The "Liberal" Media
"The liberal media."
That's a phrase I started hearing (or took notice of) when I was in middle school, back when I was staunchly conservative. Just like my parents.
I bought into it too. I didn't really have much choice. My parents talked to me about politics as early as I asked questions about them. Especially my dad. Often times when he would drive me one place or another, we would have discussions about religion or politics. They were discussions, not debates, at that time, because we had basically the same point of view. My dad has always been staunchly conservative, and so that was my viewpoint for a long time too.
It had been a while since I had heard the phrase used very often and by the general public. I can actually remember when I last heard a lot of it being circulated by my parents and the talking heads of the cable news networks. It was when George Bush Jr. was running for president in 2000. He was constantly coming under scrutiny from the media for saying lots of stupid things, not being able to say the name of most foreign leaders, or just making up his own words/phrases ("misunderestimated"). People kept on attacking the "liberal" media, saying that they're making fun of him just because he's a Republican. They claimed then as they claim now that the entire media world is dominated by liberals who seek to demonize conservatives in every way possible.
Let me ask you, then, where was this liberal media when Bush stole the 2000 election? Where was this liberal media when Paul Bremmer single-handedly destroyed Iraq's economy by firing over 500,000 government employees? Where was the liberal media when this became the single most profitable war for private corporations in world history? Where was the liberal media when over a billion dollars came up mysteriously missing from the war budget? Where was the liberal media when George Bush Jr. ran the ads against John Kerry for not getting injured badly enough in Vietnam, when Bush didn't serve at all?! Where was the liberal media when the PATRIOT Act was signed into law overnight? Where the fuck has the liberal media been during the last 6 months of this campaign when lies were thrown between both parties constantly without anyone calling them out and holding (especially) the candidates accountable?!
You cannot convince me that we have a liberal media. Especially not in the news. We have a very conservative media. Maybe some or even a lot of the journalists are liberal. Who knows? It doesn't matter, because they're not the ones who decide what goes on the air. It's the higher ups that decide what goes on the air, and all of the major news networks and newspapers are owned by multi-national corporations, run by conservative white men.
The idea of us having a "liberal media" is laughable. Consider this: the most popular news network on television is Fox News. The station with the laughably ironic catch-phrase "fair & balanced." It's the network in its effort to be "fair and balanced" invented several false stories about Barack Obama's past that have spread like wildfire into the minds of the stupidest voters, such as he's a socialist, he's a Muslim, he's an Arab, he's a terrorist, he attended a fundamentalist Muslim school, etc. Thanks to Fox's own methods of being fair and balanced, there are a lot of people who believe these lies and believe that being Arab is a reason to distrust him. Nevermind the fact that these people consider themselves Christians and that Jesus Christ himself, by all logic, was ARAB. Keith Olbermann gets fired for saying that Republicans dishonored the September 11th victims by using them for cheap sentimentality, whereas Glen Beck can ask a state governor (who is a Muslim) if he is going to attack us and no one says anything about it.
I'd be willing to believe that most of Hollywood's actors, writers, and directors are liberals. But they hardly have the influence on the public opinion that the CONSERVATIVE media has.
Politicians and conservative pundits like to talk about the liberal media because it makes them look like their efforts are being victimized and make people more sympathetic to their cause because they all of the sudden are made out to be poor hapless victims of TV bullies. Politicians and conservative writers and pundits know that if they say ANYTHING enough times, people will believe it, and they use that tactic to drill lies into the minds of the public that they're ultimately trying to control. When people who are too liberal pop in the media, people try to squash them as quickly as possible. Take Michael Moore for instance. Any time he comes to a city, people try to have him barred from coming within a five-mile range of the place.
To me, things like that are not such a far cry from the frightening world that Orwell predicted in 1984. The Thought Police would kill anyone who opposed The Party; and the country was always at war with someone so as to keep the public in line with a nationalistic mentality.
Have you ever heard of the "banality of evil"? Essentially, it's people doing evil things and thinking nothing of it. Someone in the crowd of a Sarah Palin rally shouted "KILL HIM!" about Obama, and Palin just smiled and took it in. I'll bet anything she heard it and she loved it. That's the banality of evil. And we see very little criticism from our "liberal" media. That, too, is the banality of evil.
That's a phrase I started hearing (or took notice of) when I was in middle school, back when I was staunchly conservative. Just like my parents.
I bought into it too. I didn't really have much choice. My parents talked to me about politics as early as I asked questions about them. Especially my dad. Often times when he would drive me one place or another, we would have discussions about religion or politics. They were discussions, not debates, at that time, because we had basically the same point of view. My dad has always been staunchly conservative, and so that was my viewpoint for a long time too.
It had been a while since I had heard the phrase used very often and by the general public. I can actually remember when I last heard a lot of it being circulated by my parents and the talking heads of the cable news networks. It was when George Bush Jr. was running for president in 2000. He was constantly coming under scrutiny from the media for saying lots of stupid things, not being able to say the name of most foreign leaders, or just making up his own words/phrases ("misunderestimated"). People kept on attacking the "liberal" media, saying that they're making fun of him just because he's a Republican. They claimed then as they claim now that the entire media world is dominated by liberals who seek to demonize conservatives in every way possible.
Let me ask you, then, where was this liberal media when Bush stole the 2000 election? Where was this liberal media when Paul Bremmer single-handedly destroyed Iraq's economy by firing over 500,000 government employees? Where was the liberal media when this became the single most profitable war for private corporations in world history? Where was the liberal media when over a billion dollars came up mysteriously missing from the war budget? Where was the liberal media when George Bush Jr. ran the ads against John Kerry for not getting injured badly enough in Vietnam, when Bush didn't serve at all?! Where was the liberal media when the PATRIOT Act was signed into law overnight? Where the fuck has the liberal media been during the last 6 months of this campaign when lies were thrown between both parties constantly without anyone calling them out and holding (especially) the candidates accountable?!
You cannot convince me that we have a liberal media. Especially not in the news. We have a very conservative media. Maybe some or even a lot of the journalists are liberal. Who knows? It doesn't matter, because they're not the ones who decide what goes on the air. It's the higher ups that decide what goes on the air, and all of the major news networks and newspapers are owned by multi-national corporations, run by conservative white men.
The idea of us having a "liberal media" is laughable. Consider this: the most popular news network on television is Fox News. The station with the laughably ironic catch-phrase "fair & balanced." It's the network in its effort to be "fair and balanced" invented several false stories about Barack Obama's past that have spread like wildfire into the minds of the stupidest voters, such as he's a socialist, he's a Muslim, he's an Arab, he's a terrorist, he attended a fundamentalist Muslim school, etc. Thanks to Fox's own methods of being fair and balanced, there are a lot of people who believe these lies and believe that being Arab is a reason to distrust him. Nevermind the fact that these people consider themselves Christians and that Jesus Christ himself, by all logic, was ARAB. Keith Olbermann gets fired for saying that Republicans dishonored the September 11th victims by using them for cheap sentimentality, whereas Glen Beck can ask a state governor (who is a Muslim) if he is going to attack us and no one says anything about it.
I'd be willing to believe that most of Hollywood's actors, writers, and directors are liberals. But they hardly have the influence on the public opinion that the CONSERVATIVE media has.
Politicians and conservative pundits like to talk about the liberal media because it makes them look like their efforts are being victimized and make people more sympathetic to their cause because they all of the sudden are made out to be poor hapless victims of TV bullies. Politicians and conservative writers and pundits know that if they say ANYTHING enough times, people will believe it, and they use that tactic to drill lies into the minds of the public that they're ultimately trying to control. When people who are too liberal pop in the media, people try to squash them as quickly as possible. Take Michael Moore for instance. Any time he comes to a city, people try to have him barred from coming within a five-mile range of the place.
To me, things like that are not such a far cry from the frightening world that Orwell predicted in 1984. The Thought Police would kill anyone who opposed The Party; and the country was always at war with someone so as to keep the public in line with a nationalistic mentality.
Have you ever heard of the "banality of evil"? Essentially, it's people doing evil things and thinking nothing of it. Someone in the crowd of a Sarah Palin rally shouted "KILL HIM!" about Obama, and Palin just smiled and took it in. I'll bet anything she heard it and she loved it. That's the banality of evil. And we see very little criticism from our "liberal" media. That, too, is the banality of evil.