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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWow! Nation column spared no words about Chris Christie.
I missed this in January, and I am sorry. Katha Pollitt at The Nation really lets loose about what he has gotten away with because he's a bully, a "man's man."
Christie: A Bullys Bully
Heres the thing, though. Christie was always mean, vindictive and hostile. Remember how he leaned forward and pointed his finger at Melissa Tomlinson, the teacher who challenged him on his negative talk about the schools? I am tired of you people, he snapped. What do you want? That was not an isolated incident. Jersey politicians are now coming forward with tales of his petty retaliations. Yet the media adored him. Media Matters quoted some of the most egregious examples of worshipful blather: he was different, fresh (Joe Scarborough); a happy warrior (GQ); bipartisan and a workhorse with a temper and a tongue, the guy who loves his mother and gets it done (Michael Scherer); someone who is magical in the way politicians can be magical (Mark Halperin). It didnt matter that he lost $400 million of federal school funding, or unilaterally canceled a plan to build a commuter train tunnel connecting New Jersey and Manhattan and presented it falsely as a big savings for his state, or vetoedfive timesadditional funding for family planning, directly causing six reproductive health centers to close. Christie has filled the place formerly occupied by John McCain: the straight-shooting Republican maverick (a maverick being a Republican who admits the earth is probably older than 10,000 years). It doesnt matter what he actually did or said.
But theres more to Christies attraction. Like McCain, Christie is a mans man. As he put it himself, I am not a focus grouptested, blow-dried candidateor governor. So what if he is a crude rageaholic? At least he doesnt eat pizza with a knife and fork like that liberal wuss Bill de Blasio (unbelievably, de Blasios decision to use silverware instead of shoving the whole slice in his mouth and letting tomato sauce drip all over his shirt like a real New Yorker was the other big story in the Tri-State Area while the Christie scandal was breaking). Democrats, with their usual self-loathing, cozied up to Christie, leaving Buono, a perfectly decent candidate, in the lurch. Though its true she wouldnt have won, you dont build support for your politics by fawning over your ideological opponent. But people are drawn to swagger and aggression. Bullies are popular.
..Just ask Fox Newss Brit Hume. I have to say that in this sort of feminized atmosphere in which we exist today, he said on Media Buzz, guys who are masculine and muscular like that run some risks. When a woman panelist expressed shock, he doubled down. Men today have learned the lesson the hard way that if you act like kind of an old-fashioned guys guy, youre in constant danger of slipping out and saying something thats going to get you in trouble and make you look like a sexist or make you look like you seem thuggish or whatever. Thats the atmosphere in which we operate.
BeyondGeography
(39,375 posts)What a guy.
DonViejo
(60,536 posts)Gonna have to remember that one!
jsr
(7,712 posts)No truer words.
notemason
(299 posts)Last mid-term elections I did not see one advertisement for a Democratic candidate around my area as the head of my state Democratic party was too busy listing all the Republicans he had donated to over the years. Unexpectedly, Jamie Sanderson, a political blogger, discovered that Harpootlian gave tens of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates.
calimary
(81,323 posts)Glad you're here. Glad you point this out. One has to ask - "whose side are you on?" The bad guys' side? Or OURS????? Who's yer daddy? Too bad we have to ask that of our own people.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)They should all beg for forgiveness. Right?
notemason
(299 posts)The man I admire most is Jimmy Carter. And I've pulled a straight lever D all my life. 3rd generation Democrat, more coming up behind me. My posts will confirm. With that I assume I'm on your side. Go team
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)50 NJ Democrats left the Dem candidate hanging with no support. What a shame.
GETPLANING
(846 posts)It's not that he's a good governor, the state of affairs in New Jersey prove that he isn't. It's that he's an asshole.
polichick
(37,152 posts)Sirveri
(4,517 posts)The issue is the appearance and projection of strength. I think that's why the fight was so close between Gore and Bush, Bush just seemed like he could fend off an attack by a wild predator better than Gore, hence the hunter gather part of our brain responded that he was good, at least in a significant segment of the population.
Walk away
(9,494 posts)I finally had to start trashing pro Christie threads because I couldn't deal with the piling on of love for that asshole.
Sheepshank
(12,504 posts)those who offer support and fawn, feel the need to live vicariously through the bully, or perhpas they are seeking safety from the storm that is the bully.....are the worst sychophants of all.
calimary
(81,323 posts)and in the style to which he's become accustomed) against David Wildstein went straight back to high school. I think we have a case of severely arrested development here. Let's all remember that was thoroughly evident in mitt wrongney's background, too. But he's too buttoned down and geeky to be as rough-n-tumble and in-her-face as chris christie was/is.
(to them both!)
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)NewJeffCT
(56,828 posts)they look at me like I'm crazy, and then I tell them I actually look at his policies, which are pretty conservative overall, and not that he hugged Obama once a few years ago. While he may not be Ted Cruz/Michele Bachmann batshit crazy conservative, he is certainly no moderate.
And, he's a bully.
ut oh
(895 posts)I'm not really seeing that... Unless his muscles are laid out waaaaaaaaaaaaaay differently than the rest of humanity...
complain jane
(4,302 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)To read so many "journalists" do so makes me sick.
It also makes it easier to see just how much Corporate McPravda has done to harm the nation.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)I just can't take the spin.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Last edited Tue Feb 11, 2014, 12:20 AM - Edit history (1)
Real Journalism in the Raw:
ConsortiumNews
WhoWhatWhy.com
Greg Palast
Center for Investigative Reporting
Citizens for Truth about the Kennedy Assassination
JFK Facts
TUC Radio
Project CENSORED
Truth-Out
Common Dreams
TruthDig
BuzzFlash
World Socialist Web Site
Bartcop
You probably got all those, madfloridian. ETA: Please add to them and we will build a better list. It's just nice to put them down so everyone can see and use them.
For those new to the story of how a few can get the many to do what the few want:
Alex Carey: Corporations and Propaganda
The Attack on Democracy
The 20th century, said Carey, is marked by three historic developments: the growth of democracy via the expansion of the franchise, the growth of corporations, and the growth of propaganda to protect corporations from democracy. Carey wrote that the people of the US have been subjected to an unparalleled, expensive, 3/4 century long propaganda effort designed to expand corporate rights by undermining democracy and destroying the unions. And, in his manuscript, unpublished during his life time, he described that history, going back to World War I and ending with the Reagan era. Carey covers the little known role of the US Chamber of Commerce in the McCarthy witch hunts of post WWII and shows how the continued campaign against "Big Government" plays an important role in bringing Reagan to power.
John Pilger called Carey "a second Orwell", Noam Chomsky dedicated his book, Manufacturing Consent, to him. And even though TUC Radio runs our documentary based on Carey's manuscript at least every two years and draws a huge response each time, Alex Carey is still unknown.
Given today's spotlight on corporations that may change. It is not only the Occupy movement that inspired me to present this program again at this time. By an amazing historic coincidence Bill Moyers and Charlie Cray of Greenpeace have just added the missing chapter to Carey's analysis. Carey's manuscript ends in 1988 when he committed suicide. Moyers and Cray begin with 1971 and bring the corporate propaganda project up to date.
This is a fairly complex production with many voices, historic sound clips, and source material. The program has been used by writers and students of history and propaganda. Alex Carey: Taking the Risk out of Democracy, Corporate Propaganda VS Freedom and Liberty with a foreword by Noam Chomsky was published by the University of Illinois Press in 1995.
SOURCE: http://tucradio.org/new.html
If you find a moment, here's the first part (scroll down at the link for the second part) on Carey.
http://tucradio.org/AlexCarey_ONE.mp3
A guide to understanding what we hear on the television screen and most everywhere else:
The Propaganda System That Has Helped Create a Permanent Overclass Is Over a Century in the Making
Pulling back the curtain on how intent the wealthiest Americans have been on establishing a propaganda tool to subvert democracy.
Wednesday, 17 April 2013 00:00
By Andrew Gavin Marshall, AlterNet | News Analysis
Where there is the possibility of democracy, there is the inevitability of elite insecurity. All through its history, democracy has been under a sustained attack by elite interests, political, economic, and cultural. There is a simple reason for this: democracy as in true democracy places power with people. In such circumstances, the few who hold power become threatened. With technological changes in modern history, with literacy and education, mass communication, organization and activism, elites have had to react to the changing nature of society locally and globally.
From the late 19th century on, the threats to elite interests from the possibility of true democracy mobilized institutions, ideologies, and individuals in support of power. What began was a massive social engineering project with one objective: control. Through educational institutions, the social sciences, philanthropic foundations, public relations and advertising agencies, corporations, banks, and states, powerful interests sought to reform and protect their power from the potential of popular democracy.
SNIP...
The development of psychology, psychoanalysis, and other disciplines increasingly portrayed the public and the population as irrational beings incapable of making their own decisions. The premise was simple: if the population was driven by dangerous, irrational emotions, they needed to be kept out of power and ruled over by those who were driven by reason and rationality, naturally, those who were already in power.
The Princeton Radio Project, which began in the 1930s with Rockefeller Foundation funding, brought together many psychologists, social scientists, and experts armed with an interest in social control, mass communication, and propaganda. The Princeton Radio Project had a profound influence upon the development of a modern "democratic propaganda" in the United States and elsewhere in the industrialized world. It helped in establishing and nurturing the ideas, institutions, and individuals who would come to shape Americas democratic propaganda throughout the Cold War, a program fostered between the private corporations which own the media, advertising, marketing, and public relations industries, and the state itself.
CONTINUED...
http://truth-out.org/news/item/15784-the-propaganda-system-that-has-helped-create-a-permanent-overclass-is-over-a-century-in-the-making
As was related earlier today on DU: Let's make hay before Net Parity or whatever it's called kicks us all off democracy's last remaining medium.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)Switching back and forth right now.
Some that come to mind are
http://ourfuture.org/
http://www.alternet.org/
Also http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.crisispapers.org/
http://crooksandliars.com/