Why are you still surprised about the Corporate American Media (CAM)?

- Drunk until 40ish. DUIs. Cocaine. Insider trading. Illegal stock sales. Using public property for profit. Business and personal connection to the Saudi royal and bin Laden families. Texas Air Guard desertion. The CAM (corporate American media) had already covered up these issues before, during and after the 2000 'election'.

- And let's not forget CAM's other responsibility beyond covering up GWB's* past and his 'presidency: smearing his opponents. Their most recent victims: Clinton, Gore, Kerry.

- The CBS fiasco was simply a case where one network tried to push outside the censorship and actually report an anti-Bush* story. What CBS didn't seem to realize is that ALL the Bush* Guard documents had long ago been burned/purged and nothing incriminating remains.

- The last of the impartial media has been marginalized to the point where they won't be believed on any anti-Bush* story they may report in the future. This also serves as a shot over the bow to any other media with desires to leave the ministry of propaganda.

- The free press is dead. Only the 'liberal' independent media survives and their audience doesn't reach enough people to make a difference. What this means is that fascism will thrive in America and that the CAM will work against Kerry to guarantee a win for King George* in November.

...but we MUST wake up (at least the Left) to the reality that the CAM is working FOR the opposition. This is why a president was impeached for a blowjob. This is why Gore was exiled. This is why there is a successful smear campaign against Kerry. This is why Bush's* horrible record will never see the light of day.

- Democracy is impossible without a free and independent press. The RWingers knew this...which is why they began decades ago to purchase media monopolies and trade favorable media legislation for 'favors' to the Republicans.

- It's amazing that just now...two months before the election...that only a few Democrats are waking up to the fact that the 'game' is rigged against us.

...but it's certainly not 'rubbish'. Can you prove anything I've said is not true?

- Even if you don't believe it...aren't you even the least suspicious about a media that covered up a candidate's past in 2000 and continue to cover for him today? Don't you find it a bit compelling that this same media HELPED the Bushies drive this nation into an illegal war with a country that had nothing to do with the 'war on terrorism'?

- Don't take my word for it. It's clear that the same media that helped install Bush* into office is now promoting and supporting him for a second term.

- Perhaps you've noticed that Bush* has literally dozens of stories in his past that could have been given the 'swiftboat' treatment had the CAM wanted the truth to be known?

- And how many reports did the CAM do on the creation of Bush's* shadow government?

defeatist rubbish.

...but I tend to agree that we're 'f**ked' until every single one of us comes to the realization that the American media belongs to those who pulled off a bloodless coup in 2000 and pushed this nation into an unnecessary war.

Q is merely discussing conditions that actually exist. This is not "defeatism." Indeed, to pretend that We The People, just because we are on the side of truth and justice, will prevail in the face of power monopoly and media collusion, is a false hope.

Q. is merely identifying an overwhelmingly powerful force in the nation's slide towards fascism and militarism.

They *almost* have us by the proverbial short and curlies. There is still time to vote with one's pocketbook, and to use boycotts and demonstrations and protests -- we could bring the motherfuckers down by depriving them of our cash.

One perhaps positive note: I have been astonished at how many people I know, who do NOT participate in DU, or turn to alternative media, who have figured out on their own that Wolf and Judy and Paula and Brent and His Chimperial Majesty and Unka Dick are lying to them. Just as in the USSR during the Cold War, or during WWII in Germany, people KNEW that they were being lied to, and knew to discount what they were told by official sources. In spite of the horrific power of those regimes, still, logic and reason survived, albeit underground. It gets to the point where you can "use" the official media to read like a code.

Fight fight fight.

...to our present situation. Russians KNEW they were being lied to...but also knew there was nothing they could do beyond calling a lie a lie...in the privacy of their homes. They also had the KGB to worry about...so they couldn't be seen in public protesting the government or their policies.

- That we're 'allowed' to protest doesn't mean much...as our version of the KGB rounds up protesters that haven't broken any law and the CAM downplays the impact and meaning.

- Yes...many people know that Wolfy and Judy are lying to them and trying to prop up the Crown Prince. But they also must be aware that half of America believes this BS without reservation. Their 'team' is winning and that's all they care about. They love free speech as long as their speech isn't censored or oppressed. They don't mind if the other side isn't free to express their opinions in the public forum.

- The next two months are going to be very interesting...and revealing.

Remember Krokodil? They got away with a hell of a lot. It was the only place you could see the truth published anywhere during the USSR. The court jesters are the only ones who are suffered to be allowed to speak the obvious....

As far as what they get away with: some of it is not merely distortions, or propaganda posing as news, but some of it is outright pure lies and misrepresentations. Even if miraculously it is exposed, the flying monkeys shrug it off, because the ends justify the means.

The suppression of speech and opinion has gone from right wing talk radio into the mainstream media. LTTE here in Pittsburgh, even in our "liberal" paper, are chilling. They do not respond to opinion counter to their own with arguments, but with calls for any editorial, or report, that in any way criticizes Bush be excised, that they should not be permitted to exist. Bush is praised in a mythic manner that recalls for me the authoritarian personality cults of Nazism, Soviet repression, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and even that of our recent enemy du jour, Saddam Hussein. Republican fascists MUST have an absolute enemy in order to exist, and as one passes away, i.e. Communism, one must be created to take its place, i.e. "Terra" (aka uppity Arabs). Alas, they have made absolute enemies of some of their own countrymen -- and anyone who thinks this frenzied hatred is *ever* going to just dissipate some happy day is sadly mistaken. Not only do they persecute "liberals" and "unionists/Socialists(sic)", but they have begun demonizing middle class American workers.

chimpy has the support he does have right now. His media packaging by his media handlers is the only thing between him and political oblivion, and his insiders know it.
I still cannot see where he has brought new voters into his ranks. He shot his wad in '00, and that was before he pissed off many in his party. I'm not buying into fear of dread and disgust that the repugs are trying to spread around places like this. They know it's too easy to sicken liberals and make them feel hopeless. That's what they'll do from here on in; try to demoralize every Democrat they can. That's their only hope to avoiding a Kerry landslide.

tdp

...or own enough of it to manufacture consent.

- The CAM has become an echo chamber for the Republican party and their neocon operatives. The 2000 election, lack of any real investigations into the many Bush* scandals and the 'war' against Iraq is proof.

Yes. The polls are not to be trusted. This is psychological warfare. We are being told there is no chance for us to prevail. We are even told by *some* that Kerry never really stood for us anyway, and that his presidency wouldn't really have made such a difference any way.

You BET they're trying to demoralize us.

On the other hand, the other way they are handling the utter bifurcation of American voters is to work their flying monkeys into frenzied hysteria -- so they can count on them to use whatever means to justify the ends, and to embrace whatever deception that Delay and Jeb have devised with the same tenderness they did the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. They also need to count on them to take to the streets and intimidate us, and even use violence if need be, should there be any ambiguity about election results.

There was no bounce to be had by either party. Period.

But the way it was reported was that Wolf and Paula and Judy and Brett all ridiculed Kerry for only gaining 3 points after the convention, pronouncing it a pathetric failure. But when His CHimperial Majesty rose by 3 points after NaziCon04, it was hailed as yet another mandate of love and support for this popular wartime president, proving that Kerry was going down to humiliating defeat. Go figure.

Still -- although there may be *some* people who are still too stupid to have figured out what's going on, I am continually astonished about how many ordinary Americans have come to see through this shit. They may not be marching on Washington or NYC BUT they are giong to make a beeline to the polls with more passion than they have ever in their lives.

I'm looking for the voice of the slient majority to be heard in November, despite of what Wolf and Judy and Brett and Paula tell us is true.

On the other hand, I *know* that His Chimperial Majesty *knows* that his plan is in place. He's going to do to the American electoral process what Mohammed Atta did to the World Trade Center. Yeah -- we all hear the "chatter" and have seen the intelligence warning us what is going to happen, and yet all we can do, apparently, is sit back and wait for it to happen.

when government and press cooperate."

This is how Gary Webb ("Dark Alliance") closes his essay in Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press:

"Back in 1938, when fascism was sweeping Europe, legendary investigative reporter George Seldes observed (in his book, The Lords of the Press) that 'it is possible to fool all the people all the time - when government and press cooperate.' Unfortunately, we have reached that point."

And of course, under fascism - corporatism - cooperation is too soft a word for it.

...explaining their own conflict of interest: their investments in the 'military-industrial complex'. The same small group of rich white men that own the media...also grow even richer with each war. They're involved in everything from missile defense to the production of the next generation of 'usable' nuclear weapons.

- War is very profitable for the corporate media and their subsidaries. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why they're so pro-war?

most of it we all obviously agree with, we provide examples constantly on DU of corporate media bias.

But you slickly slip in the idea that there's no hope, which of course is bogus.