'Go Back to Bed America,' or how the One Party Money Party rules us all

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK7DRPyNAHA

Made on a tiny budget, and winner of a $ 25,000 campaign contest sponsored by Mike Gravel, IMHO this is one of the most important pieces of anti-propaganda efforts ever conceived. (The video mentions Gravel in only a rudimentary way to get a much larger point across, yet Gravel did not mind that. He wanted the message of how to watch television out there more than he wanted to further his campaign.)

Awesome music and magnificent editing and idea conception.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK7DRPyNAHA

I have been able to affect at least three close friends in how they watch the news, by sitting them in front of my computer and having them watch it.



And DO NOT LET THE MIKE GRAVEL mention turn you off. This is one important video

and very well put.

to get media coverage you have to be popular, and to be popular you have to get media coverage. Its the chicken and egg argument. There was nothing Gravel did that would warrant him more coverage by the MSM. If media attitudes and coverage alone determined who would win the elections...it would have been Clinton v Ghoulianni.

If a die hard socialist somehow managed to get 20 million supporters to the polls during the primaries, the media would cover that candidate.

As long as money is the driving force behind our media, you will not see equal coverage of all POV or politicians. The ones that bring in the ad dollars will get more coverage.

......other than running for President........

I think they ALL deserve equal treatment.

If theres a few nut cases in the mix they wont win anyway, but thats NOT for the MSM to decide.

Its ridiculous to suggest the give Alan Keyes and Mike Gravel the same amount of coverage they would give a McCain and Clinton. There has to be some support behind the candidate in order for the MSM to see financial gain from covering that candidate.

If we had a government press then you could make that case.

"Its ridiculous to suggest the give Alan Keyes and Mike Gravel the same amount of coverage they would give a McCain and Clinton."



Why?

What makes McCain or Hillary's ideas better than a Gravel or a Kucinich?

What makes their judgment less worthy of your consideration?

Because the MSM tells you they arent as worthy?

Hey, if you like having the MSM are telling YOU who they think you should vote for thats your business.

Me, I would prefer equal time for all candidates so that I can decide for myself.

I just live in the real world, where they do make the choice.

You can keep dreaming that they will change, or you can go start your own media outlet and give equal time.

Did you decide for yourself this time or did the media decide for you?

Why should someone with no money and no supporters get equal time with candidates with huge war chest and millions of supporters on a medium that survives by advertising dollars? How is that medium supposed to survive?

If you want to move the discussion to how we completely change the system so that the media does not have to worry about ad dollars when pushing stories and candidates then thats worth having. But asking them in the current system to give equal coverage to anyone who runs for president is a fantasy.

So that they re fair.

The seating of candidates at debates should be done somewhat randomly.

If you get center seating at one debate, you get outer seating at the next.

And each candidate gets to have an set and equal amount of time.

Those of us who supported Kucinich and had to sit through entire debates, knowing the other candidates would get four to eight times as much coverage, realized what a sham the whole debate thing is.

And then the one question he was asked was about the UFO's he saw, whereas Clinton was asked about her favorite jewels.

if you are at a debate then you should have equal time and random seating. But then the MSM will freeze out the "fringe" candidates from the debates.

If a candidate wants to get coverage he/she needs to either have plenty of money, supporters or both. Its hard to take a candidate who get fewer than 1% of the vote seriously when he complains that the media is biased. Yeah they are biased, but that doesn't completely explain why less than 1% of the people who vote supported you.

Nationally, neither candidate were gaining any traction. Dean was polling in the single digits when the Democratic Primary really got going and it was his campaign's greatness that lifted him from 3-6 points in the polls to frontrunner status. Sure, he eventually lost, but he pretty much went from nowhere to the top and it was because they shaped their message and ran a fantastic early-primary campaign.

Huckabee spent most of the Republican primary polling below 10% nationally. In August of 2007, Huckabee was at 4%. http://www.usaelectionpolls.com/2008/polls/Gallup-National-Polls-August-2007.html

Sure, he had the benefit of the media, but that benefit only began to pick up steam AFTER his campaign began its climb to the top. The same thing happened with Howard Dean. It started at the bottom, both candidates began to climb and the media took notice. Gravel never had a message. Gravel never had the money. Gravel never had the campaign competence and that is why he stagnated in the polls at 1% or less.

Equal coverage?

Do you know how many people ran for president this year? How do you give them all equal coverage and actually have some semblance of control? You can't.

Here is a list of everyone who officially ran for president and were nominated by their party. Many didn't have their names on one state ballot, many did.

John McCain
Barack Obama
Chuck Baldwin
Bob Barr
Cynthia McKinney
Ralph Nader
Gene Amondson
Róger Calero
Charles Jay
Alan Keyes
Gloria La Riva
Brian Moore
Thomas Stevens

How does the media equally cover 14 candidates in a way where they actually get valuable information out there? Do you honestly believe Thomas Stevens, of the Objectivist Party, deserved as equal of coverage as Barack Obama? I have a hard time believing that.

Now that's just candidates who were on the ballots in one or more states. Here is the candidates who were not on the ballot or only on one (maybe who weren't affiliated with any party):

Donald K. Allen/Christopher D. Borcik (Ohio, Maryland)
Jonathan Allen/Jeffrey Stath (Heartquake '08—Colorado, write-in in Arizona, Georgia, Montana, Ohio, and Texas)<60>
Jose M. Aparicio (Maryland)
Lawson Bone (Indiana, Maryland, and Utah)
Jeff Boss/Andrea Marie Psoras (Vote Here—New Jersey)
Ted Brown, Sr. (Maryland)
Santa Claus (West Virginia)<61>
James D. Criveau (Maryland)
Richard Duncan/Ricky Johnson (Ohio)
Michael Faith (Indiana)
James R. Germalic/Martin Wishnatsky (Ohio)
Mark Graham (Utah)
Leonard Habermehl (Kentucky)
RaeDeen R. Heupel (California, Maryland)
Thaddaus Hill/Gordon F. Bailey (Texas)
Ronald Hobbs (Maryland and Utah)
Yonyuth Hongsakaphadana (New Hampshire)
Keith Judd (Kentucky and Maryland)
Lou Kujawski (Indiana)
Bradford Lyttle/Abraham Bassford (United States Pacifist Party—Colorado)<62>
Frank McEnulty/David Mangan (Colorado)<63>
Frank Moore/Susan Block (California, Maryland, and Utah)
Kevin Mottus (Indiana)
Gary Nettles/Brad Krones (Florida)
John Joseph Polachek (New Party—Illinois)<64>
John Plemons (Indiana)
Platt Robertson/Scott Falls (Ohio)
Joe Schriner/Dale Way (Maryland and Ohio)
David John Sponheim (Maryland)
Lynne A. Starr (Maryland)
Blaine Taylor (Maryland)
Jeffrey Wamboldt (We the People Party—Wisconsin)
Lanakila Washington (Humanistic Party—New York)
Ted Weill/Frank McEnulty (Reform—Mississippi)
Jerry White/Bill Van Auken (Socialist Equality—New York)<65>

That's 35 candidates + the 14 for a total of 49 presidential candidates this year. That doesn't include the dozens of unknown Democrats & Republicans who ran in both those primaries (there were officially 21 candidates registered with the FEC to run for the Democratic Primary). You tell me how all these candidates get equal coverage without diminishing the true depth of a campaign. It can't be done.

So what can be done? Well, unfortunately, the media has to pick and choose which candidates make better stories. Maybe it isn't fair, but is it really fair for Lee Mercer Jr. that he was ignored the entire Democratic Primary, even though he officially registered with the FEC? You have to draw the line somewhere and the fact is, Mike Gravel was never a serious candidate. Maybe the media helped, but as Howard Dean proved in 2004, you can go from getting no media coverage to becoming the front runner if you have campaign competence. Gravel didn't and that is a big reason why his campaign floundered.

Because of Mike Gravel, one way or another, but because of the fact this video stands on its own as a sweet and concise primer on Mass Communications and the techniques that are used within. (I admit the last fifteen seconds are ALL Advertisement for Gravel, but that is because those who produced it were producing it in order to compete for the Mike Gravel-sponsored awards for his campaign video.)


I see no reason at all that if the debate is including a certain number of chairs, each to be occupied by a candidate, that than an issue of fairness should be applied. Why have so many people if only to subliminally marginalize so many of them? The chair positioning could have been fair and random, and the times allowed for candidates should have been standard for everybody. You either have people as candidates participating at a debate, but this business of having people and thenmanipulating the perception of them is grotesque. And not something that a real democracy would tolerate.

And if the debate process allows so many canddiates to be marginalized, then at LEAST We the Public attempt to keep ourselves informed of how we are being manipulated.

If only one person seeing this topic wakes up out of their slumber by watching this, then my goal is "Mission Accomplished."

Or perhaps, DU'ers being somewhat savvier than a corresponding portion of the USA electorate, this vid might offer savvy people a way to explain to friends, neighbors, relatives, etc exactly how the manipulations of "massaging the message" are achieved. Then I will go to bed tonight a somewhat happier person.

My reply was to the comment that every candidate who is running for president deserves equal coverage.

I have a problem with that. It is not realistic to do equal coverage for every candidate, because there are just too many out there. The media HAS to weed it out, or we're not going to get any valuable information on who we should support, since each candidate would probably be given maybe an hour or so media coverage a week, if we're lucky.

I really needed tobe clearer about my reason for posting it.

I am trying to offer people a clear and concise method by which they can offer themselves an understanding of the visual manipulations that the Corporate Media exploits to keep us under control.

Positioning of people in camera view is important. Time they are allowed to talk is important. The angle at which the candidates are shot is important.

If you caught FAUX news showing Obama and McCain together, often Obama would be in the background, his body set up by the cameraman in such a way that he appeared to be "shifty"
And the person in the foreground always appears stronger. So the advantage for the more Corporate candidate was clear to the viewer in a subliminal manner.

Your debate comment is something I agree with. I was discussing the media including and providing equal coverage to every candidate.

I do not think that is possible. For the debates, well that is something you and I pretty much agree on.