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Dear Corporate Media:
When we want to wade through bullshit, we'll go cow-tipping.
In the meantime, we're just going to laugh at your antics. If you were actually good at your jobs, you would have seen the change coming. People are sick of the GOP and everyone who's been covering for them. And, yes, that includes you.
What? The "liberal media" covering for the GOP?
You people joined in the great Clinton hunt like a pack of baying dogs at the end of the Republican leash. You scrabbled for ANYTHING you could use against him. You helped the GOP paint him as a "far left" liberal when he was nothing of the kind. Clinton was mainstream and Main Street...a man of the people, which is why he's STILL loved by a great many people, and cheered even while they were impeaching him.
You sat idly by while this administration lied to us. Oh, wait, maybe you weren't so idle. You actually CHEERED this insane fucking war. "March On Baghdad" complete with martial music and whirling graphics, splashed across our TV screens. You WANTED the war, which is probably why you didn't bother to ask the relevant questions when it was time. Like "what happens when Saddam is gone?" Or "if he had WMDs, why didn't he use them to protect himself?" Or "Why didn't Bush 41 send his troops all the way to Baghdad back during Desert Storm?"
But you didn't. You didn't ask why prominent Dems were sent Anthrax, and by what agency. You didn't ask why no one has ever been charged with the crime.
You didn't ask why a secular dictator would have anything to do with a nutball radical muslim terrorist who hated his guts. You let a majority of Americans continue believing that Iraq was tied to Osama Bin Forgotten and his 40 suicide bombers. You didn't bother to remind anyone that nearly ALL of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. You also didn't bother to tell us that one of the only jets allowed to fly after the attacks was the one taking members of Bin Laden's family BACK to Saudi Arabia.
Why is that, anyway?
For the last several years, you didn't even bother investigating anything. You just took the press releases from the administration and pretended THEY were the news. You invited GOP cheerleaders on your "news" programs and let them yammer at the cameras, occasionally tossing in the most inept and inarticulate Democratic spokespeople you could find as a kind of foil for their nonsense.
And you called that journalism.
There was a time when eager young reporters would go to any length to chase down corruption, when the newspapers and the television journalists would throw caution to the wind and barrel through opposition to get to the meat of a story. Now you're willing to trade relevance for "access." You climb in bed with the Administration and wonder why your ass hurts in the morning.
You openly revile the New Media that rose up to fill the void you vacated. You parrot GOP talking points that call them the propaganda arm of the "far left," without even QUESTIONING what the fuck they mean by "far left."
I hate to tell you this, but the "Far Left" is a fucking corpse. It's a dead thing the GOP animates every so often to scare people, and to smear those who dare disagree with its twisted ideology. There hasn't been a truly relevant leftist movement in this country for decades. We only look "far" left because the whole goddam dialogue has swung so far to the right.
Opposing this administration and its Republican ideology doesn't make one radical or "far" anything. Wanting to see an America that has a chance to grow stronger by giving all its citizens access to healthcare isn't radical. Wanting to see an America that provides its citizens the chance to make ends meet by simply holding down a job isn't radical. Wanting to see an America that repudiates torture, and rejects open-ended spying on its own citizens, and unlimited and unlawful detention without the right of Habeas Corpus isn't radical.
But you all seemed to have been able to spit this out at us with a straight face and many of us can't help but wonder why. Is it because media deregulation has put the lot of you under the command of only a few powerful oligarchs? Is it because you're all owned, lock, stock, and smoking barrel by such luminaries as Rupert Murdoch?
And don't think you can make yourself look more relevant by playing hardball with the Democrats. It might fool the few remaining "conservatives" out there, but I wouldn't bet on it.
For the next couple of years the Democrats are going to be looking into the malfeasance of the President, his lackeys, and the rubber-stamp Congress that came before it. If there's even a shred of true journalistic integrity left in your tiny little souls, you'll let them show what they find to the American people so they can make the right decision come 2008.
But don't worry. Even if you don't, there are plenty of New Media outlets who're more than happy to do your job for you. If you're not going to practice journalism anymore, there are plenty of eager citizens who are happy to take on the task in your place.
Become relevant, or become history.
It's your choice.
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