Don't Help the Right Manufacture A Perception That Creates An Alternative Realityhttp://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/02/15/lets-not-help-the-right-manufacture-a-perception-that-creates-an-alternative-reality/blog post by David Sirota -- see whole piece at link.
Some readers of my blog posts readers of my column and listeners to my daily radio show have asked me why I spend a lot of my time pushing, critiquing, criticizing and generally talking about Democrats and the progressive movement and not Republicans and the conservative/Tea Party movement these days. My answer is fairly simple:
Democrats and (thus theoretically) the progressive movement are in the policy driver’s seat right now, and Republicans and the conservative/Tea Party movement are effectively locked out of power, at least at the national level.
Pretending this isn’t true creates a reality that cannot exist without such manufactured illusion. Indeed, beyond the filibuster (which is circumventable in many cases), the only way Republicans and the conservative/Tea Party movement can wield power is through perception. The more the media – and especially the progressive media – pretends Republicans and the conservative/Tea Party movement is powerful, the more chance that wholly manufactured perception can become reality.
Unfortunately, as Alternet’s Alisa Valdes notes, that illusion is being manufactured:
Four years ago, when millions of Americans took to the streets to support the human and civil rights of immigrants and, by association in the public mind, Latinos, the news media scarcely covered the marches — even though they drew larger crowds than any other marches in the history of the nation, including the oft-dramatized culture-changing protests over the Vietnam War.
Fast-forward four years, to the Tea Party Convention, which boasted all of 600 registrants and one “we-tahd” hand-scribbler from Wasilla, Alaska and the contrast in news coverage is astonishing. The news media, including progressive talk radio and blogs, have been crowing about the big Tea Party “movement” for days now. USA Today has taken a poll about a Tea Party candidate’s viability in presidential elections.
In short, what we are seeing is a mind-boggling double standard, and a wholehearted swallowing of right-wing propaganda as fact, in an American news media whose mathematics deem one Tea Party member to be greater than 4,000 human rights marchers.
(snip)
The end result, as Valdes points out, is “a wholehearted swallowing of right-wing propaganda as fact.” The game of pretending these people are important creates a political system in which they are important. That may be good for ratings – and even for progressive media ratings – but it ain’t good for the country, much less the progressive movement.
This is why I don’t play this game in my own work.
I’m not going to be part of a game that perpetuates a fantasy that both distracts from concrete reality, and creates an alternative reality that pulls our country ever farther to the right. It’s not that I won’t criticize Republicans or conservatives – obviously I will and I do. If a Republican elected official with legislative claim on relevance says or does something destructive, then I’m happy to spend time on that because at least that Republican official can lay claim to legislative relevance. If an unelected conservative/Tea Party leader does something like that, and it can be used to open up a discussion about a larger more important issue, then I will occasionally spend time on that too.
(more at link)
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
