Wanna Know Why We the People Really Don't Know Squat?

[Octafish]

34. Message Machine PENTAGON and what Dorothy Parker said.

When challenged to use the word "horticulture" while enjoying drinks at the Algonquin, Ms. Parker replied: "You can lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her think.

As a reminder for those who might've missed the boat while watching next installment of Desperate Housewares:

MESSAGE MACHINE

Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand

By DAVID BARSTOW
The New York Times, April 20, 2008

In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.

The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

SNIP...

Pentagon Keeps Tabs

As it happened, the analysts’ news media appearances were being closely monitored. The Pentagon paid a private contractor, Omnitec Solutions, hundreds of thousands of dollars to scour databases for any trace of the analysts, be it a segment on “The O’Reilly Factor” or an interview with The Daily Inter Lake in Montana, circulation 20,000.

Omnitec evaluated their appearances using the same tools as corporate branding experts. One report, assessing the impact of several trips to Iraq in 2005, offered example after example of analysts echoing Pentagon themes on all the networks.

CONTINUED...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html?_r=0

Glad you're a thinker, Egalitarian Thug. Seeing how many thousands of Americans -- and millions of innocents around the world -- have died needlessly for a lie in recent years, it's good to remind the more apolitical now and then about who is calling the shots in their lives.