Putting Your Money Where Their Mouth Is
By David Glenn Cox
http://theservantsofpilate.comIt is as plain as the trunk on the face of an elephant, and as obscene as the video of a sweating, bouncing, black-shirted Rush Limbaugh; our economy is in free fall. The roadrunner sticks his tongue out, and “Beep beep,” watches us fall to the canyon floor below, and all that is left is the “Splat!”
Forty-five days in and the media have already begun calling this the “Obama Bear Market.” The Republican talking points try helplessly to explain that Obama has caused this, and even more extreme is the opposite view. “Do you think this market is Obama’s doing?”
“No, of course not. The roots of this crisis are deep; they go back even before the last administration.” Translation, it's all Bill Clinton’s fault and George W. Bush had nothing to do with it. I wish I could have manufactured Republican Crazy Eight balls. You shake them up and no matter what question you ask, the answer is, “It’s Bill Clinton’s fault!” No need for “Ask again later” or “Answer unclear,” its just Bill Clinton’s fault.
What has happened to the Republicans is a physical and spiritual death; they have become the Kaiser party of 1918 or the Democrats after the American Civil War. It’s not that they don’t have any leaders, it’s that they don’t have any followers. The emperor’s new clothes have been discovered to be frauds, so who is going to stand up and announce, “I use the same tailor.” It’s a tough sell, trying to convince the public these days that all we need is more deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy.
The Republicans made loud noises against the bail out of the big three automakers. Certain of their own correctness, after making their public pronouncements they returned to their offices to discover piles of hate mail. The public, by a seven to three margin, supported the auto bail out. Ditto, the stimulus package. Still the Republicans are arguing for fewer lifeboats on the Titanic, after it hit the iceberg.
The rise of Limbaugh reminds me of the old Laurel and Hardy gag where the Sargeant asks for volunteers to step forward and everyone takes one step back. Limbaugh is the least grounded in reality; his shtick is emotional rhetoric, hate mongering and fear mongering. He controls the microphone; he can say the moon is made of green cheese today and made of ice cream tomorrow. Limbaugh has challenged the President of the United States to a debate. Obviously the President is not going to debate the bulbous, evil Michelin man, so of course Limbaugh will say, “See, he’s afraid of me.”
It would be fun, fun way past the point of hysterical, if Obama were to answer, “Sure, I’ll debate you, if, you can beat me in a nationally televised game of one-on-one basketball. First one to twenty-five wins!" After all, Limbaugh made the challenge, so Obama gets his choice of weapons.
It was once said that Prussia, rather than being a country with an army, was an army with a country. That state spent forty percent of all its resources on the military, so of course foreign policy became automatic. The rise of the modern Republican Party follows a similar trail. Kennedy beat Nixon with a much savvier media campaign. Goldwater was demolished by Johnson’s nuclear countdown commercial.
The Reagan administration got it, as did their corporate sponsors. Reagan’s elimination of the “Fairness Doctrine” rivals in clarity the Third Reich’s enabling acts. The modern Republican Party, rather than being a party with a media operation, is a media operation with a political party. It was Roger Ailes who put Limbaugh on the air. He was the man in charge of the fledgling Fox News when it was hemorrhaging millions of dollars a year. That’s all right, the payoff is on the other end.
From the 2000 election to the firing of Dan Rather, the right wing media controlled the issues. The estate tax became the death tax. John Kerry was a combat veteran who didn’t deserve his medals; his two combat tours in Vietnam were spent lollygaging. George W. Bush was a patriotic hero, defending Houston and Montgomery from the Viet Cong. The facts were out there as plain as, well, plain as the trunk on an elephant’s face. But the media cried foul at investigating Bush’s records, yet published the swift boater’s stories.
Stories of the later Florida recounts were brushed aside as old news or dissected to tell only the appropriate slant on the story. No one in the mainstream media pointed out the obvious, that with sanctions, inspections and bombings Saddam had no chance in hell of creating a nuclear program, or that the shelf life of chemical weapons is measured in days or weeks, and since we were his source of supply we knew damn well that he didn’t have any. The media machines poured out the pabulum and dissenting voices were silenced.
Not just liberal voices or conservative voices, but any voices not towing the Republican line. Hillary Clinton complained of the vast right wing conspiracy and was lambasted as a crybaby and a whiner. Was she wrong? Is Fox News fair and balanced? MSNBC has become a punching bag for the right because of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, yet employs Joe Scarborough for just as many hours and then it's conservatives all day long. CNN has either lost or sold it’s soul to the devil. Gone are the days of Peter Arnett and the Scud Stud; CNN is now the corporate news network of Time Warner.
They are about as insightful and informative as a sixth grade book report. Lou Dobbs rants with all the right questions and then draws all the wrong conclusions, a poor man's Father Coughlin. He rants about the stupidity of both Republicans and Democrats, and he hates the government. Gee, where have I heard that before? Isn’t there another rich fat man on the air someplace who also hates the government?
But the train wreck that was the second Bush Administration has destroyed the façade. Still, Fox News interviews optimistic job seekers at a New York job fair. Two, count them, two, without another word as to how many job seekers actually showed up. See? It’s not so bad, with a few tax cuts and some deregulation it will be just fine. Aren’t you just outraged? Raising taxes on millionaires? Shame on them. Don’t they realize that they’re not rich, they’re merely entrepreneurs? They create jobs, so they deserve a free ride.
The face of the Republican Party is wearing clown makeup. Politicians, of the republican ilk, dodge rocks every time they try to speak. Michael Steele has tried to rebrand the Republicans, but the name Silly Putty was already taken. They eat their young as they jockey for position. The line is short to make the next Republican response speech; I don’t think Bobby Jindal wants to go again. But rest assured, the Republican noise machine is alive and well and spewing crap everywhere. Timothy Geitner is regularly called a tax cheat, but we hear no comment about Sarah Plain having to repay the state for fraudulent vouchers.
Moderates are liberals and the far right are described as moderates. Nancy Pelosi sleeps under a hammer and sickle, and Obama will not rest until he enslaves your children, chaining them to the plows of the state. The mainstream media is up nights and weekends trying to find terms to describe our current economy as anything but what it is. The “Great Recession” or the “Mini Depression,” when what this is, is no less than the “Great Collapse.”
Statistically, we are staring into the abyss as our view of the roadrunner with his tongue stuck out drops from sight. America no longer has its huge industrial base or the accompanying cash resources to pull us out of this. That is the downside of a service economy. When the money goes away how are the poor going to restart the economy by supplying services to the poor? The media won’t tell you that, they won’t even discuss it, just as they don’t discuss the growing poverty in America or mention global warming in conjunction with strange weather patterns like tornadoes in January. Yet they laugh and chuckle when a rally against global warming gets snowed on. Environmental doom for our grandchildren, now ain’t that funny!
The news media is hurting in this economy, so now is the time to slay the beast. Now is the time to go to their web sites and let them know what you think about them. Fox revenues are down 40%; that is where the Republicans live. The people you see on TV are actors in the ultimate Fox Reality series called, “Man, are they gullible.” It’s been twenty years since I’ve used Gold Bond Powder they advertise on Rush’s show, and I’ve never tasted Snapple for the same reason. It’s time to stop putting your money where their mouth is.
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