"The sound and fury of middle aged infants banging silver spoons .."

[Nordic]

This is a line from a great article in the new Harper's magazine by Lewis Lapham.

It's called "The Tentacles of Rage -- The Republican Propaganda Mill, a Brief History"

And it describes how this whole GOP takeover of the media and the minds of America started -- mainly backed with a whole TON of money by several wealthy Americans including Milton Scaife (of course) Joseph Coors and the like ...

Lapham himself was offered $200,000 a year back in the mid 1980's to edit a "new journal of cultural opinion meant to rebut and confound the ravings of The New York Review of Books."

The salary was to be paid for life even in the event of his resignation or early retirement.

It's a great history and makes a person sorta go "Ah HA! So THAT'S how it happened."

I'll share with you a brilliant little bit of writing near the end:

"As long ago as 1964 even William F. Buckley understood that the thunder on the conservative right amounted to little else except the sound and fury of middle-aged infants banging silver spoons, demanding to know why they didn't have more -- more toys, more time, more soup; when Buckley was asked that year what the country could expct if it so happened that Goldwater was elected president, he said "That might be a serious problem". So it has proved, if not under the baton of the senator from Arizona then under the direction of his idealogically correct heirs and assigns. An opinion poll taken in 1964 showed 62 percent of the respondents trusting the government to do the right thing; by 1994 the number had dwindled to 19 percent. The measure can be taken as a tribute to the success of the Republican propaganda mill that for the last forty years has been grinding out the news that all government is bad, and that the word "public", in all its uses and declensions (public service, citizenship, public health, community, public park, commonwealth, public school, et.), connotes inefficiency and waste. The dumbing down of the public discourse follows as the day the night ...

[Erika]

1. Christ Loved the Poor.

Republicans worship the rich and despise the poor. One reason why I will never vote Repubbican. There is nothing Christian about Bush Republicans. Nothing.

[Nordic]

2. a very late night kick

[DeepModem Mom]

3. That's how people sell their soul - - they make you rich for life!

I wonder how many on the Right have made this kind of bargain!

"Lapham himself was offered $200,000 a year back in the mid 1980's to edit a 'new journal of cultural opinion meant to rebut and confound the ravings of The New York Review of Books.' The salary was to be paid for life even in the event of his resignation or early retirement."

Thanks for posting this, Nordic --

[no_hypocrisy]

6. Former democrats from the 60's & 70's turned republican

because of money. Wealth can be another form of substance abuse as it takes over your life if you let it, which leads you to seek out other addicts.

[DeepModem Mom]

7. Might you be referring to such as Tim (G.E.) Russert?

[Tight_rope]

4. kick

[Piperay]

5. Thanks

very interesting.