All Lies, All the Time:

May 21, 2002 4:59 PM

All Lies, All the Time: "In the United States of 2002, it's not a scandal unless the corporate media says it's a scandal, and they will not call something a scandal if it centers on the ability of large corporations to procure gargantuan favors from government. It is only a scandal if a member of the political party that's less than 100 percent devoted to granting corporations their every whim is caught doing something wrong."
posted by crasspastor (20 comments total)

Raises some interesting and probably valid points, but is unfortunately so overstated that nobody who doesn't already agree with it is going to take it seriously.

Sorta like foldy. [ducks]
posted by ook at 5:06 PM on May 21, 2002

All lies, All the Time.

"So you have a movement of people whose incoherent fantasies are not challenged by their putative leader and a candidate whose fibs and crude renderings of international affairs receive little scrutiny from either the media or his own supporters. This is the politics of soft consensus, not a rigorous culture of truth telling, and the sooner Greens confront this disconnect, the sooner they will escape from the political margins."
posted by MidasMulligan at 5:21 PM on May 21, 2002

Am I supposed to infer that the Democrats are less than 100% devoted to business? Okay, i guess I give them a score of about 90% devotion.

I am eagerly waiting for the median to coin the phrase 9-11gate. Then I will be able to understand what is going on.
posted by srboisvert at 6:27 PM on May 21, 2002

I would love to know at what glorious point inAmerica the writer refers to as the America he grew up in. In the America I grew up in, the Japanese- Americans, citizens, where put into concentration camps till the war's end. Jews were admitted to some colleges on a quota basis. Blacks almost never at all. There were two papers in most large towns and cities, and both owned by same family.
I could go on and on. But the writer imagines a country that never r4eally was. Suffice it to say, if you want a Free Press, you have to buy one. And that is what the coporations have done. The alternative is the sort of thing (alternative media) the writer publishes at...and that is often all rant and bitching with little substantive information.
STay with Jerry Springer is best advice. His show too is rigged but at least it show America as she is.
posted by Postroad at 6:27 PM on May 21, 2002

media. that is....(why do i see these after post but not after preview? )
posted by srboisvert at 6:28 PM on May 21, 2002

Am I supposed to infer that the Democrats are less than 100% devoted to business? Okay, i guess I give them a score of about 90% devotion.

I get the impression the writer would probably agree with you, as would i.
posted by rhyax at 6:36 PM on May 21, 2002

Public discourse in the U.S. is now a rotting edifice.

And this fellow, with his fact-challenged, overblown rant, is just the antidote to restore the foundations of the republic.

None had the principles or courage even to undertake a careful editorial examination of the potential ways in which such a decision might prove damaging or antithetical to the spirit of democracy.

I remember lots of editorials that expressed qualms about the Supremes deciding the matter, but deferring to the rule of law. The author is free to disagree with the editorialists parsing the matter that way, but to say it didn't happen ("none") is false.

Having shown their true colors that fateful day, it was henceforth no longer possible for the American media to speak the truth.

After reading this many logical fallacies in such a short space, it was henceforth no longer possible to stomach such shrill, juvenile posturing.

I'm gonna go get my war on. Voltron's Office of Homeland Security is in the Heeeouse!
posted by sacre_bleu at 7:03 PM on May 21, 2002

See what I mean? [ducks again]
posted by ook at 7:28 PM on May 21, 2002

Yep, that's right Midas. You either identify with Nader or you don't. He either stands for something or he does not. Those who voted for him, voted for him and then again they did not. The stupid, sappy idealism I harbor, that at the time Nader embodied, existed not in any cogent realm, rather it was created by Nader and each and everyone of us who did vote our conscience voted for a lying fraud, that heretofore the issues he stood for had no real meaning in any of our minds. I was entirely manipulated, we were completely ideologically enraptured by a charlatan who's issues, until he was there to invent them and his (laughable) "Seattle Coalition", didn't actually exist.

Actually, and I can only speak for me, I voted for and supported Nader, because he represented something different. Never once did I believe he represented an end, in and of himself. Never once did I imagine his positions or impetus for having said positions to be above scrutiny. Like, an f&m post, something must get the ball rolling. Dialogue must be had somehow. And as evidence that in this day and age, dialogue cannot be had, is that Nader was not included in the debates as he so wanted to be. Not that he'd be proven wrong, but that he'd get the ball rolling. This is what Ralph Nader embodied for me.

Now? I tend to really like the causticity of Rev Al Sharpton. He's got moxie.

We are all welcome to our thoughts and rehashings of the past. I very much so, beg to differ with the author of the article you linked to Midas. He nor you, nor either of the prime time candidates of election year 2000, affected me nor speak for me. I beg to differ, again that, there is this "soft-consensus" that thwarts a progressive's every move. There is either a vast underclass and an elite ruling class or there is not. Until I am satisfactorily sure that this is not the case then I will continue to vote my conscience. Or until 2+2 does equal 5.
posted by crasspastor at 7:30 PM on May 21, 2002

Mr. Mynick argued too long, perhaps too feverishly, certainly too repetitiously and possibly too sentimentally, but the communication problem here may not be all his.

Truth be told, some of the responses to Mr. Mynick’s essay bear the unmerited swagger of people who have read about being there, who imagined doing it and who therefore feel compelled to comment on it.

The America Mr. Mynick refers to in his essay is the America of the 1950s when the public was instructed to duck and cover in the event of an sneak attack by a godless nation which would consider the unimaginable -- first use of the nuclear weapons.

The America Mr. Mynick remembers is the one in which schoolteachers warned fifth-graders about soulless governments of foreign nations that encouraged children to inform on their parents and neighbors to the secret police.

Of course, the present Administration now proposes the former and state governments rewards the latter (see last week’s international news and the anti-drug programs embraced by local law enforcement agencies). But times change and these pragmatic revisions of basic American values have unfortunately put Mr. Mynick out of step with the modern world as MeFi’s most frequent correspondents like to define it.

Although this may also fail to please the MeFi correspondents’ cultivated self-image, the hard fact is people of few years and less experience can be way too certain about when the world was created.

For them -- as for all little wide-eyed ducklings opening their eyes for the first time to the bright world of their mother’s lily pond -- it all began the day they were born.

This happy coincidence leads each newly-hatched duckling to believe they have seen it all from the start and – insert world-weary sigh or snicker here – they consequently know everything.
posted by tnadeau at 9:19 PM on May 21, 2002

Or until 2+2 does equal 5.

Procreation: 1 + 1 = 3
Last Election: 1 + 1 + 1 = -1

I agree with a lot of what you say Crasspastor, but actions have consequences. Nader has some valid important ideas, but it is basically a statistical fact that the Nader vote gave the election to GWB, much moreso than the Supreme Court.

Otherwise, the article confuses the idea of Free Press with the industry that is the commercial press. Telling me that mainstream media is worthless is sort of like pointing out gravity. It's a long since foregone conclusion. America does have a Free Press, whether or not the commercial press participates in that ideal is another issue. However as a business dependent on customers, the commercial press has no guarantee of existence. The ideal of Free Press does have that guarantee.
posted by joemaller at 9:27 PM on May 21, 2002

If one does not vote for the candidate one believes best represents his interests, the vote is wasted. Voting for a candidate out of fear of a competitor is the ruination of democracy. Be of good conscience, stand true to your convictions, and vote for *the one* candidate who best represents what you want.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:05 PM on May 21, 2002

Be of good conscience, stand true to your convictions, and vote for *the one* candidate who best represents what you want.

Yes, that works in college_fur_protesting_love_tofu_fairyland.

Really though, my bro voted for Nader... in Florida, and his *conscience* now reminds him that he's an asshole everytime he reads the newspaper. It sucks but it's true.
posted by password at 10:39 PM on May 21, 2002

I agree with the author. Unfortunately, most Americans are too insecure with themselves to even entertain the idea that their government is doing "questionable things"
posted by GrooveJedi at 1:15 AM on May 22, 2002

I might add at this late hour, that the Greens or progressives or whatever you may like to designate them as, as a whole, and insofar as I am affiliated, are not extreme. I am not revolutionary, other than that getting people to think rather than accept, because "Oprah said this" and "Brokaw mentioned that" (not to mention your O'reillys and Limbaughs), is my greatest desire to one day witness in wholesale numbers. Propaganda is and propaganda does. It can come from any extreme. However, there are real and profound differences of ideals at work here. No matter that the standard, traditional bleeding-heart issues have been marginalized and deconstructed out of quasi-existence. There are still real issues of hunger, homelessness, labor exploitation, ecological connundrums that the right simply cannot use as reasons for existence without the left standing by to bring these difficulties up.

It could be said that extreme progressive political philosophy has tempered even the most staunch of conservative stumps. Blacks are no longer (publically) pariahs of white rule. You even have the once bastion of rascism, the right wing, accusing liberals of racism in issues of creationism/evolution and "race-based" quotas. Sure, it's a game of distraction. But the public of America does no longer stand for overt racism. It would most certainly spell the professional death of any up and coming, would be politician or pundit were he or she to let on such leanings. Even sweatshop-labor has become a hyphenable understanding. You have to thank for this, these so called leftist extremists. The fact, that we do not, more or less on the whole, (publically at least) embrace racist, sexist, homophobic and exploitative behavior has led the ruination of a free society underground and behind the facade of a free press (we simply believe to still be in existence, therefore it is in existence). This is why it is no longer expeditious for our supreme of the supreme leaders in this country to flatly state that it is their goal to subjugate the planet to their whims of profiteering. It is spun so that it is in our best interest, whatever it is that they do. It is done while we believe the otherwise. Who should believe, that in the year 2002, we actually have exploitionists running the preemminent "free democracy" of the world? Nobody dare utter such nonsense on the streets of America in fear of being rebuked by those who have "succumbed" to the temptation of being PC. Therefore, why would it be that our trusted American and so very patriotic leaders would do the same? This is America is it not?
posted by crasspastor at 3:18 AM on May 22, 2002

Don't know how this got to be a referendum on voting for Nader, but let me point out something; Nader didn't lose the election for Gore; Al did that all by himself. If I had heard AG say anything that gave me a shred of hope that he was capable of independent thought, I would have leaped to his bandwagon.

Prior to this, I have voted Democrat in every presidential election since McGovern. The last Democratic candidate I had no reservations about was Jimmy Carter. I held my nose and voted for Clinton twice. Excuse the hell out of me for choosing not to vote for the lesser of two evils when given an option.
posted by norm29 at 6:49 AM on May 22, 2002

The major print media are scarcely any better, and for precisely the same reason: all of them, when stripped of their flimsy disguises and superficial differences, are nothing more than obedient servants of power. They are the left hand, while the government is the right hand; they are all one and the same.
As a left-handed person, I resent being associated with the major print media. I would like to state for the record that I am not affiliated with major print media, nor are any of the left-handed people I know...
posted by fellorwaspushed at 7:23 AM on May 22, 2002

Yes, that works in college_fur_protesting_love_tofu_fairyland.

You're so clearly right, password. As our Fearless Leader D. Cheney might have said, "standing true to your convictions may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive personal voting policy."

Seriously, what's up with the anti-intellectualism, anti-activisim, anti-tofuism and anti-escapism? Did a nude vegan fairy with a PPE degree kill your mother or something?
posted by ahughey at 9:23 AM on May 22, 2002

Have things changed since the days of Walter Cronkite and Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein? Hell Yes!
posted by Mack Twain at 9:52 AM on May 22, 2002

Don't know how this got to be a referendum on voting for Nader,

Apparently Midas thought one piece of overwrought sensationalism deserved another.

from the Chapman piece:
Eighteen hours earlier, I had watched the Nader 2000 crew engage in a far more flagrant manipulation of the truth, more egregious than anything else I witnessed during my two months covering the campaign for the lefty news site WorkingForChange.com. Even before the first preliminary exit poll data crossed the wires, young staffers, on the orders of campaign headquarters, were frantically devising multiple formulas to "prove" that Nader didn’t cost Gore the election, no matter what the results might say later.

As one of those 'young staffers', I can say that this is absolute bullshit. Welch covered the campaign for two months? Was he disguised as a desk lamp? I don't recall ever seeing or hearing of him.

Some people will believe (and post) anything...
posted by Ty Webb at 12:07 PM on May 22, 2002