From: Arlo J. Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Sun Nov 21 2004 - 17:05:44 GMT
Mark, Sam, Platt..
Another really nice news source (actually an outlet for left articles) is
Guerrilla News (http://www.guerrillanews.com). I was unfamiliar with ZNet, but
spent some time there this morning. Thanks for the tips.
An interesting critical consideration of the so-called "liberal-media elite" is
advanced in the book "What's the Matter with Kansas" by Thomas Frank. His
criticism revolves around the "reappropriation of the language of populism" by
the right-wing media. Basically, by creating an "elite, conspiratorial enemy"
(the liberal media and academia), they are able to unite people under a common
banner of resistence. If you follow right-wing discourse, you will see this
boogeyman (the liberal elite) evoked practically non-stop.
What's insidious about Rove's (and the other right-wing propagandists) decision
to make the "liberal media elite" their "illuminati" is that it effectively
kills two birds with one stone. It creates a common unity of supposed
resistence, and eliminates the possibility that any counter-evidence enters
into the discourse of the rank-and-file. Every news story that runs counter to
its claims can be simply (and with little psychological effect) dismissed as
"evidence of the liberal elite's conspiracy". People turn of even "centrist"
news stories and agencies where multiple views are discussed and turn into very
fractured media channels where right-wing propaganda is the only voice heard
(and presented under the banner "fair and balanced").
The result: Any dissent or disagreement with the right-wing media is immediately
dismissed as evidence of collusion with "the liberal media elite".
Thinking about the liberal-media conspiracy myth and the so-called "morality of
the right" this morning, I opened Newsweek to the Periscope, and found this
commentary on Bush's appoiting of Gonzales.
"But Gonzales ultimately signed off on all of the administration's most
controversial legal moves - including declaring U.S. citizens "enemy
combatants" without permitting them to see lawyers and authorizing unorthodox
interrogation techniques that critics say set the stage for the Abu Ghraib
scandal."
"One legal issue that worried Gonzales from the start... was that U.S.
officials- even those inside the white house- might one day be charged with
'war crimes' as a result of some of the new measures.... A determination by
Bush that the Geneva conventions did not apply to the Afghan prisoners
'substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosectution under the
War Crimes Act... to seek a memo from the Justice Department's Office of Legal
Counsel concluding the president could authorize the use of torture as a
wartime interrogation technique."
It ends with "Senate Democrats are expected to press for full disclosures on
these and related matters. But privately, even they acknowledge his
confirmation is assured."
Apart from the "moral superiority" of wrongful imprisonment (or the redefining
it to make it not wrongful), the denial of counsel, and the approval of torture
and rejection of the Geneva codes, this is not mentioned again in the entire
magazine (that I could find). It garners only a tiny "blip" in Periscope, no
real criticisms or concerns get mentioned, and it concludes simply with his
confirmation "assured". End of story. (For a fun activity, imagine if this was
Bill Clinton, and this was someone *he* was going to appoint!)
Where are the challenges and criticims of all this? Non-existant. If there was a
"liberal conspiracy" in the mainstream news, this would be all over the place.
Sadly, like so many other right-wing myths, the mainstream news is hardly
leftist. If anything, it is afraid of being labeled "liberal" and so it turns
right of center. But yet the evokation of the boogeyman will continue...
Arlo
On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 10:10:14 +0000, "Sam Norton" wrote:
> Hi Mark,
>
> Thanks for the pointers. As it happens I'm one of the ZNet 'sustainers', and
it has been my primary
> source of information about Chomsky up to now. I used to subscribe to Norman
Solomon's regular
> e-mails, until after 9/11, when I got fed up with him. But I'll go back to
exploring him again.
> (Generally I think it sane to get as many points of view as possible,
especially those you disagree
> with, otherwise you're simply circulating stale tea in the tea cup. I'm still
fairly right wing
> though.... ;-)
>
> > sam:
> > Chomsky is concentrating his criticisms on the US, his own country,
> > for very valid reasons. My point was that those in positions of
> > decision-making have to get dirty hands; that is, it can sometimes be
> > the highest Quality decision available to carry out a course of
> > action which in and of itself is profoundly flawed.
> >
> > msh says:
> > I knew this was what you were getting at, but figured I'd wait for
> > you to come back. In fact, I believe I can argue that NC and other
> > critics of American foreign and domestic policy base their analyses
> > on the full spectrum of available information, rather than ignoring
> > certain context as you suggest. I'm not convinced this can be said
> > of the so-called decision-makers.
>
> This is what I want to investigate further, and the decision to go to war in
Iraq is a useful
> test-case. My underlying sense is that the logical consequence of your
position is that those in
> positions of power are frighteningly corrupt, and I am reluctant to believe
that they are quite as
> corrupt as all that. But I'll see what I can dig out.
>
> Thing is, I was also having this argument with a friend, and saying that Bush
wasn't quite as
> immoral as my friend was alleging. And then my friend pointed out that Bush
was happy to execute
> minors and the mentally retarded, and I was silenced, because (as my friend
well knew) I think
> capital punishment is indefensible. So there we go.
>
> > msh says:
> > Of course what I am actually saying has nothing to do with a media
> > conspiracy. In the case of the last war run-up, the WH ignored
> > reports from their own intelligence agencies when such reports did
> > not support their agenda....
> > Sam, FYI, here's a link to a BBC story about this incident:
> > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3056626.stm
>
> I think it has been well established that Blair, for example, strongly
distorted the evidence re WMD
> to drum up support for going to war. What I am not so convinced about is that
this distortion makes
> the overall decision worthless.
>
> Cheers
> Sam
>
>
>
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