Monday, April 14, 2008

SHOCK AND ARRRGH

When Barack Obama discusses ultra-sensitive topics he challenges the accepted wisdom that such issues are “off-limits.”

We can’t talk about the historical crimes against democracy committed by the US government.

We can’t suggest that black people in America tend to get a raw deal.

And we can’t talk about the working class because we don’t have a working class.

To raise these issues indicts corporate big media and their overpaid stooges who recite their corporate version the news.

Eighty percent of Americans including congressional panels and even members of the Warren Commission are convinced that if he shot at Kennedy at all that day, Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone and therefore there was a conspiracy.

But 99.9% of corporate media talking heads deride such an idea. Anyone who suggests that Oswald didn’t fire the “magic bullet” is labeled by them as a conspiracy nut.

Why does the media respond this way? Because they can’t stand to admit that they muffed the biggest story of post-war America.

Why are they horrified by talk about race and class? Because they have staked their careers on the notion that you can’t talk about those things—that those problems are intractable. They are wrong, just as they were wrong about the Kennedy assassination.

The wave of criticism on MSNBC against Obama’s recent comments on poor-whites is led by new show-host David Gregory, and by Joe Scarborough who seems to be working the angle day and night.


Remember, Scarborough was a Republican congressman from the Florida panhandle with a business constituency and an ignorant, racist, poor-white votership. Why are we not surprised that he doesn’t like Obama?

David Gregory now hosts “Race for the White House” weekday afternoons on MSNBC.


You remember David Gregory, Karl Rove’s back-up dancer. They may as well have been fellating.


In my view, journalists shouldn’t socialize with the people they cover. A journalist is less free if the choice to report something, or not, might affect his or her social calendar.

The major TV journalists are paid enough that they can afford to socialize with the ruling class—at least enough to make themselves presentable at events.

“Off the record” means the journalist agrees not to share valuable information with his or her readership.

Like, who’s your friend?

Stephen Colbert will not be invited back.

David Gregory will.

----- o -----

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Willie, your observation that journalists shouldn't socialize with those they cover is right on the mark. I've observed over the years that politicians abd big corps are masters at seducing journalists into believing they are a part of the elite when in fact they are pawns. No one is of the class he or she serves. r.s.