The Media Bump
Why are a handful of Republican lawmakers more powerful than a huge Democratic majority in Congress, a Democratic President in the White House, and a stable and reliable Obama grassroots movement? Take a look at the media. They are responsible. They are the ones who can make black, white and convince Americans not to trust their own eyes and ears.
Cable news, with the possible exception of MSNBC and Comedy Central (often the most reliable news analysts), is in the business of spin. By the time the news cycle has run its course, CNN and FoxNEWS have managed to weave a web of talking points, none of which resemble what actually happened in the world of actual events. For example, Wolf Blitzer, after having witnessed Obama’s health care summit on Thursday, February 25, initially expressed encouragement at the prospects of bipartisanship and even personal enlightenment, learning new information regarding issues surrounding health insurance. A few hours later, however, he was using the same talking point every other so-called journalist on his and Fox’s network were using—it was all political theater. Blitzer, remember, like most media personalities, is not his own man with his own brain: He has corporate brass and sponsors pulling his strings.
Like the health insurance industry, cable news is just being its corporate self. What is a corporate self? It’s that person, according to the Supreme Court, with God-given constitutional rights. It has a right to worship freely: its bottom line. It has a right to assembly: inside the heads of every other American citizen via every airwave, billboard, neon sign, auto repair or airport waiting room. It has a right to freedom of speech: via the media it owns. It has a right to freedom of the press: in its portfolio. It has a right to representative government: in its portfolio. It has a right to a jury of its peers: it’s peerless – What those puny individual human entities sit in judgment on a giant such as itself? Why even the President of the United States couldn’t aspire to doing Carly Fiorina’s old job as CEO of a giant corporation! According to her.
While the health insurance industry can look the other way as people are dying because they are denying claims and taking obscene bonuses yet raising ordinary people’s premiums, they are, after all, just behaving like corporate, rights-given citizens. Someone in the NBA—Magic, I think—once said, “You gotta let Charles be Charles.” The same can be said for corporations, substituting Inc for Charles. So they have these personality quirks that most citizens of America don’t have, such as sucking the life’s blood out of their competitors then buying them at a discount. That doesn’t mean we should deny (or even regulate) their rights as non-living, non-breathing citizens.
The same can be said of the corporate media. So they take the news, shake it and bake it and serve it up with poison on top. “You gotta let Fox be Fox.” They are an American citizen, according to the court. Are you going to make a citizen’s arrest? So what if the government can’t function because of their lies and distortions! Who’s going to stop them? An earthquake and hurricane and nuclear bomb all at the same time, maybe, but think of the collateral damage! China, maybe. After all, their corporations are under the thumb of a communist dictatorship. Who would have thought our last hope might reside in a dictatorship over the corporatariate!
In the meantime, all we can do is cross our fingers and hope that the media bump will someday come in our direction, that someday the corporate media may decide to become, not just citizens, but good citizens. The possibility that such a thing could happen is extremely remote, but if it should, that would be the day they cease to be merely corporate citizens and instead become as human as the Supreme Court thinks they are already.
