The right wing loves to claim that the media is liberally biased and leftist, but we all know this isn’t true. And this coming week is a perfect example.
The broadcast networks are going all out to accommodate the Republican campaign machine during this very important mid-term election by airing big chunks of fear-mongering propaganda.
First and foremost, the ABC miniseries “The Path to 9/11”, which as you know by know is a fictionalized account written by a far-right wing activist and revising history to point the finger at Bill Clinton. (I swear, the right just can’t get enough of Bill Clinton, can they? It’s pathological and pitiful, like a schoolgirl crush gone wrong.) The whole miniseries is poised to be an extra long campaign commercial for the conservatives, who are already backing it up with their carefully orchestrated campaign rhetoric — basically saying that we are now safer under Bush than we were under Clinton.
Of course, what they don’t want you to realize is that we are not especially unsafe. If we all realized that, their only campaign tactic — fear — wouldn’t work, would it?
In addition to this mess, NBC’s Today Show is planning on rebroadcasting their coverage from that day five years ago. What does this add to the world other than a way to get ratings by pure voyeurism? Do we need to relive that morning in this way? I’m horrified by this.
And, of course, the Great Leader Himself will address the nation with a live speech that evening. A speech carefully crafted to stir the embers yet again, the capper to a weekend designed to remind us of those horrifying events and stoke our fears, just in time for the midterm elections.
I can’t even voice my true level of contempt and disgust with the right wing anymore, I often find myself incredulous, not believing that they could actually do the things they do or that people would ever allow them to.
This morning I woke to NPR’s Morning Edition, where President Bush was intoning, in his brainless monkey way, what sounded like typical fascist rhetoric — as he talked about “protecting the homeland” I couldn’t help but compare him to such other “leaders” as Mussolini. It’s not just the jingoistic speeches, but it’s the introduction of that word homeland into our national lexicon. I mean, doesn’t that word just sound xenophobic, jingoistic, and wrong?
Anyway, I was talking about the media. Here’s what I find interesting: they’re going all out to help the right wing this coming week; and yet at the same time, they’re not giving much space to another big story: a confession in the Valerie Plame leak case. Richard Armitage, Bush’s Deputy Secretary of State, has admitted to telling reporters about the covert agent. He says that he was not party of a conspiracy in the White House to “out” her in retaliation for her husband’s Iraq war criticism of the administration. Of course, this just raises more questions, such as why did he wait three years to come forward? And since Scooter Libby has already been indicted for lying about conversations he had with reporters, could it be that there were multiple leakers, in some kind of elaborate scheme by the administration?
These questions won’t be answered by the media. This story has been buried on inside pages and very short wire articles except for CBS, who broke it in the first place. It is just not as sexy as the horrific images of September 11.
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