As the race for the Democratic nomination lumbers on toward the all-important contests in Guam and Puerto Rico (I wish I was joking), many Obama supporters have become increasingly aware of a chilling paradox in the way we receive our "news". Some supporters wonder why the very same networks that once dismissed the specter of Clinton wins in Ohio and Texas as incapable of alleviating her delegate deficit decided instead to celebrate those wins as a comeback of religious proportions this past Tuesday night. They wonder how the media can so effortlessly turn a tombstone into a triumph or, in the words of Bob Dylan, "make night out of the daytime and paint the daytime black." It is increasingly clear that the same people who carry themselves as objective deliverers of the news are in fact the sorcerers of a home-spun reality they manufacture to maximize profit, one in which plastic smiles are plastered across the rouge-crusted faces of blonde bobbleheads that read the copy their puppet masters fax them from headquarters. Is it just me, or have our televisions become chapters in a lost Aldous Huxley thriller?
A delegate race that outlasts the NBA playoffs is a cash cow for the CNNs and MSNBCs of the world; one can only imagine the hand-wringing behind the scenes as suspendered executives chortle and swipe the ashes of imported cigars from revised rate sheets, dangling those ungodly fees before the crazed eyes of advertisers dying to sell their products between segments of hoped-for debates. Bob Shrum salivated over the prospect of a seven-week-long campaign for votes in Pennsylvania on last Sunday's "Meet the Press," calling it "incredible." Pseudo-conservative hacks like Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan spew calculated tirades against Obama as a wet-behind-the-ears upstart who'll be a deer in the headlights of Rovean pitbulls waiting in the wings of summer to chomp him like a canned meal, when in fact they quake in their boots at the prospect of contending with the tsunami of a movement they are no more empowered than Hillary Clinton to stop. Meanwhile, Andrea Mitchell, whose husband Alan Greenspan benefited hugely from the Clinton administration's appointment of him as Fed chairman, is scandalously assigned to cover the Clinton campaign and pass off biased portrayals of Hillary as "a fighter" (as she called her following the most recent Democratic debate) as the objective analysis of a seasoned reporter. Nonsense!
So let us stop wondering why the media speaks from both corners of their mouths at once. Let us stop mistaking ad salesmen for news anchors. Let us understand that when a company in the business of selling ads fronts itself as a "news organization," the last thing you can expect of it is "news." Let us understand that commercials interrupted by programming provide no venue through which we can honestly expect to receive unfiltered information on issues of any substance. The aim is hardly to inform us; the aim, as with any business, is to make money. The aim, more specifically, is to over-exaggerate Clinton wins to manufacture a momentum that perpetuates this race long enough for General Electric (which owns NBC) to squeeze every last dime it can yield. An anchor whose paychecks were formerly signed by Jack Welch is no anchor in my eyes--he's a fly stuck to the fruit of the fool's gold he peddles as "news", a phantom reality whose violin he strokes with duplicitous mastery every weekday evening. It's no wonder words like "blogosphere" have found their way into the dictionary--those who want real news have learned that they'll have to write it themselves.
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