The Liberal Media and Obama's Warmongering

The Republicans have been demonizing the "liberal media" regularly since the days when Ronald Reagan still had full control of his bladder. This tactic has become so predictable and tired that it might as well be added to the Liturgical calendar:

Feb 25- Ash Wednesday - To do list:

1. get ashed
2. announce press conference
3. disingenuously whine that the corporate media is owned by the "angry left"- (note to self: remember to keep a straight face this time )
   
4. continue contrived bleating about the unfair treatment of conservatives by liberal "media elites" (note to self: use thesaurus to find a more original phrase) until everyone loses interest except Glenn Beck and Michael Savage

I am now going to say something that may come as a bit of a surprise given everything I just wrote. I agree with that Afghan Hound-looking, botched-plastic- surgery-survivor of a mannquin Ann Coulter about one thing: the corporate media is indeed liberal.

Of course, the corporate media is not liberal by the standards of anyone who is even an inch to the left of Pinochet, mind you. And it is certainly not staffed by the minions of the so-called "angry left" (if only the left in America had enough life coursing through its veins to get angry about anything!). In fact, the members of the corporate media are actually to the right of the majority of the American public on most issues.

However, just as the liberal corporate media uncritically accepted the most blatant lies cooked up by Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, and Colin Powell (the four horsepersons of the Apocalypse?) prior to and during the Iraq war, they are currently demonstrating the same level of servility towards the Obama administration.

You do remember what I'm talking about, right? I'm sure you recall the servility that prevented those "journalists" from actually being journalists and asking tough questions like "What does Iraq have to do with 9/11?" Or maybe it wasn't servility that turned them all into flag-waving sycophants who were drooling with anticipation over the impending invasion of Iraq. Perhaps it was the profit motive that was behind the liberal corporate media's collaboration with the subhuman scum responsible for the Pentagon's psy-ops program that allowed certain well-behaved reporters (i.e., reporters who don't go around asking questions) to be embedded with military as it invaded Iraq.

I'm sure that decision boosted ratings substantially, thereby increasing the demand for the one real product the corporate media sells and which is the sole reason for its existence : airtime for commercials! I imagine the price of running a commercial during Wolf Blitzer's "Situation Room" back in those days rivaled the cost of purchasing airtime during the Superbowl.

So I agree, the corporate media is "liberal" in the uniquely American sense of the word***.

Like most liberals, the liberal corporate media avoids any direct confrontation with power that might jeopardize its own pursuit of profit and status. Maintaining access to the centers of power in Washington is of paramount importance to the stooges in the liberal corporate media. Of course, every presidential administration has been keenly aware of this fact.

Presidential administrations have always wielded their power to grant or deny access over the press to keep them in line. This power allows them to generally keep tight reigns on the dissemination of information. The cowards in the liberal corporate media are certainly not going to risk the perceived status associated with being a member of the White House Press Corps by daring to ask any question that might cause the Press Secretary to break a sweat.

This was especially true during the reign of Bush 2.0, when merely using the word "Iraq" during a White House press briefing could get you banned from the White House along with a permanent vacation to Cuba. At the very least it could result in a swift end to your precious access to the assistant of the assistant of the clerk of the administrative assistant to the Press Secretary, thereby derailing your career and relegating you to a lifetime of doing voice overs for Beggin' Strips commercials (note: this does not apply if you are Helen Thomas, who has always been allowed to ask the occasional real question, a tradition Obama has apparently decided to uphold...but only because her question about how much money the US spent helping Israel procure nukes sounds like a question only a crazed radical conspiracy theorist would ask, especially when it comes on the heels of Suzzane Malveaux's waterboarding of Robert Gibbs to get him to disclose every minute detail about Sasha and Malia's new puppy). Moreover, the liberal corporate media's complicity (glee?) in spreading the Bush administrations' pretext for invading Iraq is consistent with the argument that liberals in the US are ardent proponents of capitalist imperialism.

I suppose it should come as no shock then that the liberal corporate media is now more or less keeping Obama and Biden's Excellent Imperialist Adventure in Afghanistan on the down-low. When they bother mentioning it at all, they tend to do so by burying it deep within a story about a different topic like the economy, where they minimize it in the very same breath by stating that it will save money in these tough economic times. If they tackle the subject directly, they make sure to point out that increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan will result in a draw down in the number of troops in Iraq. Mission accomplished! And oh yeah, not that it matters but Obama hasn't set a firm timeline for achieving a vague set of objectives and subsequent withdrawal, and oh my, he has really set this nation on such a dramatically different course compared to Bush, hasn't he OH MY GOD LOOK HOW BRUISED UP POOR RIHANNA IS! THAT BASTARD! Back to you, Nancy Grace...

Nancy: "In other news, an anonymous source has just informed CNN that Caylee Anthony is still dead."

So yeah, the corporate media is steeped in liberalism alright. The liberal corporate media shares the same values of the liberal capitalist imperialists in the upper echelons of the government who manipulate the milquetoast liberal reformists in the American public with tactics that come right out of the Republican playbook: They blabber incessantly about their superficial economic and social "reforms" (and we all know how much liberals simply adore gradualist reformism) in order to divert attention from their real agenda: Brutally enforcing neo-liberalism around the world by enacting policies (or merely extending policies from previous administrations) in order to shore up the hegemony of the global ruling class that appointed them to their current positions of power in the first place.

***(I feel it is necessary to ward off the criticism that will undoubtedly come from some quarters if I fail to include the following disclaimer: The complex history of the evolution of the term "liberal" and the multitude of definitions that are attributed to it around the world -and even within different disciplines-is beyond the scope of this post. When I use the word "liberal", assume that I am using the definition implied by its use in the American vernacular. In other words, I am using it to refer to the same point on the narrow political spectrum that encompasses the universe of all possible political discourse in the US imagination, i.e., the framework created by the liberal corporate media . Thus, Jimmy Carter is a liberal. Obama is a liberal. Paul Wellstone was a liberal. Tom Friedman is a liberal. MoveOn is a liberal organization. Al Gore is a liberal. Bill Clinton is a liberal. So is Diane Feinstein. Liberals are supposedly concerned primarily about abortion, gun cotrol, and other social issues. Some of them might be labeled "socialists" by US standards for thinking that social security and Medicare weren't completely bad ideas ...clear as mud? Ok...lets "MoveOn"...)"----

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