My Patriot’s Day Marathon: Watching The Media So You Don’t Have To (Smile)

April 21st, 2008 - by: danny

HEADLINES AS OF MONDAY MORNING:

HAMAS READY TO ACCEPT ISRAEL SAYS JIMMY CARTER

BAILOUT IN BRITAIN: LONDON – The Bank of England on Monday announced a 50 billion pound ($100 billion) plan to allow banks to swap mortgage-backed securities for Treasury bills.

BUSHEVIKS APPEAL COURT RULING-SEEK TO BLOCK PUBLIC ACCESS TO WHITE HOUSE VISITOR LOGS

OBAMA SAID TO “SHARPEN TONE” VS SEN CLINTON IN PA PRIMARY RACE

THE DISSECTOR MARATHON / SPRING OFFENSIVE
WAR BUILDS IN IRAQ; IS IRAN NEXT?
WILL THE PENNSLYVANIA PRIMARY ELECTION BE STOLEN?

The price of gas shot up just hours before I tanked up for the trek back to New York from Boston on Passover eve. I did get out of New England faster than Moses left Egypt but the trip was probably more expensive.

Now the media is filled with “tips” on how to conserve gas by not driving too fast. So far I haven’t seen any tips on the need to organize and fight for lower prices. I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t see some sort of modern version of the Boston Tea Party to protest this outrage and all the profits going to the oil industry which is a beneficiary of the intentionally engineered dropping dollar.

Monday is “Patriots Day” in Massachusetts, marked annually by the Boston Marathon – I wonder what the real patriots like Sam or John Adams woulda thunk? It makes me realize that I am still on my own Media Marathon slowly slipping to the back of the pack. I was happy to see fellow indy multi-media maker/reporter/author Jeremy Scayhill on Bill Maher filing a report from the gun ranges, and biker community in Pennsylvania where you saw pissed off former Bush lovers and “bitter” or should we say angry small-towners talking about why they are voting for Obama.

The program offered some well deserved hits on ABC’s debate coverage but I fear now that the spin machine is effectively turning outrage with an unfortunately typical media performance into a partisan incident. That’s how ABC, many others in the media and the media , the right wing echo chamber AND the Clinton campaign played it. The only problem they saw was that the Obama backers didn’t like the “tough questions” – o gag me with that spoon – and as Hill put it, reaching into clicheland – “if you don’t like the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

This is especially sad especially if you remember how the media dismissed Hillary’s remarks years ago on the Today Show about the right wing conspiracy, a vice she backed down from. It was Senator Clinton who up until that point who had been most critical – and sometimes correctly so about media unfairness. Now she supports it.

Of course, most of the media didn’t even make the media the story and those that did only did so because Tom Shales of the Washington Post – one of their own—said so. The Tyndall report which monitors network news reported that none of the broadcasts covered ABC’s dreadful performance and the ground storm of criticism it unleashed.

I discussed the issue on KALW San Francisco’s excellent Your Call Radio show on Friday so ably hosted by Rose Aguilar. I was on with Will Good and Patrick Cockburn. Listen in on this link.

Cockburn, by the way reports from Iraq for The Independent and has just published a book, a very informative book by the way on “Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Fall of Iraq.” Read it if you can. (Watch Real News for a report on why the US is building Berlin type Walls dividing Iraqi neighborhoods ) Cockburn was asked about the idea, so prevalent in our media that he is anti-American. He said that isn’t quite right and that he like many politicians in Iraq are actually anti-occupation.

Yes, there is a difference. The American media never speaks of occupation probably in the same way that the British press never used the word when King George’s army was occupying and trashing Boston back in 1775.

As readers know I made that comparison in my speech last Thursday at the Old South Meeting House where the original cast of the American Revolution – the patriots of that day assembled to do something about the occupation of their town and colony. I am sure the British media labeled them anti-British. Sometimes I feel like I am the only one drawing this obvious parallel.

COMMENTS ON THE STATE OF THE DISSECTOR ADDRESS

Some of those at that talk have written about or written to me about my talk in Boston.. Photographer Steve Garfield of SteveGarfield.com filed an audio report:

I enjoyed your speech in Boston last night. Great job.

I made a quick audio post on my way home…

You gave me a lot to think about. That’s good.

I signed up for your blog posts and got the first one today…

I’ll be reading and staying in touch…

Fellow blogger Yvonne Christian also wrote:

I loved meeting you and hearing your lecture. You mentioned a lot of things people should think about regarding the media and politics. I also heard you on the radio with Charles Laquidara last night.

Here are the links to my two blogs that I use to raise awareness of Asperger’s Syndrome and show off my writing.

Thanks also to Hartley Pleshaw and the Harvard COOP for setting up a talk on Friday night about my book WHEN NEWS LIES (SelectBook) about the media coverage of the war. To my surprise and delight, we had a decent turnout. The COOP bookstore organizer delivered an introduction worthy of a Harvard Ph.D.

I haven’t “played” Harvard Square in a long time. (I did get a traffic ticket for my troubles, as in no good deed ever goes unpunished.)

Maybe I can sing for my supper at Passim’s next time.

(British PM Gordon Brown, in town to speak at Harvard before heading South (See Greg Palast report below) stopped in at the COOP before my talk. Too bad, he didn’t stick around….)

AND ON THE POLITICAL FRONT

Thank to Jackie Newberry in Houston for sending me some of the online commentary about the great non-debate. She writes:

Bill Clinton and his whining about Obama “whining”. Bill & Hill are the latest expert whiners….

But the sorriest lame excuses for why the antics of Gibson and Steph were worthwhile…from Steph himself and cable news punditry: it’s good for Obama, it toughens him up for the Repugery he’ll have to face in the run up to the election, and we’ll see if he can be tough enough to withstand the thuggery Repugery…

as if there is now other way to run a campaign
as if this is a game
as if who can survive the ineptitude and unjust swiftboating
as if the purpose of informing the voters is only incidental

…as if beating and raping a woman will make her tough enough to face the real world

…I think the look on Obama’s face was one of disgust and sadness…someone who envisions that politics actually can take a higher road, yet he was left to struggle in the mud with the rest of the pigs, no offense to wholesome, pure-spirited porcine creatures…

the punditry continues to feel that they set the rules, they certainly frame the context that can influence mass thinking

they are entirely out of touch and don’t give a damn about what voters need or think

they have become entirely irresponsible as they have created their own echo chamber, similar to Fox News

Obama is one good chance to change the context, the perspective, the thinking…a chance to rise above…I really pray that we will not be led one more time into a phony sham of reality.

Hillary Clinton: No Wimps in the White House (Political Radar, ABC News)

Stepping up her criticism of her rival’s performance in ABC News’ primetime debate on Wednesday, Clinton, D-N.Y., told the FOX affiliate in Philadelphia, “I know he spent all day yesterday complaining about the hard questions he was asked. Being asked tough questions in a debate is nothing like the pressures you face inside the White House. In fact, when the going gets tough, you just can’t walk away because we’re going to have some very tough decisions that we have to make.”

Please note that Hillary Clinton didn’t use the word “wimp,” ABC News did.

IS THE MEDIA BIASED AGAINST HILLARY?

Obama’s secret weapon: the media (by John Harris and Jim VandeHei at Politico)

The shower of indignation on Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos over the last few days is the clearest evidence yet that the Clintonites are fundamentally correct in their complaint that she has been flying throughout this campaign into a headwind of media favoritism for Obama. Last fall, when NBC’s Tim Russert hazed Clinton with a bunch of similar questions – a mix of fair and impertinent – he got lots of gripes from Clinton supporters. But there was nothing like the piling on from journalists rushing to validate the Obama criticisms and denouncing ABC’s performance as journalistically unsound.

DO YOU HATE REVEREND WRIGHT AS MUCH AS WE DO?

Here’s an unexpected report by a reporter for FOX News looking for more vituperation to visit on the head of Barack Obama via more putdowns of Reverend Wright, who, the last time I looked, was not running. This reporter found a Chicago priest – no doubt an assumed white ethnic Obama hater–but who did not play to “type.”

ANOTHER UNASKED QUESTION: WILL THERE BE ELECTORAL FRAUD IN PENNSYLVANIA? It was asked in of all places, New Zealand.

WHO IS FUNDING MCCAIN CAMPAIGN?

Major lobbyists said to dominate (NYT)

NEW MCCAIN BOOK TELLS ALL. CHECK OUT CLIFF SCHECTER’S INVESTIGATION. (NO RELATION)

The News Dissector