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--- Begin Message --- -Caveat Lector-Why the Corporate Media killed Howard Deanice-bucket Main Page
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Dean obviously would not have many fans on the ICE list, but subscribers
may find this "conspiracy theory" hauntingly familiar, if not amusing.
ICE
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 10:16:34 EST
Subject: Why the Corporate Media killed Howard Dean"The Scream,"by David PodvinOn December 1, 2003, Howard Dean was ahead by twenty points in the polls
when he appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews and said, "We're going
to break up the giant media enterprises." This pronouncement went far
beyond the governor's previous public musings about possibly
re-regulating the communications industry, and amounted to a declaration
of war on the corporations that administer the flow of information in
the United States.It was an extraordinarily noble and dangerous thing to do:
when he advocated a truly free press, Dr. Dean was provoking the
corrupt media conglomerates that control what most Americans see and
hear and read, and thereby control what most Americans think.The media giants quickly responded by crushing his high-flying campaign
with the greatest of ease. This time, they didn't even have to invent a
scandal in order to achieve the desired result; merely by chanting the
word "unelectable" at maximum volume, the mainstream media maneuvered
Democratic voters into switching their support to someone who poses no
threat to the status quo.John Kerry is a member in good standing of the feeble
Daschle/Biden/Feinstein wing of the Democratic Party, a group of
politicians whose disagreements with the mercantile elite tend to be
merely rhetorical. Any doubts about Kerry's level of commitment to his
stated progressive beliefs were conclusively answered in 1994 when he
proclaimed himself "delighted" with the Republican takeover of Congress.
The media oligarchy knows that a general election race between Kerry and
George W. Bush will insure a continuation of its monopoly, regardless
of who wins.The news cartel had always been hostile to Dean; independent surveys
revealed that he had received the most negative coverage of any
candidate except Dennis Kucinich (the only other contender who strongly
favors mandatory media divestment). But after his statement on
Hardball, reporting about Dean abruptly came to an end and was replaced
by supposition. The existing conjecture in political circles about his
ability to win was transformed into a thunderous media mantra that
drowned out all other issues.By mid-December, the news divisions of the four major television
networks were reporting as fact that Dean was unelectable. The print
media echoed the theme; on December 17, the Washington Post printed a
front-page story that posited Dean could not win the presidency. The
Post quickly followed up with an onslaught of articles and editorials
reasserting that claim.Before the month was over, Dean's lack of electability had been
highlighted in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston
Globe, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and every other major
paper in the United States.As 2004 began, Time and Newsweek simultaneously ran cover stories
emphasizing that Dean was unelectable. In the weeks before the Iowa
caucus, the ongoing topic of discussion on the political panel shows was
that Dean was unelectable. National talk radio shows repeatedly
stressed that Dean was unelectable. The corporate Internet declared
that Dean was unelectable. And the mainstream media continued with the
storyline that Dean was unelectable right up until Iowans attended their
caucuses. Iowa Democrats could not watch a television or listen to a
radio or read a newspaper or go online without learning that Howard Dean
was unelectable.It was the classic Big Lie. Through the power of repetition, the
corporate media - which has been wrong about who would win the popular
vote in two of the last three presidential elections - inculcated the
public with the message that Dean could not win. Pollster John Zogby
wrote, "Howard Dean was the man of the year, but that was 2003. In
2004, electability has become the issue and John Kerry has benefited."The unexamined factor is how electability became "the issue".
It had never before been the dominant consideration in Democratic
primaries, because voters had focused on policy rather than crystal ball
gazing. Electability was this campaign's version of "Al Gore claimed to
have invented the Internet": it was a media contrivance that was used to
manipulate voters.On January 19, Democratic caucus goers in Iowa - who were the initial
intended audience for this propaganda disguised as reportage -
overwhelmingly repudiated Dean, telling pollsters they believed he was
unelectable. Later that evening, Dean yelled encouragement to his
supporters at a pep rally, an incident that provided the pretext for the
coup de grâce.During the week leading up to the New Hampshire primary, the media
obsessed about Dean's "bizarre" rally incident, adding "un-presidential"
and "emotionally unstable" to its descriptions of the governor. The
unified message was that Dean had self-destructed. When he finished a
distant second in New Hampshire, journalists and pundits hailed the
defeat as confirmation of their premise that Dean had always been
unelectable.Yet there had been no tangible basis for that assertion. At the
beginning of 2004, a poll conducted by Time magazine showed that Dean
trailed Bush by only six points. That was a smaller deficit than Gore
faced shortly before the general election in 2000, and he wound up
getting the most popular votes. Undaunted by this evidence to the
contrary, reporters adhered to the motif that Dean had absolutely no
chance.Matea Gold of the Los Angeles Times is one of the many deceitful
corporate scribes who obediently supplemented the "Dean is unelectable"
message with its companion lie, "Dean is emotionally unstable", although
she was a little slow on the uptake. In a report she authored the night
of the pep rally, Gold wrote, "We will not give up!" (Dean) declared,
his gravelly voice barely audible over the din of applause inside the
'70s-style disco hall. "We will not quit, now or ever! We want our
country back!"But twenty-four hours later, when it had become clear that the official
corporate media version of events was to be Dean had gone berserk, Gold
omitted all reference to the noise over which the Democrat had been
shouting: "Dean leapt onto the stage, tore off his suit jacket and
rolled up his sleeves. His face beet-red, he punched his fists in the
air and spoke in a near-guttoral (sic) roar. The frenetic response to
his poor showing struck many as inappropriate."Gold's colleague at the Times, Ronald Brownstein, joined the chorus of
supposedly objective journalists who expressed relief after witnessing
Dean's apparent demise. Brownstein has written that it is "reassuring"
to see Democrats abandon Dean. And to whom is it reassuring? It is
reassuring to Brownstein's employers at the Tribune Company, which
recently reported record earnings as a result of media deregulation
implemented by Bush.Howard Fineman, the author of the Newsweek attack on Dean, has now
written an analysis of why Dean fell so far, so fast. One of the
reasons Fineman cites is that Dean has been too "defiant". And whom has
the former governor of Vermont been defying? When Dean advocated
breaking up the media giants, he was defying Fineman's employers at the
Washington Post Company, which recently reported record earnings as a
result of media deregulation implemented by Bush.Those Democrats who have been hoodwinked into believing Dean
self-destructed by yelling at a pep rally should recall how the major
media handled Bush's drunk-driving arrest that a small Maine newspaper
revealed right before the 2000 election. It was an incident that on the
surface seemed as though it should have been politically fatal - the
candidate who had based his campaign on the vow that "I will restore
honor and dignity to the Oval Office"
was proven to have lied about drunkenly driving off a road.Demonstrably, it is never what a politician does that creates a scandal;
it is always whether the television networks and major metropolitan
newspapers respond to the incident with saturation coverage. When a
presidential candidate who was committed to deregulating the corporate
media got caught lying about breaking the law, the importance of the
event was minimized.
When a presidential candidate who was committed to breaking up the
corporate media got caught shouting at a pep rally, the importance of
the event was maximized.The scream that had the greatest impact on the Democratic presidential
campaign was not Dean's gonzo yell in Iowa, but the deafening roar of
deceit that emanated from Corporate America's media subsidiaries. The
downfall of the Democratic frontrunner was not self-induced; it was
self-defense. Dean had threatened to mess with General Electric,
Viacom, Disney, the New York Times Company, the Washington Post Company,
et al., so they messed with him first.Such corporate vigilance is inconsistent with the principles of American
democracy, but welcome to the real world. In a dictatorship, the tiny
minority of well-armed people maintains absolute power by intimidating
the vast majority of unarmed people. In a democracy that is populated
by citizens who get their information from a few greedy companies, the
tiny minority of well-informed people maintains absolute power by
manipulating the vast majority of misinformed people. When you control
what people think, there is no need to point a gun at them.In recent years, corporations have dramatically increased their power at
the expense of the average citizen (and with the apathetic complicity of
the average citizen). Big Business has evolved from merely being a
vital part of society into being master of both the political system and
the means of communication. As a result, the boundaries of the national
debate are now defined by the interests of the Fortune 500, and the
malefactors of great wealth have become increasingly brazen. Americans
used to laugh at banana republics, where the ruling elites are so
shamelessly debauched that judges go on duck hunting trips with the
politicians whose cases they are scheduled to review, but it doesn't
seem quite so funny anymore.After the last presidential election, the corporate functionaries on the
Supreme Court overrode the will of the people by empowering the man who
had lost. It was an awkward procedure, so the process has been refined.
In 2004, the mainstream media is rapidly disqualifying all the
candidates who fail to honor the business agenda, thus eliminating the
need for another controversial judicial intervention.Howard Dean's campaign now lies in ruins because he chose to confront
the multinational conglomerates that run this country. If Dean is so
resilient that he fights his way back into contention, the Fourth Estate
will be ready to batter him again. In the United States of America,
people who pose a threat to the reigning corporate establishment are
destroyed. Or, as the Soviets used to put it, emotionally unstable
individuals who deviate from the party line are guilty of engaging in
"self-destruction".
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