If you'll forgive me...

[Mythsaje]

"Pack it up and go home!"

I'm fed up with the corporate media. Fed up, I tell you. I've had it up to HERE with the War on Christmas and the distracting stories that fail to keep the spotlight on the malfeasance and mischief of the Republican Party.

Oh, yeah, I mean the Republican Party. Not just the President and his administration, that bunch of cowardly chickenhawks. I mean every last one of them who aren't standing up and yelling at the top of their lungs, "We repudiate this bastard and everything he stands for!"

The corporate media needs to be dragged off its high horse and pulled through its OWN mud, you know, the stuff they've been throwing at the Democrats for the last...how long has it been now? This calculating and callous, shit-stained, miserable FAILURE of a public watchdog. This allegedly "liberal" press which is actually not even liberal OR a free press.

They chased Clinton like a pack of baying hounds on their masters leashes, helped a bunch of would-be fascists gain control of Congress, HELPED them lie us into an unnecessary war (complete with militaristic music and flashy graphics to COVER that war) and are STILL trying to sell us a pig in a poke.

This war isn't just Bush's, or Rumsfield's, failure. It's the failure of the Republican Party, the media, AND the duck and cover DEMOCRATS too. You know, the ones who haven't quite figured out that this so-called "culture" war has completely overtaken our political system and is slowly working to overturn two hundred and thirty years of political progress?

I repudiated the corporate press, particularly the television media, in the run-up to the war. I was flat-out DISGUSTED by the cheering squad they became, all for the joy of being able to show us the war in real-time.

Did they ask the questions that needed to be asked? Not only no, but FUCK no. Questions didn't matter. The reasons didn't matter. They had a war to cover, and they got to be on the FRONT LINES. Woo-hoo. It was like the 4th of July, complete with fireworks.

The true purpose of a free press is to prevent those in power from becoming so full of themselves they forget why they're there. To serve the people. Not to serve the people UP as cannon fodder and as political tools. Human lives are NOT on the menu.

Enough fucking photo ops. Enough helping them SELL their short-sighted, crazy-ass, lunatic policies to the masses. Their job is that of a watchdog, not a PR firm.

And I'm not even talking about Fox "News." They ARE nothing but the propaganda arm of the Republican Party. Anyone who thinks any different is too stupid to vote in the first place. Hell, they're so stupid they should never be allowed to BREED. (Pure hyperbole here. I don't actually support the idea of taking away ANYONE'S reproductive rights--though I sure as hell wish someone could prevent the wackjobs from having fifteen kids in order to inflate the percentage of total nutcases in the country).

We don't want a liberal press. We want a TRUTHFUL press. We want a press that DOES ITS FUCKING JOB. They're not there to make a profit. They're there to make sure the people, the ones who actually RUN a democracy, have the correct data to make informed choices.

We should hold these motherfuckers LIABLE for churning out propaganda rather than news, for helping to manufacture distractions for the American People to feed upon rather than actually telling us what the hell is going on.

The media has become lazy, shiftless, and drunk with delusions of its own relevance...kinda like that Uncle Joe you only see at Christmas, who drinks until he's long past stupid and tells the same ridiculous stories over and over again.

And as long as I'm at it, I want to unequivocally state my disgust with that so-called "crime" reporter (we all know who she is) and the whole line of thinking that it's okay to crucify the accused before they're ever found guilty of a crime. It's a repellent practice that NEEDS to be stopped. That's not "free speech." It's pure, unadultered pandering to the lowest common denominator of the American populace for nothing more than viewership.

And it's corrupting our system.

Not that our system needs any help with the corrupting.

If the corporate press won't do their jobs, if they are going to consider access more important than accountability and truth, we need to work to revoke their privileges. They're using OUR airwaves. Let us not forget, the founders enumerated our right to a "free" press, not a press that's bought and paid for.

There's a difference.



*******
I reposted this because there was an error and it never ended up on the latest page at all, and didn't even show up on My DU page. It's in the GD folder, but I even have to hunt for it. What's up with that?

[JeffR]

1. "We don't want a liberal press. We want a TRUTHFUL press."

That's it. Eleven very well-chosen words. That's exactly what is needed. It's essentially a prerequisite for really being able to turn this situation around and rescue this country from its theater-of-the-absurd circumstances.

Well done, Mythsaje. Well done.

[Warren Stupidity]

2. K&R

One small nit pick: it hasn't exactly been 230 years of progress. Mostly it has been 230 years of corruption interspersed with a few decades here and there of progress. The kleptocracy - the merging of the interests of the corporate elites with the federal government - has had control of our nation since shortly after the civil war, with only the reforms of Roosevelt and Roosevelt getting in the way, the FDR New Deal reform era from 1933 to approximately 1981 having clouded our view of the rather bleaker reality of the situation. (And a case can be made that this era ended in 1969 with Nixon rather than 12 years later with Reagan.)

[Mythsaje]

3. Compared to what came before it

it's mostly been progress. Sure, it's been a lot of the two steps forward, one step back variety, but it's STILL been progress of a sort.

Compared to what came before it.

[Mythsaje]

4. Self kick

because I believe this one is worth reading too.