And she was right in the rain of the bullets that eventually brought her down
But she's still dancing in the night
Unafraid of what a dude'll do in a town full of heroes and villains
Heroes and villains
Just see what you've done
Heroes and villains
Just see what you've done
-- "Heroes and Villains" written by Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks, Beach Boys' Smiley Smile
Heroes and villains abound and one of the great things about 2008 is the self-check.
As hideous as everything that's gone down and is still going down is, there's also the fact that a lot of people were provided the chance to question the orthodoxy.
One way to do that was to leave the two-party mind set and support a third party or independent presidential candidate. This year saw a media blackout on these candidates, yes, but it also saw an awareness of the blackout. It was a real learning experience as so many 'independent' outlets copied the MSM in marginalizing candidates who actually had the gall to stand for something.
If you paid close attention, you grasped Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader's biggest problem was not the MSM, it was Panhandle Media. Had Panhandle Media treated them like the real candidates they are, there struggle for coverage might not have involved so much work.
If you were a Democrat, you had a really big self-check this year as you saw Team Barack and The Cult utilize homophobia, sexism and racism repeatedly and get away with it. You saw Panhandle media re-inforce those disgraceful tactics. You saw the party that screamed and whined as far back as 2000 be perfectly okay with stolen elections when they liked the results.
If you were a Republican, you saw some (not all) feminists prove just what sexist pigs they could be (hello, Robin Morgan!) by lying about Sarah Palin and by attacking her with bitchiness. When Hillary's under attack, Robin calls out men and women attacking her for Bill's involvement with Monica Lewinsky but Robin is happy to bring up Todd Palin's decades old DUI and try to make Sarah answerable for it. It's do as I say not as a whore feminism and women like Robin Morgan need to issue an apology or vanish from the public stage.
You could have learned all the above just by paying attention.
If you had, you would have noticed that FAIR waited until after the presidential debates to suddenly notice that Ralph, Cynthia and other presidential candidates weren't getting press attention. (In their action alert, FAIR didn't say if they were forwarding it to their own CounterSpin which spent each week promoting Barack and ignoring independent and third party presidential candidates.)
And as you saw all that information, you could do a self-check and ask, "Do I have ethics? Or am I just another gutter liar like Robin Morgan or the self-loathing lesbian Laura Flanders or the idiot Norman Solomon or any of the other miserable excuses for 'independent' voices in this country?"
If you passed the self-check, great. If you didn't, it's not to late to save your soul -- provided you're not an 'independent' media whore -- they're already consigned to hell with 2008's other villains.