'Progressive' media, 'alternative' media, 'liberal' media, 'independent' media, Panhandle Media, you're no stranger to us and, yes, you certainly are something to see -- something horrid.
Last week's "Editorial: Success in spite of them," noted that people turned out for the protests despite no effort (with the exception of KPFK) of getting the word out on the protests.
You might think, "Well surely they covered the protests as news. They didn't publicize them, they didn't get the word out, but now that they've taken place, they certainly publicized Saturday's protests across the country, protests against the wars."
You would be wrong. The Progressive still hasn't found the protests. The Nation? No one plays stupid better than the Katrina vanden Heuvel-led Nation magazine. Well Znet, right? Nope. Uprising Radio? The only thing "subversive" about Sonali is how well she whores herself. We all are aware, at least by now, what a little Barack groupie Sonali is, right? She "follows" him online, after all. She's a little whore who sold out Afghan women and any possible movement on the left in the US. But don't worry kids, she's "following" Barack and that's what really matters, right?
Socialist Worker? That has to be the most useless rag in the world. Repeatedly asking people to 'rise up' and when they do, when they take to the streets in San Francisco, LA, DC, Phoenix, Boston, Chicago, Portland, Des Moines, NYC, Madison, etc on the eighth anniversary of the Iraq War, our so-called 'Socialists' can't make time to cover it. Even a week later.
The deluded who worship Amy Goodman will be glad to know their hero covered the protests on Saturday -- if covering over 40 protests across the country means reducing it to one protest (and not even the largest one at that) and reducing it to a single sentence.
Goodman declared Monday (Democracy Now!): "In Washington, D.C., more than 100 antiwar activists were arrested outside the White House on Saturday during a protest to mark the eighth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq."
We hope she didn't tire herself out with such 'in-depth' 'coverage.'
In her book The Exception To The Rulers (written with her brother), Finger Pointer Supreme Goodman noted that The New York Times wasn't putting a reporter at an anti-war protest and how "it's a matter of what they care about and where they decide to put their resources" (page 148).
2004 Goodman was, in fact, describing 2011 Goodman. Oh, how they bloated have fallen.
Today on Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox, historian Thaddeus Russell observed, "The anti-war movement completely evaporated, you know. I mean except for you and a very small handful of other people, it completely evaporated with his election. And during Bush it wasn't exactly vigorous but there was -- I was. You know, when I went to demonstrations during Bush, there were tens of thousands of people in the streets. I wish it had been even more aggressive but we had large numbers. Now it's what? It's ten people on a street corner."
And when people do go out, do stand up, they can count on ZNet, KPFA, Democracy Now, Flashpoints, Letters From Washington, The Progressive, The Nation, In These Times and KPFT to ignore them. As 2004 Goodman observed, "it's a matter of what they care about and where they decide to put their resources."
During the Bush years, criticizing MSM was a non-stop process. It was also a needed process. But somewhere along the way, Beggar Media went off the rails. It happened before Barack got elected.
To be sure, Beggar Media whored for Barack in 2008 (see "2008: The Year of Living Hormonally"). To be sure. But they went off the rails before that which is why Iraq disappeared so quickly from the radar of Beggar Media even before 2007 ended.
And what we have now is a Beggar Media that wants our money, that needs our money to function but when we give it money what we find is it still doesn't function. It takes the money we throw in for it to be independent and uses that money to whore for Barack Obama. It spends months and months attempting to find "racism" in some comment or political cartoon. It spends months and months whining about how Barack was compared to Hitler (forgetting that Democrats.com and numerous others repeatedly compared Bully Boy Bush to Hitler while he was occupying the White House). Beggar Media is Frances Fox Piven embarrassing herself at a Socialist gathering by defending ObamaCare when only the insurance companies should be thrilled with ObamaCare which is not single-payer, which is not universal health care, which does not address the spiraling costs of health care in this country.
Instead of putting forward a left agenda, they spend all their time obsessing over what Fox News said (Media Matters at last has a purpose!) or what someone else did or on and on and on.
One of the arguments the Cult of St. Barack made against Hillary Clinton receiving the Democratic Party's presidential nomination was that if Hillary got the nomination, as soon as she was in the White House (no, there was never any doubt that Hillary would win the presidency if nominated) the left would be caught up in the same cycle from the 90s of defending the Clintons.
As some of us pointed out in real time, Hillary is more than capable of defending herself -- as she demonstrated over and over throughout the 90s. Barack by contrast? Barack can't defend his little self. Hillary's also capable of defending others. During the race for the nomination, she proved it again. Move On had run a "General Betray-us" ad. Republicans in the Senate wanted to condemn it. Hillary voted against the motion to condemn Move On and Barack . . .
Well let's go David M. Herszenhorn's September 21, 2007 report for The New York Times:
But curiously absent from the vote was Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, also a Democratic candidate for president, who had canceled a campaign appearance in South Carolina so he could be in Washington for votes. Mr. Obama issued a statement calling the resolution, put forward by Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, "a stunt." Mr. Obama said, "By not casting a vote, I registered my protest against these empty politics." Mr. Obama had voted minutes earlier in favor of an extremely similar resolution proposed by Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California. Ms. Boxer's proposal, which failed, called for the Senate to "strongly condemn all attacks on the honor, integrity and patriotism" of anyone in the United States armed forces. It did not name MoveOn.org, but criticized the ad that appeared in The Times. Mr. Dodd and Mrs. Clinton also voted in favor of Ms. Boxer's proposal.
Well, yes, that sort of craven behavior demands a lot of covering and whoring so clearly Beggar Media is too busy protecting their boyfriend, their boy toy, to do their jobs. In other words, they're are exactly like the MSM they used to criticize under Bush.
It's not all negative, however. 2012 is coming up. And we hope many people will follow Barack's advice at election time, "By not casting a vote, I registered my protest against these empty politics."