All last week as we watched Barack Obama speechify here, there and everywhere, we couldn't help but think back to the 2008 primary season and a photograph the campaign posted to the site and how it was also posted to then-Senator's Senate webpage. In the photo, Barack stands before a large statue of the comic book hero Superman and scrawny Barack attempts to imitate the pose the statue and fails. (The statue has hands clenched in fists on the hips, Barack's got them on the love handles.) So many sad people ran with that image. They began insisting that Barack was a super man or maybe even Superman and would save them.
But here's the thing the sad ones forgot: Clark Kent is Superman. Clark Kent is Superman and Clark Kent doesn't go around boasting, "I am Superman!" It's a secret identity. Superheroes don't generally go around revealing their secret identities. Villains, however, often boast of their goodness.
As Barack worked to gut the safety net last week, that comic book truism seemed even more relevant. And
Democracy Now? Even less so.
Last Sunday, we were explaining how the 'important' vanity-cast by Amy Goodman ducked the issues that matter to America all week and they more or less repeated that last week.
Monday was news for a segment on marriage equality and then entertainment with a far lengthier segment where Roseanne Barr discussed the history of her hit sitcom.
Tuesday was three segments on Norway and a fourth on a cash settlement for a whistle blower.
Wednesday was two segments on Norway and one of Dave Zirin explaining the plight of the NFL players, those poor downtrodden souls.
Friday was Norway and two very weak segments on immigration.
Thursday? They teased out a study on the wealth gap into a segment but never offered anything of significant value in their segment. Then there was the segment with professional whore Richard Wolff who was supposed to be talking about the invented crisis aimed at scaring Americans but had to be prompted by Juan Gonzalez to return to reality.
Juan Gonzalez: But when you say that the Republicans decided to make theater out of it, it seems to me that the Democrats also have participated in the process by making this seem like it's -- Armageddon will occur unless we get this done by August 2nd. And in essence, at times it seems almost like the Obama administration is seeking this deadline to start moving in a more centrist direction economically that it has wanted to do, but has been absent the type of crisis that it would be able to convince the American public that it needs to do.Juan Gonzalez was right. Barack's been the biggest instigator of this phony crisis since day one.
And if you doubted that, you missed the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing Wednesday. (For community coverage, see "
Iraq snapshot," "
Scott Brown in the Committee spotlight," "
Senator Johnny Isakson (Wally)" and "
Soldiers aren't gods.") It was there in the hearing on the longterm costs of veterans health care that Paul Reickhoff, in his opening statement, no less, attempted to hijack the hearing with his 'We don't know if we'll get our checks! We met with the White House and we still don't know!'
Some idiots -- especially at ABC News -- praised his crap. There was nothing to praise there. The hearing had a topic: Longterm care of wounded veterans. VETERANS. So when Paul started whining about "servicemembers" and about "pay checks and GI checks," he should have been told he need to take that to the Armed Services Committee.
Instead, he was allowed to waste everyone's time while the story of Todd and Crystal Nicely got ignored by the likes of ABC News. Todd's an Afghanistan War veteran, one of only four suriving quadriplegics from the current wars. Crystal is his wife and caregiver. If the Senate Veterans Committee wanted the news stories to be about veterans they screwed that up by letting Paul Reickhoff go 'water cooler topic' on the Committee and talk about things that had nothing to do with the topic. A quick search of news reports on the hearing demonstrates the Nicelys received less than 10% of the press coverage Reickhoff did. That was always to be expected. Reickhoff is a media 'expert' (meaning he knows nothing) on such issues as women veterans, MST and any other issue that might get his name in the paper. Even with military issues related to women, he has demonstrated he's too much of a glory hog to suggest the reporter (often one for
The Boston Globe) call a female veteran for the topic.
He never should have been invited. He is the face for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America which has an estimated 200,000 members. How many are disabled or wounded? That information hasn't been disclosed. By contrast,
Disabled American Veterans has 1.2 million members. They're also not a fly-by-night that only recently formed; DVA came into being in 1920.
If you're exploring the longterm cost of health care for veterans, DVA was the group to speak to. Another group worth speaking to would have been
Paralyzed Veterans of America which was formed immediately after WWII.
Why Paul Reickhoff was there never made sense.
Few things last week made sense. An exception was
Jon Stewart who took on Monday's night speech by Barack with the kind of comic zeal that made him Jon Stewart in the first place. But while comedian Stewart found logical fallacies in Barack's speech, newscasters like Diane Sawyer just stared into the camera lost. "Countdown to Crisis" proclaimed the 'clock' Diane and company now show off -- a direct steal from
Adam vs The Man (airs on RT Monday through Friday at 7:00 pm EST) but Adam Kokesh and company do their countdown as a joke. And when you're too damn lazy to do a broadcast what do you do? Diane demonstrated you pad it out with a taped shoot-the-s**t with three other ABC News employees segment about the debt ceiling.
Jon Stewart noted that Barack's 'answer' was for people to call Congress, as if he wasn't president and supposed to be talking to Congress. It was funny and accurate. But it still left much to call out for anyone paying attention.
Barack declared in his televised speech Monday, "The first approach says, let's live within our means by making serious historic cuts in government spending; let's cut domestic spending to the lowest level it’s been since Dwight Eisenhower was president; let's cut defense spending at the Pentagon by hundreds of billions of dollars; let’s cut out waste and fraud in healthcare programs like Medicare, [. . .]"
To Amy Goodman's credit, she did air that bit . . . but she and 'expert' Richard Wolff failed to see the problem. The first approach? Waste and fraud?
Sorry to break the news to Barack but as chief of the executive branch, he's already supposed to be prosecuting waste and fraud. Waste and fraud isn't something he needs new laws to look for or prosecute, it's his job right now. If he's found fraud, charges need to be filed. If he suspects fraud, investigations need to be launched. Immediately. His inability to do so goes to his inability to do the job he was elected to do.
Maybe if Diane Sawyer and company worried less about what was the 'saddest movie of all time' and devoting two nights of news to the pursuit of that trivia, they could have explained that to viewers?
Maybe if Amy Goodman wasn't so worried about protecting Barack, she'd be discussing the economic attacks on the African-American community (that's what they are: attacks) with he
Black Agenda Report's
Bruce Dixon and not Roderick Harrison who recognized there was a problem but couldn't figure out which players helped create it and teased it along (or was too damn weak to name Barack directly).
These days, it's all a fake out. The whole damn thing. ABC News pretending to want to figure out what is happening, Barack's self-created 'crisis,' ABC News ripping off Adam Kokesh, Amy Goodman pretending she's informing anyone and Amy Goodman queen and 'friend' of independent media.
We had hopes last Sunday that, in the days that followed, a few prominent voices would speak out and call out the phony scam to scare Americans. That really didn't happen. Those speaking out last week were pretty much the same ones speaking out the week before that. If more voices had spoken out, we'd be able to do a feature we spent a lot of time researching. Instead, we're folding it in here in this report on the Big Fakes.
Community radio, we on the left were told, was needed, was necessary. We needed low-power broadcasting, we were told. In
April 2003, NOW with Bill Moyers (PBS) offered the worst example of what was happening with media consolidation of the airwaves: No one was present. In Minot, North Dakota all the radio statrions were owned by one company and the voices on air weren't on air, but pre-recorded. When an emergency arose, there was no way to get the word out to people via their radios.
That is the worst example of radio failure, it is not the only example. Currently radio failure is taking place with community radio but no one, certainly not Amy Goodman, wants to talk about that. The Prometheus Radio Project is either foolish or dedicated to something other than community radio. They're again fighting to get airwaves freed for more community radio stations. What they should be fighting for is standards for community radio.
About two months ago, we started noticing how, when you went around the dial in various areas, looking for "community radio" it was easy to miss it unless you thought, "Listen for music."
That's the only way you'll find most of them. Supposed community radio that does nothing but play tunes. A KBOO in Portland, Oregon -- which actually provides local news (at least Monday through Friday) -- is oh-so-rare while a WMPG in Portland, Maine is the norm. WMPG has no local news program. How is that possible?
How are you allowed an FCC license and able to circumvent providing a local newscast? That's before you get into the fact that you're calling yourself "community radio" which would appear to put even greater emphasis on the local news than any other form of radio.
On WMPG and its ilk you can get nonstop music, you just can't get local news. But what you quickly notice about these stations is they carry
Democracy Now! Amy Goodman's vanity cast -- which is not a news program but a public affairs one -- is being used to give the appearance that news is being covered.
It's not. And there's something really disgusting and really McDonald's Happy Meal-ish about the use of
Democracy Now! across the country by stations who want to avoid providing local news programs. Some of these 'community radio' stations, to be sure, see themselves as more than a vanity jukebox where locals who couldn't get on the air (for obvious reasons) as dee jays at corporate radio stations spin tunes. See some, such as KRBX in Boise, see themselves as "music and culture" programming and maybe in Boise that's true. We don't think so, but we don't hold a low opinion of Boise.
The promise of community radio was not supposed to be, "I heard my favorite tunes all day!" The promise of community radio was supposed to be that communities would be served by being better informed about what was going on within their communities. The bulk of community radio stations around the country don't even care enough to program a half-hour of local news five days a week. But without fail, you will find
Democracy Now! on each one, giving the appearance that they are semi-interested in something other than tunes but in reality, it's just the same reach-around circle-jerk Amy Goodman's become infamous for. Translation, don't expect Amy Goodman to do an expose on all the 'community radio' failing to serve communities.
In fairness to Amy Goodman, she is a product of the age she lives in -- an age of fakery where fraud and lies are embraced and spewed over the airwaves, where all the media players seem willing and content to screw over the citizens.
Where the wealth's displayedThieves and sycophants paradeAnd where it's madeThe slaves will be takenSome are treated wellIn these games of buy and sellAnd some like poor beastsAre burdened down to breaking-- "Dog Eat Dog," written by
Joni Mitchell, first appears on her album of the same name
And that's why you get, on the evening news, Diane Sawyer fretting over what is the saddest movie of all time (for two nights in a row!), and why she provides you a poorly videotaped bull session between four ABC News employees as "news coverage." It's why the first thing out of her mouth the day after Barack's speech is that there will be "no new taxes -- not even on the rich" -- and she proclaims it with visible relief.
A country that mistook a War Hawk for a man who'd end the Iraq War is a country that can clearly stomach a lot of artifice. When it has its full then, and only then, the airwaves may be cleaned of the likes of Diane Sawyer and the White House of the likes of Barack Obama. Until then games of buy and sell will continue to pass for democracy.
