Sunday, March 13, 2005
Where Is The Liberal Media When You Need Them? Part Infinity
Partial answer: A few individual members unafraid of looking at events from a liberal perspective are blogging.
Case in point: A journalist from Memphis, who, in addition to writing for a local paper, who blogs under the charmingly apt name of "PeskyFly" at his own site, The Flypaper Theory, has got wind of a potential story - evidence that someone representing him/herself as a federal agent of sorts was calling local emporiums with windows near enough to the path of Bush's Bamboozapalooza Tour scheduled to stop in Memphis, to inform them that no negative signs aimed at Bush should appear in said windows. (This is courtesy of Atrios, who, as we've come to know, reads everything, God love him, and I have it on the best authority that all of the Gods do.)
Go read, and don't miss the long comments thread. Some excellent stuff there, and more information from the Pesky Fly himself, who is following up to get more details about what now appears to involve more than just the original complaint.
As some commentators note, it could be a hoax, it could be an excessively loyal Bush fan, or it could be the work one of those Republican front groups we're just beginning to figure out have reciprocal ties that run forward and backward to the RNC and to various Bush contributors.
The question remains, where is that not very pesky MSM with it's relentless liberal bias we hear about endlessly? Yes, it's accepted by most Washington reporters with big enough names to appear on cable news that Bush's town hall meetings are stage-managed to within an inch of being Kabuki theatre, but where are the obvious questions that arise from that set of facts?
Who is paying for these elaborate appearances which criss-cross the nation? If it's the taxpayers, how is it right that Bush & co get to decide who gets in, who gets to ask questions? What kind of strong leader, as the President and his party like to portray him, is afraid of appearing before groups of American citizens unless said citizens have been pre-screened to insure that only those who can demonstrate abject personal loyalty to the President will be present.
Why is so little being made of the fact that this President is using campaign tactics to convince the American people he's right about a huge policy decision, rather than communicating his vision of what needs to be done through more democratic means, i.e., talking to the press, talking to the congress, and talking to all of the American people? Remember, in the first months of the Clinton administration, when Clinton continued town meetings on behalf of his own policies, meetings that were much less stage-managed than this President's, the cry went up from Republicans that Clinton was in campaign mode, which must mean that he wasn't in a governing mode, and that was BAAAAAD. In mere seconds it seemed, the SCLM picked up the charge and ran with it, until Clinton stopped having town meetings.
And what about using government agencies as if they are partisan vehicles whose responsibility it is to serve as propaganda tools for the President? It's one thing to have members of his cabinet hawk private accounts for SS, or insist that there is a looming financial crises, it's quite another when members of the SS administration start becoming mouthpieces for the President. And don't get me started on Alan Greenspan.
It's truly stunning how deeply into the tank that SCLM is for this President. And that's part of the program. To keep us so stunned by what Bush's propagandists like to call his "boldness," but which, in the neighborhood I grew up would have been called "crust," that we can't think straight, and when we finally do, to make it difficult for us to call what's happening to the attention of our fellow citizens because what we're saying sounds so off the wall. It wouldn't sound that way if more of the SCLM would start doing their job.
But until that happens, we need all the pesky flies we can get. And that doesn't just mean bloggers who are already journalists. There's a place for citizen journalists, citizens who are willing and able to document what's going on locally that fits a larger national pattern. This is a subject that we at Corrente will be returning to when we've completed our renovation of the mightily Corrente building.
So bravo PeskyFly, and heartfelt thanks as well; I'll be following your blog to see what happens in this instance, and what's happening generally in your neck of the American woods.
Case in point: A journalist from Memphis, who, in addition to writing for a local paper, who blogs under the charmingly apt name of "PeskyFly" at his own site, The Flypaper Theory, has got wind of a potential story - evidence that someone representing him/herself as a federal agent of sorts was calling local emporiums with windows near enough to the path of Bush's Bamboozapalooza Tour scheduled to stop in Memphis, to inform them that no negative signs aimed at Bush should appear in said windows. (This is courtesy of Atrios, who, as we've come to know, reads everything, God love him, and I have it on the best authority that all of the Gods do.)
Go read, and don't miss the long comments thread. Some excellent stuff there, and more information from the Pesky Fly himself, who is following up to get more details about what now appears to involve more than just the original complaint.
As some commentators note, it could be a hoax, it could be an excessively loyal Bush fan, or it could be the work one of those Republican front groups we're just beginning to figure out have reciprocal ties that run forward and backward to the RNC and to various Bush contributors.
The question remains, where is that not very pesky MSM with it's relentless liberal bias we hear about endlessly? Yes, it's accepted by most Washington reporters with big enough names to appear on cable news that Bush's town hall meetings are stage-managed to within an inch of being Kabuki theatre, but where are the obvious questions that arise from that set of facts?
Who is paying for these elaborate appearances which criss-cross the nation? If it's the taxpayers, how is it right that Bush & co get to decide who gets in, who gets to ask questions? What kind of strong leader, as the President and his party like to portray him, is afraid of appearing before groups of American citizens unless said citizens have been pre-screened to insure that only those who can demonstrate abject personal loyalty to the President will be present.
Why is so little being made of the fact that this President is using campaign tactics to convince the American people he's right about a huge policy decision, rather than communicating his vision of what needs to be done through more democratic means, i.e., talking to the press, talking to the congress, and talking to all of the American people? Remember, in the first months of the Clinton administration, when Clinton continued town meetings on behalf of his own policies, meetings that were much less stage-managed than this President's, the cry went up from Republicans that Clinton was in campaign mode, which must mean that he wasn't in a governing mode, and that was BAAAAAD. In mere seconds it seemed, the SCLM picked up the charge and ran with it, until Clinton stopped having town meetings.
And what about using government agencies as if they are partisan vehicles whose responsibility it is to serve as propaganda tools for the President? It's one thing to have members of his cabinet hawk private accounts for SS, or insist that there is a looming financial crises, it's quite another when members of the SS administration start becoming mouthpieces for the President. And don't get me started on Alan Greenspan.
It's truly stunning how deeply into the tank that SCLM is for this President. And that's part of the program. To keep us so stunned by what Bush's propagandists like to call his "boldness," but which, in the neighborhood I grew up would have been called "crust," that we can't think straight, and when we finally do, to make it difficult for us to call what's happening to the attention of our fellow citizens because what we're saying sounds so off the wall. It wouldn't sound that way if more of the SCLM would start doing their job.
But until that happens, we need all the pesky flies we can get. And that doesn't just mean bloggers who are already journalists. There's a place for citizen journalists, citizens who are willing and able to document what's going on locally that fits a larger national pattern. This is a subject that we at Corrente will be returning to when we've completed our renovation of the mightily Corrente building.
So bravo PeskyFly, and heartfelt thanks as well; I'll be following your blog to see what happens in this instance, and what's happening generally in your neck of the American woods.
