GHOST IN THE MACHINE
by Malik Isasis



The Bush Administration and the neoconservative cabal has been successful in news management by creating an environment where questioning its motives is unpatriotic.

The news conglomerates such as Disney, Viacom, General Electric, Bertelsmann and News Corp. has forged this unquestioning-environment by producing and perpetuating the American mythology that war is romantic, heroic and that the troops are heroes and beyond reproach. This mythology also incorporates America as infallible and just, in its indiscrimmininate destruction in bringing peace and freedom to the world.
The neoconservatives’ public relations campaign worked because it played on the fresh emotional wounds of September 11, 2001. They over-stated fear and inflated terrorists as scary monsters, for which they, the Rebulican Party, were the only antidote.

The Republican Party’s patriotism campaign was pornographic, and self-indulgent. It worked because the Corporate media refused to stand up. They did not question the Bush Administration’s adventurism for fear of losing access, financial gain and being labeled as unpatriotic. Ben Bagdikian, a media critic stated in his book, The Media Monopoly, “Unchallenged information is inherently flawed information. If it is in error to begin with, it is not open to correction” (Bagdikian X1IV).

The neocons are grieved and are rebuilding. They may have lost congressional power, but they leave behind a corporate media infrastructure with phantom pains of a lost lover. The corporate media has absorbed the talking points of the neocons, and act as surrogates delivering well-polled language and framing the debates, for example, continuing to call the Occupation of Iraq, a War.

The best predictor of future behavior, is past behavior.

The neocons have recessed back into the shadows of American politics and are back-to-basics, using their primary skills as political operatives to again, stage a come back when a world crisis presents itself; the corporate media will no doubt welcome its exiled paramour back with opened arms.


Sources:
Bagdikian, Ben H. The Media Monopoly. Boston, Massachusetts: 1998.
The Christian Science Monitor, Neocon 101.
Think Progress, “First Post-Election Meet the Press Features Exclusively Pro-War Politicians.
Media Matter, “O’Donnell echoed GOP talking points to attack Democrats.”
More on media conglomeration.
Context of image.

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