THE MEDIA EDITION: ISSUE 74, VOLUME 104
THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS
by Malik Isasis



The corporate media is not really interested in advocacy journalism, where facts actually have a place in reality. The corporate media is really like a sewing circle, peddling gossip, innuendos to blur and obfuscate the truth. It is the small things, insignificant things that go on in the world of politics in which the media takes and uses to suck all the oxygen out of the room.

The right wing strategy is death by a thousand paper cuts. It’s effective. They take a big bucket of shit and fling it against the wall and whatever sticks, they make hay out of it by force-feeding the corporate media; the corporate media then regurgitates this shit as ‘controversial’ or truth, thereby forcing usually a Democrat, off message to defend him/herself.
The corporate media is wittingly a host for the right wing virus, helping to spread political petulance. The corporate media often gives facts, lies, and spin equal weight, which gives the right wing hate machine the cover they need to maintain a veer of legitimacy.

Symbiotics

It is scary how the corporate media so easily fosters the Republican false outrage strategies by reporting it as legitimate news. Let’s take Obama’s recent Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Republican political hitmen have dug up a few quotes (taken out of context) and a ruling to discredit her intellectuality, dignity and to dehumanize.


(and this is just one news channel, one pundit).

Here is another small thing:




As Bush ate cake, New Orleans drowned. Where was the outrage in the corporate media? There was none. The corporate media covered the Bush Administration’s antics with an unbelievable sense of disconnectedness as if one thing had nothing to do with the other.
The corporate media is one of the most destructive forces in American culture. Remember the Roman gladiatorial combats? Man versus man—man versus beast? Thousands would pack the coliseum just to watch the bloody carnage; what about some of the theocratic governments in the Middle East where there are government sponsored stonings or beheadings in a soccer stadium? Or how about in the early 20th century America, where people would get dressed in their Sunday’s best to see a lynching? This is our corporate media, keeping us dumb and focused on the immaterial while political power players stunt progressive policies.

The corporate media is constantly trying to bamboozle Americans by treating us as consumers rather than citizens. When they run tabloid stories of husbands killing their wives, celebrities losing their minds, or a white woman claiming to have been kidnapped by a black man, remember that they spend a great deal of time, hedging their bets with the political power players. It is why on the Sunday talk shows and cable news shows, news puppets continue to give credibility to Republicans who’ve proven over the last 25 years that their policies and so-called principles have completely failed. Only in a world created by rabid capitalism, where failure is actually success, does this makes any sense at all.

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