Larry Johnston wrote a very good diary that was frontpaged here called Let the WaPo know we’re watching. I started to write a comment…I posted it, actually…but I belatedly realized that it was more of a diary than it was a comment.
So I am posting it as a diary now.
First… a little info.
I essentially got bounced off of dKos for pushing an idea I called NEWSTRIKE!!! during the spring of this year. This post is a short (Relatively short, anyway…minimalism is not my style.) version of it.
Read on if you are interested.
Here’s the idea…
1-The entire mainstream, corporately owned media is to blame for this Neo-con, BushCo fiasco. Had they done what we laughingly refer to these days as “their job”…Clinton would not have been successfully hounded by that nasty little man in the prosecutor’s suit; the 2000 vote would not have happened as it did; the Florida vote FRAUD would have been exposed if it DID happen; 9/11 would probably NOT have happened; there would be no “Homeland Security” system in place, no Iraq Blood For Oil War; the vote fraud in 2004 would not have happened, and we would not be in the terrible situation in which we find ourselves today.
But they did NOT do their job. They did “Job One” instead (The Neo-con version thereof) , and here we jolly well are, aren’t we.
Jobbed.
2-The “media”: is a set of corporate entities.
3-Corporate systems MUST show a fairly regular quarterly profit. If they do not, the people who run them get sacked. The people who run them do not WANT to get sacked, because they are up to their ears in upper-class debt.
4-The liberal blogosphere is a VERY high demographic. Mostly white, mostly prime buying age, mostly middle to upper middle class.
5-A blanket boycott of the media..NEWSTRIKE!!!…by a sufficient number of the members of this group would panic the frontrunners who operate the media system into printing and broadcasting some closer version of the truth than the heavily censored, administration-friendly garbage they now provide.
They lean towards the administration because;
1-They are LIKE them. Ratpub or DemocRat, they are like them. Same class, same schools, same clubs, same race, same basic interests and beliefs. See the DC Press Party where Bush went onstage and made fun of looking for WMDs under the bed and behind the chair to uproarious laughter and applause for more on THAT subject.
“Whadda buncha MAROONS!!! (Bugs Bunny, early ’40s.)
2-They are afraid of NOT leaning towards the administration because they know damned well that if they oppose them, OTHER media will be the beneficiaries of governmental favor and they will be punished. Punished financially and legislatively, and punished in terms of access.
We can’t change who they are but we CAN punish them financially. And the severity of our “punishment” would be amplified a huge amount by their fear that it might grow into a popular movement.
Letters to the publishers of the NY Times, Washitclean Post, USA Today, Newsleak, Time Magazine and to the news producers at CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN and Fox followed by a determined turning off of TVs at news time, cancellation of subscriptions and not buying on newsstands would do WONDERS about just this sort of administration-friendly censorship IF IT WAS DONE IN SUFFICIENT NUMBERS.
Unfortunately, the only blog that has such numbers and general clout is dKos, and it is my observation and opinion that it is now under the control of people who do not WANT this kind of change. They want the status quo, only Burger King style instead of Mickey D’s.
They want it THEIR way.
Dem hype instead of Ratpub hype.
Still fooling the people, because we are too stupid to be trusted with the important things.
Now maybe this state of affairs cannot be solved. Maybe the hustlers ALWAYS run things.
But I think not.
I think that a little window of opportunity always presents itself, and that sometimes “the people” actually climb THROUGH that window and do something.
It always has a different name…call it revolution, call it a New Deal, call it a civil rights movement, call it Watergate…and after that window has been opened and crawled through, usually “the people” go right back to what they were doing and get ripped off by the hustlers again, on down the road a ways…
But maybe that’s how it works.
How it’s S’POSE to work
And maybe we have a window opening here, right in front of us.
These heretofore teflon dons have slipped right on their own slime and are now spinning ever more wildly out of control.
So what few people are on this blog…try it.
NEWSTRIKE!!!
Try it.
You’ll like it.
It’s good for the soul.
Opens up the mind.
Regenerates the body.
AND…if you were to not only do this (and email the SPONSORS of these commercial entities as well) but SPREAD THE WORD…
Who knows?
We might actually have an effect.
I mean…the blogs HAVE had an effect. They…we…have cumulatively acted as a REAL ombudsman on the media, in that we have aggressively broken story after story that the media tried to bury. After a sufficient number of people have been informed, an informational critical mass is reached…a relatively small number, really, given the population of the country, but that number is amped WAY up by the internet…and out of sheer self-interest they then MUST cover the story in order to avoid getting scooped by some other MSM outlet. Cover it UP, as often as not, but even in the attempt to cover a story up they inevitably must shed some light on it.
Our REAL power has been monetary.
Look around.
Story after story about the decline of viewer/readership in the mainstream media.
Who is causing this decline?
Well, lemme see…
It ain’t the working class. On the subway I still see thousands of people gulping down the NY Post/Daily News-style Supersize me poisons. Every day. In EVERY city I go to. (And I go to a LOT of them.)
It ain’t the suburban middle class. Go into any gathering place where consensus is necessary…waiting rooms, fast food restaurants, banks. There’s CNN and/or Fox, blathering away to the subconscious minds of all those donut eaters and bill payers.
And it SURE as hell ain’t many country people. Only the really poor ones, and that’s because they can’t fucking AFFORD to buy a paper.
It’s US.
The virtualized middle class.
The computer savvy.
The contemporary “intellectual” class.
Do a little survey.
What do most of us do?
We’re students, academics, professionals, office workers who’re looking for more, working mothers, working fathers, artists, artisans, etc.
And we have FINANCIAL POWER.
Go to ANY ad agency and offer to reach the demographic that resides on this part of the net. See how they react.
Like Pavlov’s dog to the bell. The bell of profit.
Well, if we are so “profitable”…why can we not be UNprofitable?
ANTI-profitable.
Beats me…
So…feel free.
Boycott your ASSES off.
We would ALL be better off without the parsing of the truth that sophisticated propaganda rags like WAPO and the NY Times provide.
NEWSTRIKE!!!
Pt. II.
Try it.
You’ll feel better if you do.
I’ve been on newstrike since…well, REALLY since the Warren Commission, when I just plumb dropped out of this system. But seriously…with intent rather than with a certain disinterest…since the runup to the Iraq invasion.
I mean…that was over the line!!!
WAY over.
Remember?
On every TV station, in every print medium.
275 “expert witnesses” FOR the war against every 1 or 2 frumpy nuns or quavering academics “against” it.
What bullshit THAT was!!!
That was it for me.
I stopped watching and reading even to find out what the latest LIES were.
Went to the net for my news.
And here I am…a couple of years later.
Telling YOU…
NEWSTRIKE!!!
Goddammit.
Try it.
You’ll like it.
And it MIGHT even do some good.
Really.
Later…
AG
