No people in history have ever survived who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies. — Dean Acheson
I have a question for our press: Have you learned your lesson yet?
After all your kowtowing–all your groveling, your pandering, your agreeing to hold your silence, your maintenance of “respectability”, and your deference–what have you achieved?
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. — Winston Churchill
In the end, having sucked up to and refused to call this administration on its lies and crimes, you have been eschewed and found utterly wanting by the progressives in our nation, who have instead turned to blogs and even to comedians to get news unsullied by your filter of appeasement. You lost not only our business and readership (at economic expense to yourself), but also our respect, as well as your own reputation.
The one sure way to conciliate a tiger is to allow oneself to be devoured. — Konrad Adenauer
And yet, by insisting on maintaining your own independence and not become a wholly state mouthpiece of the Pravda variety as our fascist friends at FreeRepublic would like, you have found yourselves nevertheless the brunt of accusations of being the “liberal media.” You are harrassed and spit upon at every opportunity by the rabid right wing. Anything to the left of Fox News has never been–and will never be–good enough.
Appeasers believe that if you keep on throwing steaks to a tiger, the tiger will become a vegetarian. — Heywood Broun
And so here you sit–in the crossfire of the progressive left and the jingoistic Christianist right–feebly attempting to suck up to this malAdministration in the hopes of currying their favor and gaining respectability.
Oh, yes–some of you are just pure corporate shills, through and through, who find Bush policies to your convenience and liking. And yes, some of you are truthseekers who sometimes must make deals with devils to get your information. But in the end, even as you were demonized by the right and the left alike, you knew that you could at least depend on the cozy acceptance and respectability of the rich and the powerful on the cocktail circuit.
——————————————-
So I’m sure it comes as a completely SHOCK to you to learn that you are now the target of Bush’s utterly illegal domestic spying program. Like Julius Caesar at his final, grand coronation, you stand–the anointed–having made enemies of all the good and decent who care about the Republic, and look at last upon the face of your eminently respectable, dearest friend. And when still the dagger gleams forth from the scabbard you cry, “et tu, Bush?” in palpable shock, as the final act that destroys the very essence of your being comes crashing down upon you, leaving you in a pool of your own blood.
Yield to all and you will soon have nothing to yield. — Aesop
Yes, in palpable shock as, having delivered up your honor and committment to truth on the altar of that shimmering mirage of respectability that comes with acceding to the comfortable selfishness of rich and powerful–those very rich and powerful take your livelihood and eliminate the very basis and reason for its existence.
———————————–
No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it. There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness. There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb. — Franklin Delano Roosevelt
And so I ask again, men and women of the press: HAVE YOU LEARNED YOUR LESSON YET?
You stand at the brink of a precipice from which there is no return. Already this administration has curtailed the economic and social freedoms of its citizens–though they be but masses whom you disrespect and who, in return, hold you in nought but contempt. And already the wildfire has reached your doorstep.
And it has done all of this on the basis of one–yes, one– mindless act of terror masterminded by a medieval psychopath living among the rubble of Afghanistan, and who remains terribly, terrifyingly, at large.
If there is another attack, and these villains remain in office, it means the end. The end of you, and of all that you and we hold dear.
If Al-Qaeda succeeds in striking again on American soil, and the shadowy nightmare of three more years of oppression by these criminal thugs remains unchanged, even the octogenarians among us will live to see the day that YOU, the free press, no longer exists in its current form.
——————————-
It comes down to this, my friends in the traditional Press:
You will either make your stand now, or you will forever hold your peace–whether you like it or not.
The time for appeasement is at an end.
Your move.
[Cross-posted at The Daily Kos]
I suppose it is too much to think that any of the press will read this, and if they do that they will be ashamed enough to take heed of it.
But the free press is disappearing so quickly that it doesn’t have long to make a choice about which way it will go.
There are plenty of others that are playing the appeasement game, and I have great hopes that their seats in congress and the senate are in dire danger of being taken from them.
Lloyd Dobler: I got a question. If you guys know so much about media, how come you’re here at like a blog on a monday completely alone cursing the darkness with no reporters anywhere?
Joe: By choice, man.
Alterations mine.
My answer:
You only think we’re cursing the darkness. We’re lighting candles and hoping people open their eyes enough to notice.
Well done. Recommended at Dkos too.
The trouble is, we will never know precisely how much self-censorship or corporate censorship has gone on over the last few years. It’s like that scene in Goodnight and Good Luck where Paley starts to pressure Murrow over the McCarthy stories. And that was one Senator. One. Here we have the entire Executive Branch and much of the Rep. Congressional leadership to threaten with sticks and offer carrots in the form of deregulating media consolidation.
that’s the scariest thing about the McCarthy business: it was just ONE senator!
The sheer cowardice of most people is amazing to me.
Not for long Steven, not for long.
The press was coopted over time through a long and aggressive program through the CIA. They used a carrot and stick approach – find the friendlies and praise them; find the enemies and lose them their jobs or access. The CIA tapped the phones of journalists whenever they damn well pleased to ensure no damaging info would come out that would challenge the Agency’s story of events.
In fact, the whole news system now is rigged toward balance, not accuracy. Meaning, the press now has to report “objectively” what the President says without challenging it, and if they DID challenge it, they’d have to get the President’s response.
The CIA has also kept a tight hold over academia – especially in the fields of history and science. Remember, as Orwell warned, who controls the past controls the future.
And who controls energy controls the world. Look at CIA actions worldwide over the last fifty years and you’ll see it was more of a cold war for oil access than to protect us from Communism. I mean, this administration is all about one-party rule, are they not? And they are the most Godless administration i’ve ever seen, all unsupportable pronouncements to the contrary aside.
I read the news very skeptically these days, even on relatively simple matters.
In fairness, the control of energy supplies was legitmately considered a major foreign policy consideration in the aftermath of World War Two.
There is a lesson there though. It was Hitler’s decision to split his eastern front and break off a portion for the oil-rich caususes that doomed his invasion of Russia. And it was his need to protect the Romanian oil fields that weakened his forces during the Russian counter attack.
When the Cold War got going, it was our policy to deny the Communists access to oil fields as a matter of national security. We still operate in that framework. Our energy companies have been crawling all over the former Soviet Union from within moments of its collapse.
What we should do is work on protecting our national security in a more rational, less violent, and less expensive way. Energy independence is also a way to bring peace to many regions of the world.
Bravo!!!!
“Anything to the left of Fox News has never been–and will never be–good enough.”
Simple enough… why don’t they get it? Maybe now, finally, they will see it. Recommended in orange.
i don’t see why they don’t get it either.
Of course, the same logic of appeasement also applies to certain leading Democrats.
As long as the press remains as an integral mechanism of an “entertainment” medium, real constitutional democracy will be impossible to grow and flourish.