I have written several pieces pieces recently that predicted a Hillary Clinton/Barack Obama Democratic ticket for the ’08 Presidential election. The most recent two are still up here on the rec list over at My Left Wing. Why Al Gore will not be…SHOULD not be…the 2008 Dem candidate. and My last word on the Gore-Hillary-Obama thing. With pictures.
Well, I lied about that “My last word” thing. There’s more. Sorry. Sue me.
Read on.
Back in the U.S.S.R.
The NY Times as Pravda.
During the Cold War, there was a whole cult of Pravda parsers. Pravda. The word means “truth” in Russian. The most transparently fake newspaper/propaganda rag ever to waste forests. 1984 in action. Truth through lies.
But by running the Pravda articles through some sort of mental gulag, the real truth could often be tortured out of them. Usually truth of “the dog that didn’t bark” variety. Miniscule changes in the way to which a Soviet politician was referred could predict a coming purge. Changes in statistics used in articles about production goals could mean drastic shortfalls in the economy. That sort of thing.
Intel analysts in thick glasses made a good Cold War living by being Pravda experts. Lots of them.
Now I, like most of us, was brought up believing in the truth of OUR “truth”, just as were many Russians.
Only they were not NEARLY as deeply indocrinated as we were.
In the new movie The Good Shepherd, a Russian double/triple agent who is posing as a defector fails a CIA lie detector test and says something to the effect of “Of COURSE I failed the test. All Russians fail lie detector tests. The machine does not understand the Russian soul.”
And that line is right on the money. Lied to for centuries and not even lied to that well because they were so powerless that it was hardly worth the bother, the Russian people…and I speak from close contact with a number of Russians plus a month spent in Moscow soon after Gorbachev was deposed…have a VERY good read on “the truth”.
Relativism as a cultural way of life.
Bet on it.
For instance…did you know that all the maps of Moscow are wrong? (They were when I was there, anyway.)
On purpose?
Imaginary streets, great six lane avenues marked as small byways, etc?
So that if they were invaded the enemy would get lost?
True story.
Well…we have much to learn from the Russian people.
My own moment of enlightenment… the virtual end of my trust in the American media and the real beginning of my whole NEWSTRIKE!!! idea…came one summer Sunday afternoon in 2003. I had been working in Europe for a few weeks, and I came home, brought my son to a martial arts class he was taking, and stretched out in my car for a good long catch-up read on what had been happening in the U.S. courtesy of the Good Grey NY Times Sunday Lady.
Now you may remember that Governor Dean’s internet-fueled candidacy was raising holy hell in the back rooms of insider Washington at the time. He had raised over $8 million dollars in NO time, and it looked as if he was going to steamroller over the rest of the hacks and quacks who were in contention for the Democratic nomination.
I was elated at the idea. He was clearly the best hope at that time for America to avoid the debacle that has occurred since Small K kerry lost to Son of Butch. The ONLY hope. A passionate, fiery speaker who was about as far left as one could go and not get kicked out of the DemRat Party entirely.
I opened the Sunday Times and right there on the front page I saw this image.
In full color.
The Kerryhawk about to pounce on the Dean mouse.
I shrugged my initial reaction off as simple political paranoia, but as I browsed through the paper it became increasingly evident that the fix was already in. That Kerry had been anointed by the Dem controllers as the anti-Dean, and that the “ARRRGH!!!” game that got rid of Dean about 8 months later was already well in motion.
From that moment on, I began parsing the so-called “news” with a new eye, and 3 1/2 years later I believe that I have gotten pretty damned good at it.
SO good that I no longer have to waste money or time on The NYT or WAPO, no longer have to tune in to much of Katie Kutie or Tweetybird to see which way the wind is blowing. A quick look at the the left blogs, Drudge and Google News is usually all that is needed to get a good take on the the whole rotten media picture.
Left, right and center.
Or…hook, line and sinker.
Add to that the inevitable imposition of newspaper headlines and blaring CNN/Fox news whenever I am out in public, and I get my news the old fashioned way.
I earn it.
I learn it.
So here’s the NY Times line on Obama.
Now remember…the Times’s REAL motto today is “All the news that we think we will be able to enforce.”
OK. Here’s the skinny. Straight from the Timesmouth:
Testing the Waters, Obama Tests His Own Limits
By JEFF ZELENY
WASHINGTON, Dec. 22 – On a winter afternoon two years ago, Senator Barack Obama took his oath of office and strolled across the Capitol grounds hand-in-hand with his wife and two daughters. At the time, a question from his 6-year-old sounded precocious. Now, it seems prescient.
“Are you going to try to be president?” Malia Obama asked her father, giggling as a television camera captured the moment. “Shouldn’t you be the vice president first?”
Her innocent musings go straight to a threshold issue Mr. Obama faces as he edges closer to entering the presidential race: his limited experience in national politics.
But they only hint at a complex matrix of questions swirling around his prospective candidacy: Is he simply a first-term liberal Democrat long on charisma who is enjoying a brief moment of fame? Is he, as some of his more enthusiastic fans seem to feel, the post-partisan, post-racial, post-baby boom embodiment of a new brand of politics? Does he have the drive and discipline to survive a wide-open presidential campaign?
Put more bluntly: Is he for real?
“He’s so incredibly skilled, but he’s also had a lot of luck,” said Abner Mikva, a White House chief counsel in the Clinton administration and a longtime friend of Mr. Obama’s. “Hopefully people don’t think the media just puffed him up and he’s a flash in the pan.”
Even his aides wonder if he can meet lofty expectations, which have elevated him beyond a politician’s normal realm, thanks to his celebrity, ambition and biography.
While a presidential campaign would highlight Mr. Obama’s strengths as a lyrical communicator and personable campaigner, it also could expose the shortcomings of a 45-year-old politician not fully developed, and one who will not enjoy the luxury of learning in obscurity.
—Snip—
Word, Barack.
If he hasn’t already received it.
Even your 6 year-old daughter thinks that you should run for Vice President first.
And so do “we”.
In the classic truth joke, Tonto asks the Lone Ranger when under attack by a large force of indigenous poeples “Who ‘we’, white man?”
Well, in THIS case “we” is DA MAN.
Bet on it.
Nothing…NOTHING…of national import gets printed in the NY Times that is not edited down to the last semi-colon by subtle, highly skilled and “approved at the highest levels” spinners.
Bet on that as well.
And here is the message.
We want Ms. Clinton. She has proved herself to us for nearly 40 years. We’ll give you a chance, because you are lookin’ good. But you WILL have to prove loyalty to us, and you will also have to prove yourself politically talented enough to continue to pull the wool over the sleeple’s eyes when we need you to do it.
Welcome aboard, but…watch your step.
We have to power to turn you into a lawn jockey on your own recently hustled next-door lot just as quickly as we can turn you into a world figure.
OR a corpse, if need be.
Look at what happened to JFK if you have any doubts on THAT score.
Bet on it.
Do not even THINK of crossing us.
Read the article. It is a classic.
It goes on to discuss his ethical problems with that Chicago hustler, his race, his anti-war position and how it has affected Ms. Clinton’s maneuverings. It draws the inevitable JFK connection…
And it is also a warning shot across Ms. Clinton’s bows, just in case she has any ideas of drawing outside of her proscribed lines.
“You know, Hillary…we COULD make him the President if we want…”
Back in the U.S.S.R.
Just as it always was.
All Empires play by the same rules.
Only the languages are different.
Have fun parsing.
Later…
AG
