A judge rules that Bush Era illegal warrantless surveillance was (shockingly) illegal. So, how does the PermaGov protect itself? This week’s guests on Meet the Press include former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT). Last time Harman went on Meet the Press to discuss wiretapping she said the New York Times should be prosecuted for their Pulitzer Prize winning coverage of the crime.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
It’s this kind of stuff that keeps conspiracy theorists in business.
What’s stunning to me is the lack of basic journalistic curiosity (to say nothing of journalistic integrity). Wouldn’t Chertoff and the lead ACLU attorney make for better ratings and better journalism?
Wouldn’t Chertoff and the lead ACLU attorney make for better ratings and better journalism?
What do you think this is? The 1970’s and Walter Cronkite?
David Gregory is an honored member of the PermaGov. He’s probably too young to have gone shopping with Casper Weinberger at Safeway, but probably not too young to run into Don Rumsefeld at the Piggly Wiggly.
Cronkite worked for CBS.
CBS was thoroughly infiltrated by the CIA as early as the 1950s, as were the rest of the major media.
Walter Cronkite’s shows were was just a primitive version of the media hypnosis that has now been refined into a true art.
Wake the fuck up.
AG
Sure .. but that wasn’t the point .. Cronkite wasn’t in any way a saint .. but compared to him .. the guys on TV today(like Brian Williams) aren’t even the cheap knock off(read fake) Rolexes that you can find on the streets of any big city .. there won’t even be any Brian Williams’ within 20 yrs .. the internet and their own stupidity will take care of that
Cronkite himself was a cheap knock-off of the truth. He hewed to the party line as it was dictated to him by his masters…the so-called “producers”, his bosses at CBS…who were in turn run by right-wingers like William Paley and by extension Allen Dulles.
Brian Williams is Mr. Cronkite. He does the same job, as do all the other Cronkites on network TV. Right, left, center…the works. They follow orders or they get fired. It really is as simple as that. The advertisers…and in important affairs, the political/intelligence bosses…tell them what they can and cannot say.
The Peter Arnett saga contains all that you need to know about hoe things operate in the world of corporate/intelligence-controlled mass media.
Left right and center, the exact same principle applies. Keith Olberman right through Glenn Beck. Cross the bosses’ orders and you lose your job. A big money job. A job that allows you to get into such debt…the mortgage,the big automobiles, the kids at Yale, investing w/assholes like Bernie Madoff, etc…that you cannot afford to cross them even if the thought crosses your mind.
So it goes.
And you? John Q. Public, be you leftiness shmoo, unconcerned, clomp clomp clomping workaday zombie or all-wet teabagger? You buy into the “choice” farce.
Or:
Bullshit.
Sheer bullshit.
They’re not “stupid.” They are just very good hustlers, most of them.
Those who pay any attention whatsoever to them are stupid.
As are those who somehow think that “the good old days” were better.
Where was Cronkite on the JFK/RFK/Malcolm X murders?
Right.
Mumbling his pipe-smoking, tweed-jacketed platitudes.
I got news fer ya, Calvin.
These are the good old days.
Nothing has changed but the style of the newscarriers.
You’re right about one thing though.
Yup.
Watch.
If the whole system does not implode first, of course.
Watch.
AG
I disagree because of one thing. Is Brian Williams going to pronounce, on air, that we need to get out of Iraq or Afghanistan? Williams would never do such a thing.
If told…”encouraged” to do so? You bet your everlovin’ ass he would. When Cronkite said it he has at the very least a tacit OK from above.
Where was he when we went in? Before The Vietnam war was unpopular.
Before The Vietnam war was “made” unpopular by a system that realized it had made a mistake. Not a moral mistake…just an an unwinnable one.
Please.
You think that the media bias during 2008 for Obama and against Butch II/McCain etc. was anything but an attempt to get rid of a failed war and a failed…not “wrong”, simply fucking falled, as in “We’re gonna crash!!!”…set of policies?
You do?
Do you think that Obama would have won if he Butch administration had actually won in Iraq and the economy was booming? No matter how morally repugnant its tactics were?
Do you think that JFK would have been shot if he he hadn’t reneged on deals w/the CIA and the Mafia regarding Cuba?
That Watergate would have happened if Nixon hadn’t started freelancing with China and Bebe Rebozo-type bagmen?
Do you think that the Billary Clinton adminstration would have been honeytrapped if it hadn’t been being quite successful at playing the Big Money financier’s game against them?
Please.
If you do, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
Wake the fuck up.
AG
If the whole system does not implode first, of course.
I’ve said for a long time that we’ll either end up like the Roman Empire .. or the British Empire … right now .. I am leaning towards Romam Empire.
It’s a way of life, massappeal.
It’s how things are done in the PermaGov.
It’s how the “Gov” got Perma-ed.
You write:
What?
Where have you been since…oh, say since 1963?
Basic journalistic curiosity? Journalistic integrity? On Meet The Press? On any corporate-owned media? Please. If the story in any way threatens the interests of Big Money, it becomes a non-story.
You betray your own media-induced hypnosis with the words “conspiracy theorists” and the idea that such people must somehow be “kept in business.” The real wonder is that every American with an ounce of brains is not cognizant of the ongoing PermaGov conspiracy. It is the biggest of big lies. “Too big to fail?” The common wisdom même that is being promulgated by the corporate media as we speak?
Too big to be seen is more like it.
You also write:
Unbelievable.
Better ratings are not the issue here. They can get “ratings” from cheesy (non)-reality shows. Neither is better journalism an issue. All that is at issue is the continuing of an ongoing conspiracy, and that conspiracy is not about individual policies such as warrantless surveillance.
It is about keeping the audience mystified.
And on the evidence…on your own evidence and the evidence of about 99.9% of the rest of the so-called “loyal opposition” here in the US…this effort is working very, very well.
Wake the fuck up.
You are watching he free hand of the PermaGov magician as it waves around in the air.
Meanwhile the other hand is screwing you even further into the PermaFrost.
WTFU.
AG
There were lots of people in the press protecting Hitler too.
Compared to the American media hypnosis machine in its current bloom, they were Neanderthals.
Bet on it.
AG