I have been writing here since the Dean/Kerry primaries about how the media-controlled electoral fix operates, and more often than not I get outraged cries of “Oh!!! That’s impossible!!!” or some such variant on the same general Idea.
“That’s too complicated!!!”
“It just can’t happen!!!”
“Not here in the good ol’, red, white and blue U.S.A.!!!”
And so on and so forth. Etc., etc. etc., etc., etc., clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp, fucking clomp.
Just recently I posted something called Station WTFU Once Again Tries To Talk Some Sense Here in which I once again brought up this fix idea and Booman, who is so deeply invested in our ongoing national political farce/reality show/talk show that he cannot see the digital woods for the faux trees…pooh-poohed the idea every which way that he could.
I also posted a comment on Steve M.’s article What I Got Wrong About Etch-A-Sketch-Gate comparing the whole deal to a Punch and Judy show and received a comment that posited a wonderfully leftiness point of view.
I think it’s probably more complicated than that.
“I think” and “probably” being two of the leftiness brands for the idea “I don’t want to believe that and I have no proof, so I’ll cover my rear end with some ifs, ands and buts.”
So it goes here in leftiness land.
But today?
Today is a red-letter day in FixWorld, USA.
Today they have decided that the fix is so well in that they can publicly write about it without fear of awakening the torpid bunnies of the public.
Read on for more.
From Howard Kurtz, CNN insider and “Washington bureau chief” of The Daily Breast…errrr, Beast…and Newsweak, whatever the fuck that title means in the reality show newsworld.
Here’s his spin. I’d be tempted to call it “audacious” if I didn’t think that he’s actually so bone-deep stupid that he is totally unaware of what he is saying about his own system.
(By the way…I looked up the word “smug” in the dictionary and guess what image I found.
Yup. Mistah Kurtz. Nice wig, Mr. K.!!! Really.)
Read on…
Television News and the Incredibly Shrinking 2012 Campaign
When Mitt Romney was winning the Illinois primary on Tuesday night, Bill O’Reilly moved from a short discussion of the contest to segments on whether Barack Obama is pushing the country toward socialism and whether he’s been tough enough on Iran. Sean Hannity led off his show with another debate on whether Bill Maher is a bad guy.
It wasn’t just Fox. On MSNBC, Ed Schultz devoted half his program to the killing of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin.
The next morning, the campaign wasn’t among the top three stories billboarded by the Today show, which included: “What is it about this two-year-old that has more than three million people logging on to YouTube to watch her?”
Nor did the 2012 election make the top three at Good Morning America, which trumpeted this story: “Bikini model busted. The international swimsuit star back behind bars right now.”
None of this is coincidental. At the cable news networks, including CNN, the only one to provide continuous primary coverage on Tuesday, the word is out that the presidential campaign is sending the ratings south.
Television, in short, has pretty much decided the race is over, Mitt Romney has won, the thing is boring everyone to death, and it’s time, at least for now, to move on. The campaign is occupying less front-page real estate in the major papers as well.
What happened?
The end of the debates is a major factor. They were produced by the networks and functioned as a kind of continuous reality show, from Rick Perry’s “oops” moment to Newt Gingrich beating up on John King. Now they’re history.
—snip—
There it is, folks. Direct from the ass’s mouth to your brains.
“…the word is out that the presidential campaign is sending the ratings south. Television, in short, has pretty much decided the race is over…”
Yup.
Now there are some half-truths floating around in this backwater garbage. Yes, it is about the ratings, and yes, it was and will remain a “continuous reality show,” at least until Obama is safely back in the Oral Office and the scam is well set up for another four years or so. But the real deal? The media continuously and very effectively dissed every candidate other than Mitt Romney right from the get-go. Now most of them were pretty easy targets anyway, but really…Gingrich is a high-level political pro and Ron Paul has a great deal to say that resonates with large segments of the American public. Large enough to pose a real threat to both parties, which is why he got the super-silent treatment for as long as they could manage to do so. Don’t wanna git them marks all stirred up, right?
They could just as easily made R-Money,…errr, Romney…his haircut, his dog and his multi-multi-millions look as foolish as any of the other candidates if they so desired, but they didn’t.
Why?
Because he is the designated loser in this scam, that’s why. The safe loser. The loser who could, if necessities dictated, be slotted into the winner’s circle without posing any threat whatsoever to the status quo.
Bet on it.
In more semi-conscious commentary, Mistah Kurtz (“The horror! The horror!”) goes on to say:
…substance is a tough sell in today’s short-attention-span media environment.
OH yes!!! Indeed. And who created that “media environment?”
Please.
The corporate owners of said media created it, and they did so quite consciously. Get `em into short-attention-span land and you can sell `em anything. If you can sell Cap’n Crunch cereal, you can sell Cap’n Obama and Cap’n Romney.
STAYS CRUNCHY…EVEN IN MILK. AND IT’S FREE!!!
Sorry folks…I really am, y’know…but there it is.
Bet on it.
A fix that is in so deep, they don’t even have to hide it anymore.
WWF America.
In your heart of hearts you know who’s gonna win…you just watch it for the show.
Actually you watch it because you can’t stop watching it. It’s an addiction. But let’s leave that sad fact alone for a while. It upsets too many sleeple.
Yup.
So once again…wake the fuck up.
You been had.
Again.
And even worse…you’re being had a little deeper each time.
Yes you are.
Enjoy, folks.
It’s all you’re getting until you walk away from the scam.
Bet on that as well.
Step away from the (s)electoral scam with your brains in the air!
Over and out…Captain In The Crunch signing off once again.
Later…
AG
But…wait a minute!!! That kind of vote fraud is so…passé!!!
In fact, now they don’t even have to run digital vote scams. The voters themselves have been wired up instead.
Yup.
Bet on it.
Later…
AG
A better question is whether they are right to do this.
I’ll grant you the partial exception of Ron Paul, who actually poses some legitimate questions about the status quo.
But as to the others, why isn’t it legitimate to laugh these jokers out of town?
After all, much like Reggie Jackson falsely alleged of Thurman Munson, these fuckers can only stir it bad.
It’s not about “legitimate,” Booman.
It’s about “fix.”
Just as Noam Chomsky said in his FAIR speech about the real meaning of he words “stability”and “instability” in foreign policy-talk (The meanings are inverted when it is in the interests of the United States to do so.), the words “legitimate” and “illegitimate” are also inverted when it is in the interests of the Permanent Government to do so.
Gingrich, Santorum, Paul and that whole other clown-group were equally painted as being somehow or other “illegitimate” by the media with absolutely no question of anything but getting them the fuck out of the way of the fix without spoiling the golden egg-laying flock of geese that were laughingly referred to as “The Debates.” They propped one after another guaranteed loser up to keep the show interesting without taking the chance that one of the clowns might actually upset the rotten apple cart, while actively trying to shut the really dangerous ones…Gingrich and Paul…up. Santorum surprised them a little…they didn’t take him seriously enough to really put him away like they did Bachmann, Perry, Mr. Pizza and the others…but he’s being taken care of by a massive “The primaries are as good as over and Romney’s won. Please stand down and let’s gear up for the big rodeo” campaign.
Like I said…it’s not about “legitimacy.” They could have equally easily painted Romney as the autumaton that he really is but they didn’t because he’s supposed to win.
It really is that simple, Booman.
Deal wid it.
AG
I’m not even disagreeing with you except in a small technical sense.
It really isn’t that simple because the people have some agency, too. No one really propped Hermann Cain up except poll numbers resulting from decent (by GOP standards) debate performances. It was Iowa wingnuts who handed the Ames Straw poll to Bachmann. Nothing really was preventing the people of New Hampshire from supporting Huntsman, which many papers and pundits suggested they do.
As for Ron Paul, let me tell you this.
He’s running for the nomination of the wrong party. I take some of his ideas seriously, but Republicans do not. He has the highest unfavorables among Republicans of any candidate. Why? Because they don’t like his positions on most issues.
The media was correct to largely ignore him because he had no chance.
The thing is, no one else really had a chance either since no one else had the resources they would need to win these contests at the end.
So, the whole thing is a farce. And they don’t even really count the votes.
My point is that it was a media-controlled farce, Booman. It wan’t so much “propping people up”…people like Bachmann, Cain etc. It was making sure that they did not stay up that was important, and this was done quite well.
Ron Paul?
They really don’t care what party he is in; they just want to make sure that as few people as is humanly possible pay his ideas any serious attention. They did a good job on that account as well.
Ron Paul “had no chance” largely because the media made sure that he didn’t have a chance.
Not even counting the votes? That’s so last decade. They don’t need to play games with votes anymore; they’re just doing it out of habit and low-level ignorance regarding how things really work now. Control people’s minds and their votes are sure to follow.
Watch.
AG
Well…alright, I will belabor the point, because said point is so completely unbelievable to me that I cannot fathom why it is not being seen by every U.S. citizen with an IQ greater than say that of G.W. Butch.
Which ain’t saying much, of course.
Mainstream media people also seem not to have a clue about the fix system as it is in place today in this country.
Here’s one example from Andrew Sullivan, who is at the very least not totally, lockstep-style doctrinaire about his pronouncements.
Once one accepts the “fix” idea, reservations of this type simply fall away like the proverbial scales that fell from Paul’s eyes on the road to Damascus when he realized just how heavy Jesus really was.
Like…
Like dat.
The fix is in so deep that Romney wold have to be live broadcast in bed with a boy, a sheep, or a boy and a sheep before he was nixed from the fix game as it stands today. So much effort and money has been spent setting him up for the fall that almost nothing stupid that he might do would have any result other than making that fall appear more justifiable.
He’s the perfect patsy. He’ll get some fairly respectable portion of the vote on looks alone..I mean, he does look presidential, y’gotta admit, something like Reagan w/out that mean glint of a nasty, soon-to-take-over senility shining from his eyes.
He’ll get some fairly respectable portion of the vote because he looks he part and after all, he is a Republican, but not enough to win because Obama looks more like a modern president and after all, he is in office and (so far) hasn’t presided over a total collapse of the system.
Why change hoses in mid-scream?
Watch.
It ain’t over ’til it ain’t over.
And it ain’t over ’til the fat lady screams as well.
Bet on it.
AG