In his article about right wing media lamebrain Stanley Kurtz today (Mr. Kurtz? He Dumb.), Booman wrote:
The basic idea behind the piece is that Barack Obama is subtly changing the very nature of American society and that the Republicans need to point this out or they will lose.
The truth of the matter is that the nature of American society is, has and always will be changing, and the changes have never been particularly subtle. This goes with the territory of an immigration-based system. Every generation brings brand new sets of cultures into the system, and as they move into the mainstream over a few generations they bring previously unprecedented amounts of change to its culture. The civil rights movement accelerated that change by dropping a fully formed internal black culture smack on the mainstream, a change that took over 50 years to really become permanent. As I pointed out in my piece Why…and How…The Democrats Are Going To Win and Win Big. Bet On It, we are now at the culmination of that change and the Dem convention certainly reflected it. The Republicans think that they can win by demonizing this change to 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th generation etc. “Americans”…many of whose ancestors were themselves marginalized when they first landed here…and they may well have a point. They have won before by using essentially the same tactic. But it appears to me that the numbers and ongoing changes in the media depiction of that society are both working against them.
Read on.
It used to be that the media presented a mainstream that pretty much agreed with the Republican image of “what should be.” A white, Christian, heterosexual, family-oriented, middle class, 40-ish America. Even during the last major societal change (the so-called “youth movement” of the late ’60s) it only took the media about 5 years to transform that movement into a bunch of middle-class Monkees cavorting on the moneybars…errr, ahhh, monkeybars…of the system’s suburban playground dream. Transformations of this sort appeared in film after film, TV show after TV show and…most importantly…commercial after commercial, but you cannot “transform” the truth of the matter too much without losing the demographics that reflect those changes. Money talks, nobody walks. Including the media. Even as recently as the last two successful presidential campaigns for George W. Butch…”successful” only by dint of massive vote fraud and manipulation, in my opinion…the full measure of the media reflection of our society’s internal changes had not hit the culture. However, by the time Barack Obama appeared on our little mindscreens the societal/media sea change was well in place. During the ensuing four years it has only gotten stronger.
In the ’60s Timothy Leary said “Turn on, tune in and drop out.”
A catchy little phrase, that. But inaccurate.
Less catchy but much more accurate?
“Turn on the media, tune in and agree.”
Submit to the subliminal power of the hypnomedia. To the societal mind control.
Media changes are formed just as is the weather. Masses of heat and masses of cold, masses of high pressure and masses of low pressure, masses of change and masses of stasis collide. Winds, storms and all sorts of weather ensue. Eventually the one with the most mass wins.
I wrote in the piece referenced above:
The RatPub convention’s images were almost all of older, white, middle class-and-above people looking kinda…tired. Like the dinosaurs must’ve looked as they dragged their weary, overweight carcasses to the tarpits. Every time they trotted out someone of color to prove that they are not racists the poor cameramen had to hunt down the approximately 1% of the audience that were not as pale as Romney and do a closeup so’s the media wouldn’t be accused of some sort of anti-RatPub “bias.” Nice.
The DemRats, however? The average age of the delegates looked to be one or two generations younger than that of the Rats, and if you mixed all of the shades of color and ages in the audience in the proportions that were present you’d get…
Well, you’d get almost precisely this:
Barack Obama when he’s not been able to get out in the sun much.
Maybe a tad lighter and a few years younger.
A fairly accurate picture of the America in which I live. Urban America. Traveling America. Multi-racial America. Young America. Working America.
I got yer “message.” Right here!!!
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Dems think they can win with a multi-racial, trans-generational, multi-sexual, multi-class effort over the Republicans’ racist, sexist, anti-youth, anti-non-mainstream sexual persuasion, anti-worker campaign. And I think that they are right, provided another vote fraud or two or twenty doesn’t get in the way. The RatPub Super Pac millionaire/billionaire money and its airtime buying power? If the message in those ads is aimed the way their lame convention was aimed, they may as well just pack it in now and invest alla that cash in some offshore scams. Preaching to the choir…especially if the choir is overweight, tired and really can’t sing worth a lick…is a fairly useless and almost always totally unrewarding occupation.
There it is.
The only thing I’d like to add?
Listening to, criticizing and jes’ plain getting hot in the collar over lame, right wing preach-to-the-choir types like Mistah Kurtz is also a fairly useless and almost always totally unrewarding occupation. There’s enough preaching-to-the-choir going on in leftiness blogs without having to endure complaints about the same act on the right.
Dassit…over and out.
And…WTFU.
Turn off the media, tune out and think for your own damned self.
Or, to put it another way:
NEWSTRIKE!!!
MEDIASTRIKE!!!
CULTURESTRIKE!!!
VAYA!!!
Later…
AG