THE PURPOSE OF NEWSPAPERS IS TO HUMILIATE

Pasadena Sub Rosa ^ | April 18, 2009 | Wayne Lusvardi

[WayneLusvardi]

The radical community organizer Saul Alinsky once wrote: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Taking a lesson out of the Alinsky playbook, staff writer Jennifer McLain of the San Gabriel Valley Tribune feels it's her apparent duty to aid public unions in humiliating Metropolitan Water District Board Director Bill Robinson's call for unions to "share some of the pain to avoid rate hikes." She puts Robinson's photo up, not labor leader Antonio Perez. She isolates Robinson, not Perez, for his comments. She polarizes the issue. Read her article here "Water Director Slammed for Questioning Public Employee Contracts"

http://www.sgvtribune.com/ci_12167512?source=rss_viewed Imagine the difference her article would have made if McLain had a headline of "Labor Leader Says Only Private Sector Must Absorb Pain." That is the real story; not that a director of the board of the MWD wants labor concessions during a depression. That's no story. That is just holding someone up for public shame.

McLain probably doesn't even perceive what she is doing. It is just taken for granted in the professional culture of newspapers that this is just just how newspaper reporters do their job.

The stance of public unions and the public sector in California is that they will accept no salary cuts or staff cutbacks. They feel entitled. Their salaries are their property right. That is what should have been isolated, photographed, and personalized.

So the message is that only the private sector, which pays the MWD salaries, has to experience all the pain of economic adjustment after a near decade of living in an economic bubble. What a wrong message for labor leaders to send to the public. But Jennifer McLain feels it her duty to subtly humiliate the MWD Director who, Cassandra like, called for cuts. Blame the messenger.

Toward the end of her article McLain doesn't do too bad a job of reporting the true situation of MWD's budget picture. She reports, accurately, that a 10% reduction in MWD labor costs would only reflect 1% of their budget. That should have been highlighted. But, then again, that's called "burying the story" in newspaper parlance.

McLain might have written that the MWD, a water wholesaler, is raising water rates this year 20% and another 20% next year. Cities like Pasadena, a water retailer, are also planning to raise water rates 10% to 20% per year. So we're talking about 60% plus increases in water rates in an economic Depression. Soon water rates will double.

I worked at MWD for 20 years. It is essentially a 1930's style Works Progress Administration jobs program. MWD was founded as a jobs program in the Depression era, much like the Tennessee Valley Authority. MWD water operations could be handled with a fraction of the staff and engineering and other jobs farmed out to consulting engineering firms. Instead it is a bloated, politicized water agency which should be cut back by its board.

At the end of her news article McClain quotes Tony Fellows, former San Gabriel representative on MWD's Board of Directors, as saying he hoped that current Director Bill Robinson's views don't represent the San Gabriel Valley Water District Board. McClain does a horrible job in not reporting that Fellows was removed from the MWD Board and replaced with Robinson because Fellows did not advocate low water rates for San Gabriel water rate payers.

Do newspaper reporters ever connect that water rate payers, not unions, are their subscribers? Is it any wonder then that newspapers, at least the hard paper editions, are dying. Newspapers don't inform or even persuade any more, they just humiliate.

As Theodore Dalrymple has written:

"In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to cooperate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to."

Theodore Dalrymple, "Our Culture, What's Left of It," interview by Jamie Glazov, FrontPageMagazine.com, August 31, 2005.

[Brilliant]

Or deify

[nmh]

Has Obama okayed the bail out bill for failing newspapers?

I kid you not that if he hasn't it's on the list.

Of course you know he needs to keep his written mouth piece in business, at YOUR expense.

[wombtotomb]

We need to keep educating folks. They can’t understand what an Alinsky is if they were never taught history, which I can guarantee in these govt. schools, they weren’t. Lets educate em!

The video is a description of the 5 supposed forms of government, from 100% government control (Communism, fascism, totalitarianism etc) to 0% government (anarchy) it obliterates all forms of government as only temporary and futile except for 2, oligarchy and republic. It does this in a clear concise manner, which effectively shows even a grade schooler about them. It then, in the last few moments, explains Rome, its beginning as a republic, and its morph into a democracy. The parallels are well put, and clearly where this country is today. It is an excellent way to spread the word to those who have never been taught proper history, and that is alot of people since they have been re writing it for so long now.

I have been posting this sucker all over all day, and sometimes I forget that some are stuck at work, so I have included the above basic description of the video, however it does not do the video justice. I beg, implore and urge all to view it who have not. THIS is the reason we are so angry. Taxes are a symptom, losing our republic is the disease!!!!!

http://www.marchforliberty.org/multimedialinks.html

[callisto]

That’s an excellent video!

[1010RD]

Keep at it. My kids loved it. I have a book I got totally by accident in college at a used book sale that covers the very same points. Saved me much grief.

[OpeEdMunkey]

Thanks for posting. That was worth watching.