Posted on 11/20/2004 9:40:16 AM PST by Congressman Billybob
Like Confederate General Jubal T. Early, I make occasional raids into Washington, D.C. The raid this week included a visit with some of my children and grandchildren, meeting Judge Robert Bork, and assorted other pleasures. But the most telling moment of the trip came in a deserted corridor of Reagan National Airport on Sunday morning. Then and there I understood the mechanical voices of the MSM (Mainstream Media).
It was a politico-religious experience, a secular epiphany, if you will.
I took a wrong turn and wound up in an empty hallway. There were moving walkways on both sides, but they were out of service and marked off with orange cones. Still, every five seconds a female mechanical voice said urgently, “Caution! Moving walkways are ending!”
In that moment I suddenly understood a talk show I’d seen an hour before, starring Chris Matthews, Andrew Sullivan and Sam Donaldson, among others. (I’m not picking on these gentlemen. Most other talking heads – with or without bad hairpieces – would have filled the bill.)
I realized there is no significant difference between these “live” talkers on the MSM, and that disembodied voice in that empty airport hallway. Before the election the MSM thought the Democrats might win. After the election, when the Republicans had won, the underlying message did not change. In thousands of words the talking heads of the MSM are repeating, ad nauseam, the same seven word message. It is:
“Caution! Republicans are bad! Democrats are good!”
Try this experiment for yourselves. Pick any talking head show. Choose any MSM print outlet; the New York Times will do nicely, thank you. Take whatever apparent story they’re talking about, and boil it down like Vermont maple syrup in the fall. When you reduce the story to its essence, beneath the level of the apparent facts of the day, see whether any political story in the MSM has any core message other than the “Caution!...”?
Bias is usually subtle. Pay attention to the verbs. I read a story right after the election on the thousands of state legislative races. The article consistently referred to seats “won” by Democrats, but seats “claimed” by Republicans. Is it any surprise that the reporters writing that were primarily Democrats? Or, pay attention to the adjectives. Others have researched to a fare-thee-well the respective use of “left-wing” and “right-wing.” Republicans often get the second label; Democrats seldom get the first one.
Are there more right-wingers than left-wingers in American politics? Check out the websites of the Congressional Black Caucus, or of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, or of almost any union (but especially the National Education Association). See if you conclude that the left wing is alive and well. Its label disappears because the MSM reporters don’t perceive the left as being “left-wing.”
When the MSM had a monopoly, facts they chose not to report simply did not exist. The monopoly has ended. Facts get reported in the alternative media. The MSM no longer controls the agenda; it can only embarrass itself by pretending that it still does.
TV requires, of course, more than just words. There has to be something to point a camera at, the apparently live and sentient pundits sitting in their chairs. But is that any more than window dressing? Does that make the content of the political shows any more substantial than that mechanical voice in the airport?
The MSM are dying by degrees in the quarterly Arbitron reports on audience shares. The MSM are dying because they insist on producing vacuous bias in their political coverage. This task will be unsettling, but I recommend it. Read the MSM, listen to them, watch them with more care than they think “dumb” Americans can bring to the task. See if you reach the same conclusion, that you’re hearing repetitive, mechanical voices from the MSM.
When the voices are clearly mechanical, they may be annoying but they seem less threatening. The true menace comes from voices which present the illusion of being real. Think of Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, and the Hal 9000. Don’t the first three need the same cure as Hal got in the movie, 2001? Don’t they need to be deprogrammed, back to a time before they learned to lie, or worse, learned to believe their own lies?
Don’t they all need to go back to Urbana, Illinois, in 1992? Shouldn’t they all be asked to sing us a song before they fall silent? “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true ....”
You are so right! It is basically the same. I actually checked the cable "news" channels and got mad then started laughing at their absurd attempts to paint everything with their leftist brushes. Good analogy.
Great job, Billy Bob. In Latin, dexter means right; sinister means left. I propose we refer to the political left as the Sinister Party. Has a nice, truthful ring to it.
like the empty corridor at Reagan, the mechanical media voices continue but, alas, no one is there to listen
um sorry I thought the Urbana Illinois 1992 reference would make you hip to it...see memorable quotes from 2001 A Space Odyssey...Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?...as Dave is slowly pulling out HALs memory chips. To be even more obscure the photo of the gentleman below my post to you is the actor Douglas Rain who said that line and sang Daisy too. :)
Agreed. The old media appears to not be in this particular aspect of their business just for the money.
I just missed the reference. Before the final writing on my column, I viewed the scene in which Dave shut down Hal. But I did not know the name or face of the man who played the part of Hal.
Billybob
Regards
This, IMO, is the fundamental issue. (Bernard Goldberg has made similar arguments in his great books Bias and Arrogance.) The media elites were brainwashed somewhere along the way and can probably never be de-programmed. Their idiological perspective is constantly being reinforced by the political cultures in the places where they typcially live and work, the group-think mentality of their friends and associates, their common educational indoctrinations, and general disdain of ordinary folks whom they view as intellectual inferiors.
Wow! It looks like Samuel Clements had the media figured out a LONG time ago!Thanks.
>"It looks like Samuel Clements had the media figured out a LONG time ago!"<
-Yes he did.
I believe he was attacked by the media, for opposing the treatment of blacks. He was also a big proponent of intellectual property, being an author, he wanted to protect and strengthen copyright law. I believe the media attacked him for that as well.
Thanks so much for your rendition of that famous L'il Abner tune. It took me back to my thespian days of many years ago, when delights like this were popular and before the theatre was taken over by ideologues pushing for societal change, not producers pushing delightful entertainment!
Take whatever apparent story they’re talking about, and boil it down like Vermont maple syrup in the fall.
... and like that same sap, their writers are about 95% composed of "nothing".
Pretty snotty remark by a newbie.
I think you should go to DU where you will be appreciated more.
"Thanks so much for your rendition of that famous L'il Abner tune. It took me back to my thespian days of many years ago, when delights like this were popular and before the theatre was taken over by ideologues pushing for societal change, not producers pushing delightful entertainment!"
Think about it. Al Capp was probably the last "conservative" author to ever be presented on Broadway. And that was fifty years ago.
Pretty sad when you think about it.
Sorry I brought up actual proveable facts.
If you think facts are more welcomed at DU, that says a lot about your opinion of FR and DU.
BTW, the Nazis were always pulling rank on each other based on their party membership number. The lower was the better.
Some--like Hitler himself--even arranged for lower numbers for bragging rights.
It's a weird mindset. But your welcome to it.
I think you nailed it.
Thanks. It's a good mindset for you also (when you a picking nits) You belabored the issue when it had almost nothing to do with the point being made.
Great stuff, thanks. I must say, I knew about the MSM for quite sometime now.
"You belabored the issue when it had almost nothing to do with the point being made."
I coulda swore the point being made had something to do with the MSM not being accurate.
Well it's a bit of a laugh to kick off such a piece with misinformation.
The glory of the internet is its fact-checkers. But instead of thanking me, Billybob lied and span (past tense of spun) in a great Dan Rather impersonation.
So it seems to me to have a lot to do with the piece when you think about it.
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