CNN Sees the Myth Slipping Away

RUSH: CNN is noticeably down today, and you can see it, see the reason why in their own headlines. It's starting to return to normal in Ferguson. And you can see, I mean, the credibility of key witnesses in question. It's beginning to dawn on them that the myth might not prevail here.

And the reason the myth might not prevail is because even the New York Times, ladies and gentlemen, even though they tried to bury this in paragraph 26 yesterday and then another story today. It doesn't matter whether the police officer had a broken eye socket or not -- and there's some question about that, people are questioning the original reporting that the cop's eye socket, orbital socket was shattered. But it doesn't matter.

He was still beaten up. He was still taken to the hospital. His face was swollen. The original story is falling apart. The gentle giant walking innocently down the street on the way to grandmother's house, eagerly thinking about the soon-to-commence college classes, shot in the back by a racist white St. Louis cop, which happens way too often. That was the myth.

And the myth began to break down within a couple of hours, but then they got the myth back. And then it began to break down again, and they were able to rebuild it. And then about five days later the video was released and the gentle giant was no longer gentle. He was a thief. Forty-four dollar box of Swisher Sweets, and furthermore, he was abusive to the clerk, shoving him away as the clerk attempted to keep him from walking out of the store with the stolen cigars.

Then we learn from an autopsy conducted by the myth makers that the gentle giant was not shot from behind. (gasping) And then we learned that the gentle giant actually did reach into the car and may have attempted to get the cop's gun. And so then a number of witnesses came forward, but many of them are beginning to lose credibility. And so the myth is getting a little harder to hold onto, because if there was ever any real media scrutiny involved, the myth could not survive.

The media was there so much, I mean, it was 24/7. It was impossible for the media to miss elements of the story. It was just in the cards that they were going to learn of several facts that dealt serious blows to the myth. So now the grand jury has begun hearing the evidence. The authorities say there will not be any charges or any adjudication of any kind until at least October, which again, by the way, part of a myth that is right before the November elections. But you can see that watching CNN, there's not this confidence that the myth, as originally created, is gonna hold up, simply because it can't.

It was nothing more than a myth, and it started out with one huge flaw, that being that this is common, that being that white cops shoot innocent black kids all the time, and this is the final straw, this is the end, no more. But it doesn't happen all the time. So we'll just have to see. The myth makers have not given up by any stretch.

But now, what's different from today than even 1992, Rodney King episode, what's different is that there is an entire, very large media and otherwise apparatus that is aligned and empowered and in action, specifically aimed at denying the myth makers a free road, a free rein to write whatever story they want.

It's the story of the alternative media. It's the story of talk radio destroying the monopoly of the Drive-By Media. They no longer get to dictate what is the news. They no longer get to dictate what doesn't get reported or told. They no longer get to dictate commentary about it. They are challenged on virtually every assertion they make, be it the writing of a myth, be it the ignoring of a certain piece of evidence in the story, be it lying about certain things.

There are watchdogs everywhere making sure that they don't have a free road anymore, a free, open road to write any incident the way they want it written. And this isn't the first time. Trayvon Martin's incident is another. They're taking it on the chin, but yet they keep trying. Every incident like this they keep trying to manufacture it in such a way that it looks no different than what happened in the 1960s because in that way, nothing's changed. We have made no progress. We're still a racist nation. We still have white cops who will shoot a black kid on sight for no reason whatsoever. Nothing's improved in America on that score.

Well, now, there are people willing to stand up, go to great lengths to call 'em out on this, so they simply don't have a free road. And they're not used to this kind of opposition, even though it's not new now. They've never learned how to fight it. I'll tell you something else. Leftists really don't know what to do when the media turns on 'em, even for the smallest things, even for the briefest of moments. Because leftists have been treated so slavishly and with such sycophancy by members of the Drive-By Media that they just aren't prepared to do battle. They're not prepared to deal with people calling them on lies. They're not prepared. They haven't been toughened up.

They've never been in the ring. They've never had to deal with never-ending, constant media, oppressive attention, attempting to find any flaw to write them out of any story, to discredit them, to destroy them. This is something the left has no experience with. Young journalists who attempt to climb the ladder of success in journalism never, ever seek -- very rarely, I should say -- to destroy Democrat people of power.

Republicans and other wealthy people, yep. Take them out, that's a resume enhancement. But the Democrats, the leftists, really don't have a whole lot of experience with this. And, as such, they panic when there is the slightest bump in the road. So we'll see how this turns out. But you can tell by watching CNN that something's happened, and it's no longer the slam dunk that everybody thought it was, even two days ago.

RUSH: Here's Luke in Charlotte, North Carolina. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: The reason I called was I want to just bring a little of my personal expertise into the argument about Ferguson.

CALLER: In the 31 years I was on the street as a patrol officer, eight of our officers in our state were executed with their own weapons during a struggle with an unarmed suspect. And I think people have to understand, the police understand that even the toughest cop isn't always gonna win the fit, and one lucky punch and he's stunned or unconscious and now the bad guy has access to his weapon. In fact, one of my friends was chased down by an unarmed guy that knocked him down, stole his weapon, then chased after him while he tried to hide, and executed him in his community. So, I mean, this is pretty close to home for me.

RUSH: I could imagine, 31 years and eight officers killed with their own weapons. You guys also, over the years, have seen your hands tied even more and more.

RUSH: Well, not only that, I mean, you've been forced into a defensive posture in practically every situation.

RUSH: For a person in authority, like a police officer must be, to have to assume a defensive posture for politically correct reasons or what have you. No, no, I think people way too often take for granted the risks uniformed police officers take.

When Trayvon Martin blew up in their faces, they fell back to their habit of rewriting history.

Party ownership of the print media
made it easy to manipulate public opinion,
and the film and radio carried the process further.

16. Ministry Of Truth

.......

The Ministry of Truth, Winston's place of work, contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above ground level, and corresponding ramifications below.

The Ministry of Truth concerned itself with Lies. Party ownership of the print media made it easy to manipulate public opinion, and the film and radio carried the process further.

The primary job of the Ministry of Truth was to supply the citizens of Oceania with newspapers, films, textbooks, telescreen programmes, plays, novels - with every conceivable kind of information, instruction, or entertainment, from a statue to a slogan, from a lyric poem to a biological treatise, and from a child's spelling-book to a Newspeak dictionary.

Winston worked in the RECORDS DEPARTMENT (a single branch of the Ministry of Truth) editing and writing for The Times. He dictated into a machine called a speakwrite. Winston would receive articles or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, in Newspeak, rectify. If, for example, the Ministry of Plenty forecast a surplus, and in reality the result was grossly less, Winston's job was to change previous versions so the old version would agree with the new one. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs - to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance.

When his day's work started, Winston pulled the speakwrite towards him, blew the dust from its mouthpiece, and put on his spectacles. He dialed 'back numbers' on the telescreen and called for the appropriate issues of The Times, which slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a few minutes' delay. The messages he had received referred to articles or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to rectify.

In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages; to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and on the side wall, within easy reach of Winston's arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.

As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of The Times and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.

What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead.

In the cubicle next to him the little woman with sandy hair toiled day in day out, simply at tracking down and deleting from the Press the names of people who had been vaporized and were therefore considered never to have existed. And this hall, with its fifty workers or thereabouts, was only one-sub-section, a single cell, as it were, in the huge complexity of the Records Department. Beyond, above, below, were other swarms of workers engaged in an unimaginable multitude of jobs.

There were huge printing-shops and their sub editors, their typography experts, and their elaborately equipped studios for the faking of photographs. There was the tele-programmes section with its engineers, its producers and its teams of actors specially chosen for their skill in imitating voices; clerks whose job was simply to draw up lists of books and periodicals which were due for recall; vast repositories where the corrected documents were stored; and the hidden furnaces where the original copies were destroyed.

And somewhere or other, quite anonymous, there were the directing brains who co-ordinated the whole effort and laid down the lines of policy which made it necessary that this fragment of the past should be preserved, that one falsified, and the other rubbed out of existence.

The Ferguson Police Chief reported as soon as possible giving the officer’s version of what happened, and offering the information that the officer had been roughed up. The basic information was there from the beginning, the press just didn’t bother to cover it.

No Police Chief is EVER going to hand out extensive information regarding an ongoing investigation. And if he did, he could be hauled into court and would lose all credibility with the people working for him. There was also political pressure not to release the video of Brown stealing the cigars; that’s one piece of information they had no legal reason not to release, and every reason to want to get into the public discussion.

No information regarding an ongoing investigation is released without serious consideration, meaning not much is going to be available for quite some time. We live in a society of “innocent until proven guilty,” and the police are responsible to protect the innocent by not allowing witnesses to be influenced and by not compromising the jury pool.

Plus, witholding information from the press is one way to weed out people who aren’t valid witnesses but are just looking for attention. If a potential witness knows things that weren’t in the news paper reports, the odds are much better that they know what they’re talking about.

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