Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright
Katha Pollitt – Hayes’s colleague at the Nation – didn’t disagree on principle, though she did sound weary of the propaganda. “I hear you. but I am really tired of defending the indefensible. The people who attacked Clinton on Monica were prissy and ridiculous, but let me tell you it was no fun, as a feminist and a woman, waving aside as politically irrelevant and part of the vast rightwing conspiracy Paula, Monica, Kathleen, Juanita,” Pollitt said.
“Part of me doesn’t like this shit either,” agreed Spencer Ackerman, then of the Washington Independent. “But what I like less is being governed by racists and warmongers and criminals.”
Ackerman went on:
I do not endorse a Popular Front, nor do I think you need to. It’s not necessary to jump to Wright-qua-Wright’s defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.
And I think this threads the needle. If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.
Ackerman did allow there were some Republicans who weren’t racists. “We’ll know who doesn’t deserve this treatment — Ross Douthat, for instance — but the others need to get it.” He also said he had begun to implement his plan. “I previewed it a bit on my blog last week after Commentary wildly distorted a comment Joe Cirincione made to make him appear like (what else) an antisemite. So I said: why is it that so many on the right have such a problem with the first viable prospective African-American president?”
Several members of the list disagreed with Ackerman – but only on strategic grounds.
“Spencer, you’re wrong,” wrote Mark Schmitt, now an editor at the American Prospect. “Calling Fred Barnes a racist doesn’t further the argument, and not just because Juan Williams is his new black friend, but because that makes it all about character. The goal is to get to the point where you can contrast some _thing_ — Obama’s substantive agenda — with this crap.”
(In an interview Monday, Schmitt declined to say whether he thought Ackerman’s plan was wrong. “That is not a question I’m going to answer,” he said.)
Kevin Drum, then of Washington Monthly, also disagreed with Ackerman’s strategy. “I think it’s worth keeping in mind that Obama is trying (or says he’s trying) to run a campaign that avoids precisely the kind of thing Spencer is talking about, and turning this into a gutter brawl would probably hurt the Obama brand pretty strongly. After all, why vote for him if it turns out he’s not going change the way politics works?”
But it was Ackerman who had the last word. “Kevin, I’m not saying OBAMA should do this. I’m saying WE should do this.”
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It is true to call the media “mainstream’ is totally incorrect. If “mainstream” is defined by the ‘market share’ a media outlet obtains in ratings, then ironically, FOX News is the new mainstream. FOX is not perfect. They do however, provide the message so that folks can take the info & make up their own minds. The misleading words, the omitted stories, the opinion camouflaged as hard news facts, shows us that ABC, MSNBC, CBS, CNN, NBC NPR, & a plethora of other media venues, are sending the same message, all the time. That their messages have been so similar, so in line w/ what the other says or portrays, is evidence the “old” mainstream media has been coordinating the message they’ve been delivering to the public. The “jour no-list” list-serve many are now talking about that was recently exposed, tells the story in indefensible terms. Many of the “old” media have actually been conspiring to deliver news according to their own political preferences & in doing so, falsely portraying their news stories as unbiased, hard news. Just dismissing the story about “jour no-list” does not make the facts go away. That the list even existed & that many on it discussed how to silence certain stories while promoting other stories that made their political candidates look good, reveals to the public an orchestrated attempt by many members of the media to deliberately sway the political discussion in America, while they were acting as actual political activists & advocates of specific politicians & the preferred political party of those activist journalists.
Deliberate distortions, lies, omissions, obfuscations, etc. represent the most despicable thing we have seen in our history. Thomas Paine was openly a revolutionary. Many other media types over the years, picked a side & openly advocated for it. This was their right. But today’s so called journalists have tried to hide their actions & they have tried to put down anyone who exposed their despicable activities. These actions & words, represent propagandizing & all of its despicable tenets. These people acted to change the course of history by maliciously manipulating facts. And there was malice involved here. The attacks on Palin as incapable & inexperienced that so many naive members of the public bought into, after hearing that lie so often & loud, were as low as it gets. Whether you would or would not support Palin’s candidacy is not the point. She had been governor of a state. She had run the administrative apparatus of a state. She has experience as the Commissioner of the oil & gas commission in that state. She had extensive managerial experience & she has extensive administrative experience. She knew how to develop & run a budget. Obama was only ever a community organizer. Yet the public was sold the story that Obama ran his campaign so that made him more experienced than Palin. What bunk!
Sorry folks, but any effort to subsidize the media, whether its public media or private media, must be met with absolute opposition. The very idea we would be asked to help pay these idiots is reprehensible. I will not help pay for propaganda by leftists who support any politician who speaks out against America, denigrates her, ignores her centuries of helping others, & her stand for individual rights & freedom, does not deserve my financial help. They deserve my disgust!
The journo-list scandal exposes the despicable actions of America’s OLD traditional mainstream media that is being overcome by new forms of media delivery & their blatant bias’ & hateful rhetoric also exposes how malicious they have been & will be until they go broke because they failed to deliver news to America, but tried to act as governmental propagandists to support the installation of a socialist state.
Kodos to you! So very well said!