All the news that’s fit to fix 


Pay no attention to the Rove behind the curtain 

This has been known for long enough that I’m a bit surprised that the good grey Times has even bothered to devote a rather lengthy story to it. Don't get me wrong, though. I’m duly grateful. Not that it will do any good:

It is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets.

"Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.," a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of "another success" in the Bush administration's "drive to strengthen aviation security"; the reporter called it "one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history." A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's determination to open markets for American farmers.

To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The "reporter" covering airport safety was actually a public-relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department's office of communications.

Much more here.

A generation ago, this would have been a massive scandal. Hell, had the Clenis (whose administration was not entirely innocent of this sort of manipulation, though on nothing remotely like this scale) been caught at such conduct, it would have figured as one of the articles of impeachment. Today, though? Ah the public cynicism (actually a species of naïveté masquerading as cynicism) so sedulously cultivated over the past few decades has paid off in spades: those still paying attention yawn and say “everyone does it.” No outrage attends. It's a win-win-win proposition, really—you have the aforementioned segment that attaches no onus to these activities because, after all, “everyone does it”; there are the teeming millions who already believe in the wicked Liberal Media and who automatically assume that any paid-for propaganda they happen to see has actually reached their screens by some fluke or in consequence of inattention on the part of the liberal censors; there are finally the thoughtcriminals who are offended by this sort of thing, but hell, they didn't vote for you anyway, and in 2008 it won't matter who they vote for.

I knew there was a reason I was fascinated with the USSR from childhood onward. It wasn't admiration; it was the instinctive imperative of understanding a vital benchmark for my own country's political development.

We are so fucked.  

Posted: Sat - March 12, 2005 at 04:46 PM          

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