Living in the Limelight

[Daveparts still]

Living in the Limelight
By David Glenn Cox


Media is a function of government. No matter what they told you in social studies class about a free press, unless you actually own a press then it isn’t free. Since media is a function of government, you can take it to the bank that anything you see in domestic media is the sanitized, government-approved version of events.

When I lived in the confines of Montgomery, Alabama, we had a cigar-chewing, gun-toting mayor. He reveled in flaunting his power and getting his face in the media. One night the police arranged for a big drug bust. This was back in the days when “Cops” was a hit TV program, so the police and mayor arranged for all the local TV stations and newspaper to be invited to the big bust.

But something went wrong. There were no drugs and there were no criminals. Instead there were innocent men, handcuffed, face-down on the lawn with their wives screaming and their babies crying. Oh, it was a spectacle all right, just not the one the mayor and police had hoped for. After a few words of explanation the media was sent home. The newspaper printed just a small tid-bit about drug bust comes up empty. But one TV station took their footage and aired the whole story of the debacle, complete with women screaming and babies crying.

The mayor was enraged. You could have lit cigarettes off of his forehead, and even though the story didn’t get much notice the mayor called a press conference to give his side of the story. He first defended the police and then defended himself then he did something hot heads and non-astute politicians do, he said what he meant rather than what politicians say in public. “Perhaps the next time we have a news event, maybe we’ll just forget to call the reporters at WXYZ.”

It was a political threat against a media outlet that had dared to tell the unflattering truth. After the Bay of Pigs invasion President Kennedy accepted the blame saying that his administration welcomed criticism. You believe that one, don’t you? For the media to gain access they must curry favor; access means stories, stories mean promotions and promotions mean riches. It was Tim Russert of “Meet the Press” fame who once said, “Integrity is for paupers.” Some of Russert’s favorite guests on the show were Bob Dole and Dick Cheney. No Howard Zinn, no Noam Chomsky or Amy Goodman, it was sanitized for your protection.

Does the name April Glaspie ring any bells? She’s the woman responsible for the first gulf war in Iraq. Saddam Hussein had been an ally of the Reagan administration but the Bush administration appointed a woman ambassador to Iraq. While that was perceived as all warm and fuzzy here in America, it was seen as an insult in Iraq. It was culturally insensitive and a signal that the new administration wished to distance itself from Iraq.

Saddam summoned Ms. Glaspie for talks. Remember now that Saddam was a crazy lunatic and a murderous thug, but that he only became those things after he stopped being our ally.

HUSSEIN: Your stance is generous. We are Arabs. It is enough for us that someone says, "I am sorry. I made a mistake." Then we carry on. But the media campaign continued. And it is full of stories. If the stories were true, no one would get upset. But we understand from its continuation that there is a determination.

GLASPIE: I saw the Diane Sawyer program on ABC. And what happened in that program was cheap and unjust. And this is a real picture of what happens in the American media -- even to American politicians themselves. These are the methods the Western media employs. I am pleased that you add your voice to the diplomats who stand up to the media. Because your appearance in the media, even for five minutes, would help us to make the American people understand Iraq. This would increase mutual understanding. If the American President had control of the media, his job would be much easier.

Saddam then spent the better part of an hour explaining to Glaspie that the Kuwaitis were infringing on the Iraqi border and that they were slant drilling for oil into Iraq. He made the point that it was Kuwait and the U.A.E. that were driving down the price of oil making it impossible for Iraq to pay back its debts.

HUSSEIN: But when planned and deliberate policy forces the price of oil down without good commercial reasons, then that means another war against Iraq. Because military war kills people by bleeding them, and economic war kills their humanity by depriving them of their chance to have a good standard of living. As you know, we gave rivers of blood in a war that lasted eight years, but we did not lose our humanity. Iraqis have a right to live proudly. We do not accept that anyone could injure Iraqi pride or the Iraqi right to have high standards of living.

GLASPIE: I think I understand this. I have lived here for years. I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. I know you need funds. We understand that and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.

This was a first-class screw up on Glaspie’s part. Here was Saddam all but drawing her a picture and she failed to put two and two together. The Glaspie story was covered up in the media. The invasion of Kuwait by Iraq was portrayed as the work of a deranged lunatic. What we got to back that up was heart-wrenching congressional testimony about Kuwaiti babies thrown onto hospital floors by Iraqi thugs. Who told these stories of the terrible atrocities? The daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador. And where did she live? She lived in New York.

When the Glaspie story reached the public it was effectively covered up by another major scandal, Vice President Dan Quayle had mis-spelled potato on camera. This is called falling on your sword and Dan Quayle was perfect for the job because he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.

Before the era of Darth Cheney, Vice Presidents cut ribbons and attended state funerals. Quayle was barely qualified for these tasks, so how did he rise so high so quickly? His family owned a string of newspapers across the Midwest. He was groomed from childhood for a political career but he wasn’t a great thinker nor was he a great speaker.

His claim to fame was his staunch family values and his one true talent was being a scratch golfer. Do you know what it means to be a scratch golfer? It means that you don’t have a handicap and would give Tiger Woods a run for his money on eighteen holes. Do you think you get to be that good by spending weekends with the wife and kids?

The media can make you and they can break you. Do you think that no one in Washington knew that Larry Craig was gay? When California anti-gay legislator Roy Ashburn was pulled over for DUI he was driving a car with state license plates on it. It had been seen parked in the parking lot of a gay nightclub. It wouldn’t take Woodward and Bernstein to crack this case.

One of my favorites was Ann Coulter’s appearance on the "Today" show. Coulter does the appearance in a black cocktail dress at seven in the morning, Eastern Time. Logistically she had to be there at least an hour early, if not two. So when the guest shows up in a black cocktail dress at say five or five thirty in the morning, chances are she’s been wearing it all night in the city that never sleeps. I’m sure she was at the Christian Science reading room doing research.

Coulter’s, shall we say, erratic behavior has discouraged her TV career, but her books and articles are still beloved by the right wing reactionaries. I try to stay away from writing about the Coulters, Limbaughs and Becks because I don't think they deserve the attention, and like monsters under your bed, if you ignore them they will go away.

Today we have tea parties that are treated as real political movements when they aren’t. This disparate group of white rednecks has no more political influence than the Girl Scouts. Then there’s Sarah Palin who could barely manage a book tour without pissing off the faithful. She's inarticulate, one-dimensional and poorly-educated, yet the media faithful ask, “Will she run?” Even when the polls show that most Republican’s wouldn’t vote for her, the media still ask, “Will she run?”

Why does the media focus on potatoes and tomatoes? The President of Afghanistan is rapidly becoming the most corrupt political figure on the world stage since Ferdinand Marcos. Through friends and family, estimates run as high as one billion dollars siphoned off by Karzi and his ring of cronies. They purchase multi-million dollar condo’s in Dubai and control the concrete industry so that every dollar spent to rebuild Afghanistan goes through the fingers of Karzi.

The election in Iraq is hailed as modern democracy in action but hundreds of candidates were ruled ineligible because of their past affiliations. Only the approved and sanitized may run for office, as BP and Amoco begin drilling for oil for the first time since 1972 when Saddam nationalized the oil interest of Iraq.

And so it goes and so it goes. If the media makes a mountain out of a molehill it is only to cover up the mountain growing behind it. When the media suddenly grows quiet on the issue of, say, the public option, it means the fix is in. If you want to learn the truth about what is going on, read what other countries say about you and then split the difference. Nothing new under the sun.

[Lost Jaguar]

1. Thanks for including...

...that transcript of the dialog with Saddam. It's forgotten, certainly by the mainstream, and the longer version you have here is especially revelatory.

Monsters under the bed, indeed! And they're in the closet as well. In more ways than one.