Reply #3: As an American who writes on-line, a lot, I disagree.

[leveymg]

WHY WE WRITE

I am old enough to remember the Vietnam War, and the movement that opposed it. There were many large anti-war demonstrations, and more than a few turned into violent clashes. Nothing galvanized the so-called Silent Majority than the sight of cops clubbing long-haired demonstrators on television -- such a street fight one night in August in Chicago gave us the Nixon Presidency.

Large demonstrations work on several levels. Mostly they make the participants feel better about themselves. Unless they truly symbolize an overwhelming majority will that is otherwise being thwarted -- or end in the successful physical occupation of the seat of government -- they accomplish little. The media has learned how to ignore or neutralize them through selective editing.

The reason the Vietnam War ended in 1975 was because the Vietnamese inflicted sufficient battlefield casualties on the U.S. Army to convince the Pentagon and U.S. Senate that the war, as it was being fought, could not succeed by its own terms. So it is in Iraq.

Now, for the war for control of the media. The Left is winning, for largely the same reason the Vietnamese did. It's all about costs and benefits. In a war of attrition, past the point of diminishing returns, the Establishment behaves rationally. It cuts it losses, and reinvests elsewhere. The corporations still own the networks, but Arbitron shows that fewer and fewer Americans watch or much care about what's on TV news. As for new media, the Left bloosphere is on the rise while there has been a corresponding fall in page views and ad revenues are down for most Right-wing blogs. The tipping point has been reached, and the helicopters are on the roof.