RANT: The Slave Discount in the Media Constitution

[arendt]

The Slave Discount in the Media Constitution
by arendt

.."Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among
..the several states which may be included within this union,
..according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by
..adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound
..to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three
..fifths of all other Persons.

........- U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 2.


At its writing in 1787, the U.S. Constitution condoned and codified
slavery. Under the euphemism "other Persons", it gave slaves no rights,
but it did give their owners 3/5ths of a person for purposes of the census.

We are now witnessing the emergence of a new Corporate Constitution,
in which liberals have been demoted to "other Persons" of an even
lowlier status than plantation slaves. On the current corporate media market,
liberals seem to be counted at no more than 1/10th of a "free person".

I base my claim on the consistent deflation of the statistics of *liberal*
demonstrations by a factor of ten. Yesterday's Women's Rights March
is a case in point. The NY Times and its subsidiary, the International
Herald Tribune, both used the phrase "tens of thousands" to describe
a crowd which most other news sources have acknowledged to be
the largest demonstration ever mounted in our nation's capital - over
one millilon people. To have been honest, the NYT should have been
saying "hundreds of thousands".

Not to be outdone in denigration, Karen Hughes, a Bushco hit-man
smeared these women demonstrating to *keep* the Constitutional
rights they already have as "terrorists". When statements like this
are condoned without debate, while liberals are hectored as a
matter of course, by a media that has already disappeared 90%
of the truth, can slavery be far away?

Eighteen months ago, the NYT reported anti-war demonstrations in
D.C. as "hundreds of protestors", using the sleazy trick of focusing on
a small group of protesters and weasel-wording the coverage so they
left the impression this small group was the whole demonstration.
Four days later, they were forced to print a retraction. They were
forced to admit that the crowd approached 100,000. Net demotion:
roughly 1/1000th of a liberal person present was counted by the NYT.

These incidents are not flukes. The NYT is not some podunk paper that
is so stupid it inadvertently makes such errors. We constantly see the
corporate media not merely "rounding down", but actively distorting the
truth by orders of magnitude - when they are not ignoring it completely.
At some point, however, numbers do count, otherwise there would
be no difference between larceny and grand larceny.

On the other side, we see that reactionaries' numbers are rounded up
in a political version of "AFL coverage". (When the old American Football
League got started in the 1960s, the stadium crowds were pathetic, so the
TV network focused in tightly on the few fans in attendance to give the
impression of big crowds.) We saw, during the runup to the Iraq War,
pro-war groups as small as 50 people given a corporate soapbox to
spew the GOP lies about WMDs by Faux News, Clear Channel, and
other members of the corporate propaganda squad.

The rules for liberals are increasingly like the rules for slaves. We
have no right to honest reporting about our numbers, our intentions,
our demeanor. Meanwhile our corporate masters have the right to
put their own shills in front of their biased agents (laughably called
journalists) to give the GOP party line on what a bunch of rotten
traitors, sexual perverts, and godless atheists any group who opposes
George Bush is.

And this travesty of denial by the media whores is met with bland
acceptance by the majority of America. How else can one explain
polls in which most Americans still believe the pro-war lies about
Saddam and WMDs? The members of that majority are already
slaves, and they don't know it. They stand around like cattle, while
the Bush cowboys string the barbed wire on the fence posts that
they put in the ground with the Patriot Act.

I say to DU, once again, that the media is the enemy. It is on Bush's
side, in Bush's employ. They aren't "softening", "waking up", or
"coming around". They shill, and shill, and shill - like some demented
Energizer bunny. We must fund our own media and take this
country back. Because, Dan Rather ain't gonna do it for us.

[arendt]

1. page one kick n/t

n/t

[yowzayowzayowza]

2. When I was a ...

jungen growen up in the DEEP south, the socially acceptable prejudice was racial. You could hear {blacks} being harped upon in just about any forum. Today's socially acceptable prejudice is political lead by the RW talk shows fer years.

[arendt]

3. Just wait for the first lynching

Today's socially acceptable prejudice is political...

First you differentiate them. CHECK.
Second you demonize them. CHECK.
Third, you destroy them. The CHECK is in the mail.

The RW has made liberals (by their definition, anyone who
doesn't want the government handed over to the corporations)
into Jews; and we know where the Germans' socially acceptable
prejudice led to in that case.

So, a word to the wise is sufficient.

arendt

[yowzayowzayowza]

4. The first and only...

time I endured the Rush Limpjob TV show, he was being replayed in the wee hours of the morning on cable in the mid 90s. He lit into liberals with a spate of jokes that were ... damn funny. So, I decided to let him run on a while. Thirty minutes and a seemingly endless stream of humor laden smears later, it became abundantly obvious that he was out to dehumanize and demean a class of people. He is a political bigot who has programmed legions. Period.