American Politics Journal

Kicking a Corpse
The Whore Media might do what Osama bin Laden could not: destroy American freedom
By Bryan Zepp Jamieson

Oct. 16, 2001 -- MT. SHASTA, CA (APJP) -- Anyone familiar with my essays knows that for some time, I have considered the mainstream American media -- CNN, FAUX, the television networks, and so on -- to be corporate disgraces to journalism, interested not in dispensing information but only in ratings, and hopelessly corrupted by their corporate overlords.

Indeed, in my news service, the large majority of the news items I run are from foreign sources: England's Guardian, for instance, or the Toronto Globe and Mail, or even Pravda. There are few Americans over the age of forty who would have ever guessed that Pravda might tell us more about what is happening in America than the New York Times -- but here we are.

If there was ever much doubt that I was justified in my disdain for America's once-proud media, there were two stories over the past few days that should convince anyone not only that the corporations have sold Americans out entirely, but that America no longer has a free and independent press -- or rather, it does, but it's small, and largely drowned out by noisy whores working for Murdoch, Isaacson, Moon and Scaife, and owned by corporations such as Disney, GE, and Time/Warner/AOL -- the same corporate class that, by and large, owns the government, too.

In the first instance, Condoleezza Rice, Putsch's administration harpy, summoned the press and bade them to not show Osama bin Laden on television. The given reason almost made sense. He might be passing instructions along in code. Anyone who has read Kurt Vonnegut's novel, "Mother Night", or seen the superb Nick Nolte movie of the same name, is familiar with the concept. Prearranged hesitations, coughs, chuckles, and choice of words can be used to pass along information outside the text stream.

But when bin Laden broadcasts, it's via satellite -- which means that all the terrorists in America need is a satellite dish, a tuner box, and the Arabic version of TV Guide, and they can catch all bin Laden, all the time, in color, stereo, and close-captioned. Which means that the people who Condoleezza Rice putatively wants to prevent from getting the information aren't affected at all -- while the American public find that the corporate media, and the illegitimate junta in Washington, are conspiring to control further what Americans get to see and hear.

NBC's head news whore, Neal Shapiro, made the amazing statement:

"...was that here was a charismatic speaker who could arouse anti-American sentiment getting 20 minutes of air time to spew hatred and urge his followers to kill Americans."

I dunno, Neal.

To tell you the truth, I think bin Laden's followers in America already hate Americans and want to kill them. It's not the kind of thing where you need to remind them: "Oh, and by the way, Mohammed, stop by the Quik-E-Mart and pick up a dozen eggs and some beer, and be sure to release some vials of cyanide in the subway at noon tomorrow".

As for the rest of us, I doubt bin Laden is going to make much in the way of inroads. I watched his broadcast from what Maureen Dowd called "the set of the Flintstones movie" for about ten minutes with a totally unprotected brain, and not once did I feel any urges to hijack a commercial jetliner and fly it into any prominent buildings. Not once.

In fact, bin Laden reminded me of nothing so much as some skinny old weirdo who comes up to you at a stoplight with a filthy, greasy rag in hand, and wants to know if he can clean your windshield for a dollar. If you let him make eye contact, he'll start ranting about the Zionist conspiracy, and how the CIA has put eavesdropping devices in his turban. Charismatic he's not -- and I suspect most Arabs figure him for a dip, too, but since he's not the one bombing Afghanistan, they have to more or less support the crazy son of a bitch.

Rupert Murdoch, who has done more than any single individual in the history of the earth to destroy freedom of the press, made the incredible statement:

"We'll do whatever is our patriotic duty."

Keep in mind: this was spoken by an Australian son of a bitch with a whore citizenship who openly bribed the Speaker of the House in order to get several billion dollars worth of stations in America in his grasp, and spent the past eight years doing everything he could to destroy the President of the United States.

"Patriotic duty?" Take your "patriotic duty" and ram it up your sleazy ass, Murdoch. We don't need to hear from scumbags like you about "patriotic duty."

CNN chief Walter Isaacson added, "After hearing Dr. Rice, we're not going to step on the land mines she was talking about." He probably sidled up to her afterward and apologized for his reporters having asked questions.

And the ever-thuggish Ari Fleischer demanded that papers not print the full text of Osama's speeches, since it might contain code.

Say -- maybe they should just shut newspapers down entirely!

If Arab terrorists can use code, anyone can. For all Ari knows, this message is actually addressed to a vast armada of space ships lying in wait on the far side of the moon, awaiting only my command before wreaking endless death and destruction. ("Pl, hvzt. Pqfo gjkf. Gjwf cvdlt jg zpv ijv Bsj gjstu.")

The old saying has it that "The first casualty of war is truth", and thus this particular story wouldn't be too horrific. At various times in history, the media has gotten swept up in the wave of war fever patriotism, and deliberately muzzled itself in the cockeyed notion that America will benefit from it. Usually, they quickly realize that the government finds that far too convenient a relationship not to abuse, and the bloom is off the rose. In this case, they'll eventually figure out that we don't even really have a war!

But the second item is catastrophic for America, and signals that we have already lost America as we knew it.

The Toronto Globe and Mail broke the story on October 10, 2001. It begins as follows:

U.S. media forget about dimpled chads
By JOHN IBBITSON
Thursday, October 11, 2001 - Print Edition, Page A1
WASHINGTON -- Just weeks ago, it would have been the biggest story in the land: A final, comprehensive audit would reveal whether Al Gore or George W. Bush should be president. Today, it seems to be nobody's news.
A consortium of major U.S. news organizations has decided unanimously not to analyze and report the results of the $1-million (U.S.) audit they commissioned to identify which presidential candidate received the most votes in Florida in last November's election.
By "spiking" the story, they have raised questions about whether the country's biggest media conglomerates are suppressing news that potentially could tarnish the image of Mr. Bush in the midst of the President's war on terrorism.
"I find it truly extraordinary that they have made this decision," said Jane Kirtley, media ethics specialist at the University of Minnesota. "I am so chilled by what is going on."
Catherine Mathis, vice-president of corporate communications at the New York Times Co. reportedly said, "Right now, we don't have the time, the personnel or the space in the newspaper to focus on this." The consortium consists of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, Newsweek, CNN and several other news organizations.

No time, personnel, or space in the papers. Right. They could cover blow jobs 24/7 for a year and a half, but they don't have space to cover a coup against the United States.

Steven Goldstein, vice-president of corporate communications for Dow Jones & Co., which publishes The Wall Street Urinal, said, "The priorities have changed. People are focused on the fact that we're at war."

We're bombing the set of the Flintstones for no apparent reason -- that's the "war" Goldstein is talking about, and it didn't stop the rich white trash on the WSJ editorial staff from pressing hard for such pet projects as cutting capital gains taxes or privatizing social security to be added to the anti-terrorism bill.

But what it boils down to is the fact that the whore media -- The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, Newsweek, CNN and several other news organizations -- have unilaterally decided not to print the results of a completed survey because it would just upset people.

That can only mean one thing: George W. Putsch, indeed, lost Florida, and probably by a substantial margin.

If he had won, nobody would have been upset. I would have grumbled that he tried to steal it anyway, but I'll be the first to admit that it would be a grumble that would convince very few people. Republicans are sleazebags who cheat (shrug). Are you SURPRISED or something?

So the result must show that Gore won.

Of course, the whore media are "trying to protect"... well, somebody. They say America. I say they are trying to protect their milk cow, the Putsch junta. They say America is in crisis, and so they shouldn't print upsetting news. Wouldn't be right. Certainly wouldn't be "American".

In 1972, we were fighting in Vietnam. Did that stop the press from reporting on Watergate? During the civil war, Union newspapers carried livid accounts of the incompetence of our drunken and cowardly generals. Nobody questioned their patriotism for doing so. During World War I, many American papers blasted Wilson on a daily basis for getting America involved in a European war. Nobody condemned them for upsetting the country-not even Wilson.

The difference? In those wars, we didn't have a carnival media owned outright by cowardly and corrupt corporations who are intent on protecting their puppet regime in Washington at all costs.

It looks, more and more, like America lost, and well before the first plane smashed into the World Trade Center. It may be that Osama bin Ladin did nothing more than kick a corpse.