The Right Wing media has an overwhelming advantage over the commentary that comes from the Left. First of all, 90% of all radio programming that involves commentary is Right Wing commentary. That is, factually, 91% of all radio talk programming or commentary is identified as conservative talk radio. They don’t try to hide that they are conservative. They try to hide the truth.
Let’s start with the Glenn Beck radio program and what he has to say (don’t laugh) about President Obama’s apparent desire to be a dictator and some others (unnamed) who, Beck says, want him to be a dictator. Then he gets into history, which he clearly is making up as he goes along. It is simply not even remotely close to being true. It is Beck re-writing the French Revolution in his own confused mind.
Of course, the idea that President Obama would even consider attempting to become a dictator is preposterous. But on Fox News and on the Conservative radio networks, Conservatives say whatever they want…no matter how fanciful or ridiculous. This is the typical method. Toss up a straw man, set up a premise that is impossibly stupid and then proceed to debate it as if it were rational. No one can object. No one but Conservatives or the stooges that they hire are allowed to speak. They prop up a few news people characterized as Liberal to merely pretend they are the opposition (but never speak up) and to act as props rather than offering real opposing viewpoints.
They are paid by the corporations to sling propaganda at the people and see what sticks. We saw it in the lead up to the War in Iraq. So much propaganda on the war was sent out over the airwaves, that most people believed that Saddam Hussein was in league with Al Qaeda even though he kept them out of Iraq on pain of death. The truth is that we attacked and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis for no good reason.Our military General Staff and they were overruled by Right Wing Conservative oil men…Bush and Cheney.
Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the pack when it comes to Right Wing propagandists. He is the master of the art of the big lie. He makes a comment and unless someone challenges its truth, he then begins to follow up the first lie with numerous others. Here’s an example:
There he goes again. Limbaugh has now obviously been sent a memo to start attacking unions again. We see it all over the Intenet and on television, the little remarks about how much our unionized government workforce is costing us. So what does Limbaugh do? He takes France, which is is much better fiscal shape than the United States and absolutely not comparable to hapless Greece, and attacks their government pensions. Of course it is hated France, where people by the way, get a month of vacation every year, get 40% of their income for up to four years if they are laid off, and who retire earlier with more money than we do here in the United States.
The reason he attacks government unions is because they are strong. Union membership is at an all-time low in this country simply because of people like Ronald (GE stooge) Reagan and Rush Limbaugh working for the financial, oil and manufacturing collectives. The Chamber of Commerce and the big coal, oil and manufacturing interests know that they will never get the government workers to leave the unions. So they are crying poverty…no money left in government.
Well, the fact is that a ten percent increase on the top income tax rates right down to those families making $250,000 or more would solve the problem. Exxon pays no taxes. Federal revenues from corporations are at an all-time low. As of 2010, there are no federal inheritance taxes, so if your granddaddy leaves you $400 billion you keep it all, whether you ever worked a day in your life. Tax the rich? Absolutely. They have become fabulously wealthy on the backs of the American worker and the American consumer. They can kick in a little to the common good. But Multi-Millionaire Rush (worth at least $200 million) will never recommend that. No one in the top 1% of this country is hurting. They can afford to kick in for a few years until this country gets on the right track again.
Then there is Michael Savage. And before, you say, “Ah yes, but he is merely an eccentric, mean-spirited, belligerent, self-hating, pseudo-thinker…also sponsored by the big corporations…banned from even traveling to England, and considered by most a real nut.” That may be true, but he lies every day, slanders the President and the Administration every day, and gets away with it, while many unsuspecting people think that if he can, then there must be something to what he says. Here’s what he says…and it is pure ignorance and prejudice. But Savage is different, he spews hatred and vile false propaganda because he is paid for it, but also because he enjoys it. He is a man filled with hate.
So if you listened to his foolish comment, you must be saying to yourself…what evidence is there that President Obama is anything other than extremely competent. Even in the ultra-conservative air of Russian-U.S. diplomatic relations Medvedev came out and said that it was nice to be working with someone with a brain. Every Washington newsman comments regularly on the high level of intellectual discourse and focus on efficiency by this White House. He’s kept the best and brightest and consults regularly with those Republicans in his administration, in business and in the Congress who are not trying to obstruct.
Why would Michael Savage suddenly have the opposite opinion of everyone else? It seems pretty obvious. His livelihood depends on his criticizing any Democrat in the White House or Congress. He has slandered Nancy Pelosi who has passed 290 bills out of Congress that are still languishing in the Senate tied up by Republican filibuster. The same corporations that pay Senators to filibuster pay Savage to tell lies on radio.
As far as not being a soldier but leading the military, neither Clinton, FDR, Roosevelt, nor even Herbert Hoover or Cal Coolidge ever served in the military. Most Senators and many high government officials come from jobs as prosecutors, government staff jobs like Lt. Governor or judgeships. They don’t have any outside business experience. Richard Nixon didn’t have any outside business experience and he was Vice President and President for two terms. Being Republican, like Jack Abramoff or Duke Cunningham, he couldn’t quite make it through his last position. Look what we have, Savage says, a President named “Obama.” Is that a racist statement? Can’t be anything else. If you’re a racist your motivations are racist. If your motivations are racist, no one can trust anything you say to be objective.
Savage says Dodd gave away money to Native Americans for casinos in the stimulus. Once again, the Republican Savage, who merely talks on the radio, and doesn’t care what happens as a result of his lies, has it backwards. Jack Abramoff stole $80 million from Native American tribes, who, by the way, are owed, literally, billions in unpaid royalties by mining companies, oil companies and timber companies that have never been paid.
Senator Chris Dodd channeled stimulus money to Native American tribes to help sustain the only business opportunities, job and wealth creating opportunities the Native Americans have ever had, except for a few private oil leases. But, of course, that would have a negative effect on the People who fund Savage. They don’t want Native Americans to be prosperous. They want to continue to exploit them.
Savage is like all the others, Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, Palin, Kudlow, Cavuto, Coulter,Matalin, Noonan, Will, Palin and Krauthammer…are all paid propagandists for the Right. They are characterized by one common attribute…their overwhelming hatred for a Black President. Like the Republicans in the Senate, their bigotry is what drives them to say outrageous and sometimes simply impossible things. There is no logical reason other than racism. President Obama is, by any standard, assuming he can continue to create jobs, on track to become a great President. He is a capitalist, too capitalistic for some, with very heavily corporate advisors, like Larry Summers, Paul Volcker, Reagan’s Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Bob Gates as his number one military man…Bush’s military man.
There is no reason at all other than pure racism to attack him in the way that they do. Calling his politics wrong, his policies wrong is one thing. Calling hims a dictator, demeaning him in words like calling him a “dummy” or “Barack the Magic Negro” or with the most brutish, racist signs showing him as a witch doctor. These racist commentators make the outlandish accusations…that he is a communist or a fascist…ridiculous, adolescent attacks. If you heard the comments on this blog by Beck, Limbaugh and Savage, you can see why the country is in turmoil. It is only partly because of the economy. The other part is the active anarchist attitude of these Anti-American commentators whose African American hatred means more to them than the future of the United States.
