Sunday, June 08, 2008

Hegemony is the enemy

At the National Conference for Media Reform, Bill Moyers is sparking, as always, incredible dialog on the media's responsibility for our current political situation. Now comes Paul Rosenberg to say that Republicans are not the enemy in November (they're "a pathetic wreck"). It's hegemony, led by the corporate media:
In the 1990s, the media led the charge to depose Bill Clinton. As Gene Lyons meticulously documented in Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater, the New York Times and Washington Post persistently, repeatedly, and egregiously misreported virtually every major aspect of the so-called "Whitewater scandal." When that failed, and the Monica Lewinsky scandal emerged in its place, dozens of leading newspapers editorialized that Clinton should resign. Sixty percent of the American people disagreed, but they couldn't get a word in edgewise-which is where, when and how MoveOn.org was founded.

In contrast, George W. Bush has not merely subverted the most central aspects of our constitutional order with his dictatorial theories of unchecked executive power, he has shredded the Magna Charta as well as the Constitution, and yet the media persists in lying that only the "loonie left" thinks that there's anything amiss.

That's hegemony for you.
Read the whole thing here. And don't miss the great aikido ambush journalism video at Crooks & Liars.