Oh, so now they get excited. The cocksucking lackeys of the American media, puffed up with their typically self-righteous rage, are blasting the inaccuracies of Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11, believing, of course, that journalistic standards are at stake. If memory serves — and it does quite well, thank you — these are the same people who, as a group and nearly without exception, bent over and spread their willing butt-cheeks in order to take up the ass whatever it was the Bush administration saw fit to throw at them. Or in them, I should say. This “liberal-biased” bunch swallowed the lie-filled jizz of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al, for the worst possible reason: self-preservation. Knowing that the Bushies play hard ball like no other administration in history (Joseph Wilson, anyone?) and have been far from subtle in promoting their policy of swift and immediate punishment for all voices of dissent, reporters, editors, and publishers have kept their eye on the financial prize and have failed in their duty to the American people.
As such, we continue to live with the lie that the airwaves are indeed “public” and that the media’s primary duty is to hold power accountable. Not in an industry that relies on billions upon billions in corporate advertising you won’t. These assholes value their jobs first and foremost, and would headline “America a Christian Nation; Non-Believers to Be Executed in the Public Square” if it meant increased revenue. Because assorted suits and executives creamed their tailored suits in anticipation of Bush-backed deregulation and consolidation, they played along with the daily assaults on the truth that passed for “news” in Dubya’s regime. Most would claim that a post-9/11 sense of honor and decency kept them from highlighting Bush’s stupidity or the jingoistic march to a war that would benefit few outside of the Fortune 500, but we all know (or at least, should know) the actions of our media proved they were cowards of the highest order, that is when they weren’t clever and calculated in pushing propaganda of their own.
And that is the crux of the matter. For every journalist who now assails Moore’s film as Goebbels-lite, there are an equal number who remained stone silent while the U.S. goose-stepped to Baghdad. If Bush said it (“oh think of the 9/11 victims”) and the administration believed it was necessary (“what about the children under Saddam’s thumb?”), then who were we to express doubt? “We’re at war,” they cry, under the impression that the presence of tanks and aircraft on a battlefield triggers an immediate suspension of the Constitution. These saps were lied to repeatedly, then reported the lies, then reported the lies about the lies, and then lied themselves when the lies were exposed, using the old chestnuts “misstatements” or “not having all the facts” to cover official asses as well as their own.
And so they’re adopting a position of “displeasure” and “concern” about Moore’s fast-and-loose portrayal, wondering if such an incendiary film might not play into the hands of our enemies. They appeal to our need for “unity” and refer again and again to the perpetual war for perpetual peace. My take? Terrorism did not begin on 9/11/01, either in terms of this country or the world. Throughout our nation’s history, terrorists of every stripe — and this includes socialist and labor leaders who were labeled as such by the powers that be — have been advancing their visions of a more just world, and of course some have been more appealing than others. I, for one, have no desire to live in an Islamic theocracy, for example, but my loathing is just as strong for the Christian variety being sold here as “compassionate conservatism.”
For well over a hundred years, we’ve seen bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, instability, and fear. We’ve had to live with talk of “things falling apart” and division winning out over social control. From talk of crime in the streets to a pervasive lawlessness, I can’t remember a time when a measured calm ruled the land, and I wasn’t even alive to remember the blood soaked streets of the Gilded Age. Remember, President McKinley was shot by an anarchist — a terrorist who spreads fear in order to create the sort of chaos that will bring down organized society — and that was back in 1901! The weapons and methods may have changed, but the drive to bring down the powerful has always been with us. But the media, in cooperation with the administration, would have us believe this is a recent phenomenon that only now are we able to confront. Translation? In real terms, we are no more likely to be killed by a terrorist attack today than we were at the turn of the century. A case could even be made that we are at less risk now.
So when the American media — not Right or Left, simply profit-driven, which makes them above partisan ideology – tells you that Moore’s lies threatens to tear us apart, remember their actions in the years leading up to the film’s release. Remember how they’ve played along in Bush’s calculated campaign of self-deprecation to re-imagine a wealthy, East Coast Yale grad with an affinity for butchered syntax and whose father was director of the CIA, Ambassador to China, Vice President for eight years and President for four as “one of us” and the sort of “plain speaker” we need in these unprecedented times of good and evil. Remember how they refuse to show us the real horrors of war (bodies, coffins, limbs, shattered lives), and yet castigate Moore for his “manipulative” imagery showing exactly that. Remember the absence of tough questions, basic follow-up inquiries, and the aw-shucks acceptance of the unprecedented infrequency of presidential press conferences. Remember the fawning, the boot-licking, the ass-kissing, and the self-congratulation. And then pause, gather yourself, and focus on the assault leveled against Mr. Moore. And so it is that when the media watchdogs cease their barking, they have become servants of power. Without this important guardian, we have nothing left to protect us. And our servitude is but a foregone conclusion.
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