We Live Under
A Media Coup d’État
By Roger L. Simon
October 1, 2012
Coup d’états come in a variety of forms. Some are violent with arrogant colonels pointing forty-fives at the temples of their predecessors and blowing their brains out; others are stealthy with the citizens awakening on an ordinary morning to find their whole world has changed yet not a drop of blood has been shed.
The latter is what has happened in America. We are the victims of a media coup d’état and are currently living under it.
You will see that clearly in evidence on Wednesday night when the series of debates commence, each one moderated by a member of the liberal media nomenklatura. It is under the guidance of this liberalism, under their own version of sharia, if you will, that the debates will be conducted and Mitt Romney judged.
We have long lived under this assumed reign of liberalism – in our media, in our schools, and through our entertainment. It is as pervasive as the air we breathe and as unquestioned. Fox News, even the Wall Street Journal, important as they are, exist under this reign and more often respond to it than initiate their own programs and investigations.
Barack Obama is a product of this coup d’état. In a very real sense, he helps them cement it, but he has, at most, four more years to reign. The real coup plotters, the New Media Class (to cannibalize Milovan Djilas [1]), can go on in perpetuity. And that has always been their intention.
It is the media that rules us then, not politicians. Politicians come and go; journalists, pundits, commentators – in print, on television, and now on the Internet – last forever, or nearly, as they pass the baton to the next generation without a semblance of an ideological blip, seamless as a gold medal track team.
They are the ones who tell our story to us. They are our mirrors and they are indeed a new class, as resistant to change as any entrenched group of the rich and powerful. (Yes, many of them are not so rich and powerful nowadays, but the ones that count, the ones that truly rule, are. And the others stand patiently by, waiting for their turn.)
This class, more than any, determined that Barack Obama should be president and they consequently will work more assiduously than any to assure his reelection, because a failure in that would be a serious, perhaps fatal, attack on their hegemony.
The coup would be in danger of a counter-coup. That can’t be allowed to happen. No facts, no events (Benghazi, Fast & Furious, endless unemployment, a healthcare fiasco) will get in the away or be allowed to be given serious credence.
But when did this coup start and how did it get so successful?
It certainly began further back than we all realized. It began with the illusion that media could be even-handed. Journalism could be an occupation like cardiology, subject to verification and highly professional. But it never was. It was always biased – written by humans.
Nevertheless, there was a plot to make us think we were hearing the truth.
When the New York Times claimed they published “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” what they were really doing was publishing the news they determined was worth our seeing. It was the news their way. It always is, no matter who is doing it.
Then, in 1972, Watergate happened and became a turning point this new class was waiting for. Journalists became heroes played by movie stars. They overcame presidents and were more powerful than kings. Suddenly their way was the way. Competing visions were swept aside or relegated to also-ran status like a token conservative on the op-ed pages of the Times. A certain bias became the bias became “the truth.” Schools adopted this truth and taught it to children as early as kindergarten and as late as graduate school. It became the sub-text or the uber-text of many movies and TV shows.
And a coup began – the coup we are living under now.
It was a slow-motion coup. For a while we didn’t know it was happening. But soon enough it was all around us.
It was so powerful that this year the Republican Party allowed the coup plotters to control the debates, even those that determined their own nominee.
And the rest of us sat outside, tweeting, blogging, hoping Charles Krauthammer would say something smart on Fox News or Rush would get his revenge. But the narrative is set. The coup has taken hold. It’s too late now — or is it? We live in a Media State.
Article printed from Roger L. Simon: http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon
URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2012/10/01/media-coup-detat/
It is the media that rules us then, not politicians. Politicians come and go; journalists, pundits, commentators – in print, on television, and now on the Internet – last forever, or nearly...
ReplyDeleteAnd that is the hideous reality, particularly when we remember how little hard news that people read now. Hell, most people don't do more than read the headlines on the front page. If they even read that much!
As Nietzsche (On the Future of Our Educational Institutions) said 130 years ago...
ReplyDelete"For centuries it has been an understood thing that one alluded to scholars alone when one spoke of cultured men; but experience tells us that it would be difficult to find any necessary relation between the two classes to-day. For at present the exploitation of a man for the purpose of science is accepted everywhere without the slightest scruple. Who still ventures to ask, What may be the value of a science which consumes its minions in this vampire fashion? The division of labour in science is practically struggling towards the same goal which religions in certain parts of the world are consciously striving after,--that is to say, towards the decrease and even the destruction of learning. That, however, which, in the case of certain religions, is a perfectly justifiable aim, both in regard to their origin and their history, can only amount to self-immolation when transferred to the realm of science. In all matters of a general and serious nature, and above all, in regard to the highest philosophical problems, we have now already reached a point at which the scientific man, as such, is no longer allowed to speak. On the other hand, that adhesive and tenacious stratum which has now filled up the interstices between the sciences--Journalism--believes it has a mission to fulfil here, and this it does, according to its own particular lights--that is to say, as its name implies, after the fashion of a day-labourer.
"It is precisely in journalism that the two tendencies combine and become one. The expansion and the diminution of education here join hands. The newspaper actually steps into the place of culture, and he who, even as a scholar, wishes to voice any claim for education, must avail himself of this viscous stratum of communication which cements the seams between all forms of life, all classes, all arts, and all sciences, and which is as firm and reliable as news paper is, as a rule. In the newspaper the peculiar educational aims of the present culminate, just as the journalist, the servant of the moment, has stepped into the place of the genius, of the leader for all time, of the deliverer from the tyranny of the moment. Now, tell me, distinguished master, what hopes could I still have in a struggle against the general topsy-turvification of all genuine aims for education; with what courage can I, a single teacher, step forward, when I know that the moment any seeds of real culture are sown, they will be mercilessly crushed by the roller of this pseudo-culture? Imagine how useless the most energetic work on the part of the individual teacher must be, who would fain lead a pupil back into the distant and evasive Hellenic world and to the real home of culture, when in less than an hour, that same pupil will have recourse to a newspaper, the latest novel, or one of those learned books, the very style of which already bears the revolting impress of modern barbaric culture--"
Pajamas Media lecturing about reporting is like Justin Bieber lecturing about music.
ReplyDeleteI think a better question is why the American public is such a herd that they don't demand more real news.
And the rest of us sat outside, tweeting, blogging, hoping Charles Krauthammer would say something smart on Fox News or Rush would get his revenge.
ReplyDelete--------
Q.E.D.
The Krautzenjammer Kid and Talent on Loan from Synthetic Morphine aren't part of rigging the narrative. Please tell me I read you incorrectly.
Better the news from perspiring day labourers, right duckman?
ReplyDeleteGrub Street rules!
ReplyDelete< / Sarcasm>
I always hate agreeing with Ducky, but I must concur with this comment:
ReplyDeleteI think a better question is why the American public is such a herd that they don't demand more real news.
A. Pope, "Dunciad"
ReplyDeleteIn eldest time, e’er mortals writ or read,
E’er Pallas issued from the Thunderer’s head,
Dulness o’er all possessed her ancient right,
Daughter of Chaos and eternal Night:
Fate in their dotage this fair idiot gave,
Gross as her sire, and as her mother grave,
Laborious, heavy, busy, bold, and blind,
She ruled, in native anarchy, the mind.
Still her old empire to restore she tries,
For, born a goddess, Dulness never dies.
O thou! whatever title please thine ear,
Dean, Drapier, Bickerstaff, or Gulliver!
Whether thou choose Cervantes’ serious air,
Or laugh and shake in Rabelais’ easy chair,
Or praise the court, or magnify mankind,
Or thy grieved country’s copper chains unbind;
From thy Boeotia though her power retires,
Mourn not, my SWIFT, at ought our realm acquires,
Here pleased behold her mighty wings out-spread
To hatch a new Saturnian age of lead.
Close to those walls where Folly holds her throne,
And laughs to think Monroe would take her down,
Where o’er the gates, by his famed by father’s hand
Great Cibber’s brazen, brainless brothers stand;
One cell there is, concealed from vulgar eye,
The cave of poverty and poetry.
Keen, hollow winds howl through the bleak recess,
Emblem of music caused by emptiness.
Hence bards, like Proteus long in vain tied down,
Escape in monsters, and amaze the town.
Hence miscellanies spring, the weekly boast
Of Curll’s chaste press, and Lintot’s rubric post :
Hence hymning Tyburn’s elegiac lines,
Hence Journals, Medleys, Merc’ries, Magazines:
Sepulchral lies, our holy walls to grace,
And new Year odes, and all the Grub Street race.
In clouded majesty here Dulness shone;
Four guardian virtues, round, support her throne:
Fierce champion Fortitude, that knows no fears
Of hisses, blows, or want, or loss of ears:
Calm Temperance, whose blessings those partake
Who hunger, and who thirst for scribbling sake:
Prudence, whose glass presents th’ approaching goal.
Poetic justice, with her lifted scale,
Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs,
And solid pudding against empty praise.
I think a better question is why the American public is such a herd that they don't demand more real news.
ReplyDelete"Pajamas Media" is off Grub Street. At least IT represents a step in the RIGHT direction.
Love the Pope!
ReplyDeleteAnother clear indication that "it has been ever thus."
Though mises en scene and costumes ever alter
No hope there be the Dullards' Dance may falter,
And though each century's time too quickly passes,
Each generation breeds more horse's asses.
~ FT
Grub Street bore a striking resemblance to NYC's "Grubwich Village" -- at least as it was in the late-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries --. although I suppose it was really the other way 'round, wasn't it?
ReplyDeleteI love the engraving of Grub Street in the Wiki article -- or was it a lithograph? -- I'm never quite sure. Looks like a scene straight out of Dickens, who must have been contemporaneous with the illustration.
Lots of fun finding these bits and pieces that make up the patchwork quilt of History!
One learns much much more about the true "Scent" and "Flavor" of former times from Art, Music and Literature than one does from any listing or dry recitation of Facts and Figures.
If your knowledge has no LIFE to it, it's pretty useless.
~ FT
I couldn't agree more about Pajama's media. It's doing a far better job of advancing the cause of Truth and Integrity than that quasi-erudite, muckraking old Yenta that calls herself The New York Times.
ReplyDeleteWhen WILL that filthy, moribund Communist rag finally "thaw, melt, and resolve itself into a dew?"
I cant wait!!!
~ FT
>>...It was so powerful that this year the Republican Party allowed the coup plotters to control the debates, even those that determined their own nominee.
ReplyDeleteIn politics nothing happens by accident. It it happened, you can bet it was planned that way.
~ FDR
That statement has been attributed to Franklin "Several Of The Best Friends I Have Are Communists" Roosevelt. I have never confirmed that he actually said it, but it's essentially true regardless.
So the Republican Party was UNWITTINGLY 'stepping in it' AGAIN, eh? Sort of like how John McCain said that he could envision U.S. troops in the Middle East for a hundred years, and that our economy was basically sound? The two BEST things he could have possibly said to the American people at that time to ensure that he would NOT be elected president.
It's remarkable how many "mistakes" the Republican party makes that even the basic boob on Main Street can identify as a tactical error. Somehow the "Conservative American Boob" seems to consistently know better than does the Republican party.
And we're supposed to believe, year after year after year, that the Republicans (read: "Pseudo-Conservatives") are fighting with all they've got?
Sorry, but I stopped buying THAT line many years ago.
>>...And the rest of us sat outside, tweeting, blogging, hoping Charles Krauthammer would say something smart on Fox News or Rush would get his revenge.
Uh-huh. Ri-iiii-ght!
Charles Krauthammer: Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member.
Rush Limboob: On record as having publicly stated that the ONE Republican presidential nominee in 2012 (Ron Paul) who TRULY believes in the U.S. Constitution as the vast majority of our Founding Fathers did, would wreck the Republican (read: "Repugnantcan") party if he wasn't stopped.
The nice thing about Democrats is that they don't hide who they really are and what they really believe. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows that the Democrat party is comprised of Socialists and Communists.
But the really DANGEROUS people are those who know how to speak with a forked tongue, how to include enough truth in their lies to fool all the people who recognize the truth but are not savvy and educated enough to see through the lies of commission and omission.
That would be your Rush Limbaughs, Sean Hannitys, Ann Coulters, Glenn Becks, Bill O'Reillys, and Michael Medveds.
~ D-FensDogg
'Loyal American Underground'
I'm not sure about ALL of that, Stephen.
ReplyDeleteWhen Meet the Depressed broadcasts its bilious bias no Sunday mornings, it is no longer just the VIEWERS and the featured VICTIMS who are "depressed," it's probably the Producers and Directors of this farcical feature today.
A significant portion of the populace now is "mad as hell, and they're not going to take it anymore" which is what the "Conservative-Libertarian" movement, that began rather tepidly with Bill Buckley -- who played ball with our "Masters," many of whom fancy themselves as "The Conscience of the World," in order to be allowed to stay in the game -- is all about.
The latter day Conservative-Libertarian Movement really got rolling, however, with the advent of Rush Limbaugh, who may or may not be totally cynical in the way he tapped into the boiling lava of SIlent Majority Sentiment seething 'neath the surface, that had either been ignored, dismissed, derided, or possibly undetected, by the moguls who run the enemedia, but there can be no doubt that Rush, whatever his true motives may be, has been tremendously effective in rousing the "rabble."
At any rate, whether perfectly sincere or not, it doesn't matter. I think it would be safe to say there would have BEEN no vocal Conservative-Libertarian Movement with significant political impact were not for the machinations and peculiar genius of Rush Limbaugh and the host of emulators who soon followed in his wake.
The enemedia ran -- unsuspected -- unquestioned -- unopposed -- and unmolested -- for several decades, and is STILL far too powerful an influence as far as I am concerned.
But yes, there could be no doubt that The Oligarchs, who sanction and finance ALL of these circuses, are playing with our heads, and doubtless laughing at the extreme polarity they've fomented through the enemedia.
NEVERTHELESS, we must remember that "SOMEONE" -- or a group or series of "Someones" -- has ALWAYS been in charge.
We are by and large a species of FOLLOWERS naturally given to being "subjects" of the biggest, loudest, strongest, cleverest elements among us.
Frankly, Stephen, I think we have far more in common with the bees, the ants and the termites than we'd like to admit. Not one of us is truly capable of going it alone. We need the protection and hierarchical support system of the hive in order to survive.
In any ways we might be said to have a dual identity. We are, indeed, INDIVIDUALS, but we are ALSO single cells in what-might-be termed the corpus mundi.
A chilling thought no doubt!
It may turn out to be entirely illusory to imagine the worker bees and the drones could exist without their Queen.
"Life is a mystery to be lived -- not a problem to be solved."
~ FreeThinke