In the absence of a dictator and iron-fisted control of a heavily censored press, our press has been manipulated into the functional equivalent. And that ought to scare hell out of any American. One week of media manipulation will make the point, but more importantly, the point should anger and frighten you. Don’t believe me? Read on.
Here’s the “top story” in Amerika from right wing think tank “The American Enterprise Institute”s blog as I begin writing this at 12:45 PM EDT:
The awful, awful August jobs report
James Pethokoukis / AEIdeas:This was not the employment report either American workers or the Obama campaign were hoping for. A huge miss. It shows the U.S. labor market remains in a deep depression, generating few jobs and little if no income growth. As IHS Global Insight puts it:
Here is today’s top of Memeorandum:
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Note that the American Enterprise Institute is virtually never on Memeorandum, but that PowerLine is run by John Hinderaker, now a board member of the CATO Institute, inserted during the hostile Koch takeover a couple of months ago, and a player in the Dan Rather takedown. William A. Jacobson was one of the “movers” of this week’s phony Labor Day “Empty Chair Day” and Memorial Day’s “Blog about Brett Kimberlin Day.”
Let me state my thesis and then I’ll give you proof:
Explanation: Memeorandum is entirely machine-generated, based on cross-linking. I have added “Memeorandum colors” from WIRED’s Andy Baio, a javascript program that assigns red or blue highlights (also entirely mechanical) based on links to “conservative” (red) and “liberal” blogs (blue). I am colored pink, because I fight them each and every day, and the database — wrongly but understandably — sees that I link to “conservative” blogs more than “liberal” ones. (See “I am not Pink” 24 April 2012) Note how the “red” sites dominate the front page.
The right wing blogosphere, coordinated to propagandist’s purpose has dominated the “news” about the Democratic National Convention, just as they gave cover to the Republican National Convention with a series of trivial messages (defense) and trivial attacks (offensive) that intentionally stifle actual news, and shove real stories far down the page.
The Republican party is not the first to invoke motherhood
1930s propaganda poster to make Nazis look cuddly
This is a coordinated and intentional gaming of the Memeorandum robot, and it’s been taking place for a long time now.
This is ALSO the antithesis of a free press, and is nothing less than a right-wing attempt to control information and bully the so-called mainstream press, aided and abetted by the craven and ignorant stenographers who have supplanted actual reporters in our American newsrooms. And, while I believe I’m probably writing a one-way ticket to the eventual gulag here, it needs to be said, and nobody’s saying it. This week it has NEVER been so clear or apparent.
Guess where the story of President Obama’s nomination speech sits, in contradistinction to the “spin” that “only” creating 96,000 new jobs as opposed to the 125,000 “expected” by the disreputable soothsayers (economists examining turtle entrails) is AWFUL AWFUL?
Halfway down the page, with plenty of phony spin about what an AWFUL AWFUL speech it was, how the pundits are “divided” on the speech, etcetera.
Now, in the real world, is what the American Enterprise Institute says about the August Jobs Report (that 96,000 is disastrous as compared to 125,000 ??!?!) MUCH more important than the renomination of the President of the United States of America?
Hell no. And if you think that it is, please stop reading right here and now, and call your ward nurse for more antipsychotic medication. The sane among you are invited to continue reading.
Here is what Abraham Lincoln said in his “House Divided” speech of June 1858. See if it rings a bell for you:
We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. [planned and coordinated manipulation] But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen, — Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James, for instance, –and we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few, not omitting even scaffolding — or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in — in such a case we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck…
Our house is divided and this milled lumber from the blockheads bears a suspicious resemblance to the congressional manipulation that Lincoln was talking about.
Look at yesterday’s blog swarm:
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Bill Clinton’s speech was shoved down to the middle of the page. Mission accomplished.
What was the point? To embarrass the DNC, to stomp on the message, to create a Rovian “scandal” that would dominate the news coverage of the day. If you don’t understand this Rovian need to dominate EACH AND EVERY news cycle as a way of suppressing dissent, you weren’t paying attention at all from 2000 to 2008.
Here is Tuesday’s Memeorandum front page:
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Michelle Obama’s speech was shoved down to the middle of the page. Mission accomplished.
Here is Monday’s Memeorandum front page:
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A “poll” from The Hill — a small publication that includes wildly partisan bloggers right and left — is THE MOST IMPORTANT STORY IN AMERICA?
You see that the New York Times‘ coverage of the convention opening is shoved down below the top of the page: Mission Accomplished.
Here was the front page at 12:05 AM EDT on Monday (and note that I’m pink):
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And here is Sunday’s front page at 5:45 PM EDT, with a legitimate news analysis and one that the Right didn’t much care to see:
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But they were persistent, and by midnight, they had moved this coordinated mass media manipulation to the top of the page (aided and abetted, as you see above, by Politico‘s increasingly compliant and complicit Dylan Byers):
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By ten o’clock Sunday, they dominated the Memeorandum front page, heading into Labor Day …
They aren’t powerful enough to do it all by themselves, and need a mainstream media “judas goat” to tie their poison to. Click-addicted Politico is more than happy to comply, just as Howard Kurtz used to when he was at the Washington Post and CNN.
The Clint Eastwood debacle deeply troubled them, and they’ve spent the last week covering it up. At 8 AM EDT, the day after the Eastwood debacle and the Romney acceptance speech, they successfully shoved the Eastwood headlines from the top of the page with this “VITALLY IMPORTANT” news snark:
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Note that it is AGAIN, The Hill, that gives them cover for their blog swarm. Here’s what they suppressed (partially, since the American people and press are not totally blind, but merely legally blind):
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You will note how many attacked that actual Eastwood story to attempt to smother it in its cradle, as well.
Do Lincoln’s words begin to resonate with you, just a bit?
in such a case we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck…
Just substitute a few names of contemporary bloggers for Lincoln’s list and it’s right up to date.
And now doubling down AGAIN to destroy the memory of Eastwood’s screwup, LITERALLY AS I WRITE THIS today at 2:45 PM EDT:
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The “Awful Awful Jobs report” has moved into second place, and any discussion of the acceptance speech of the President of the United States of America from last night has been relegated ever lower on the page, intentionally belittled and trivialized right out of the news cycle with the additional snark stories of the Usual Suspects, just as they attacked the Eastwood story originally: Distract with a non-story at the top of the page; attack the real story further down.
And the story about the President of the United States of America is now halfway down the Memeorandum page and falling fast. Joseph Goebbels himself could not have done better. Lincoln:
… and we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few, not omitting even scaffolding …
This is media manipulation at its ugliest. It is coordinated and it is fascistic. (If they get to call me a “socialist” and no one blinks, don’t try to get upset that I’m calling them fascists. My cavil, at least, is backed up by a lot more evidence.)
I will continue to fight their psy-ops and disinf0rmation each and every day.
And, if past experience is any indication, I will do it alone.
Courage.
UPDATE 5:25 PDT: Just got a clarification from Memeorandum creator Gabe Rivera, who also runs Techmeme and Mediagazer. He says: “Memeorandum runs fully automated.”
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A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, an honorary Texan, Clown (ditto) and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog
A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog, His Vorpal Sword (no spaces) dot com.