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U.S. Media Trivializes Campaign 2008

By Robert Parry

Every four years, during U.S. presidential elections, the same thing happens, except it’s always a little bit different. Some clever political operative injects “oppo” into the campaign – some little “scandal” that supposedly speaks to the “character” of a candidate – and the press corps obsesses on this marginal issue nearly to the exclusion of all substantive matters. This all-consuming… return to article

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    Maybe it’s not only the media trivializing the campaign.

    Since so much of each day’s media coverage deals with Hollywood’s latest crazy behavior or an athlete’s violence and lawbreaking, this may be all most of them are capable of talking or writing about.

    Much of what the candidates have to offer is a band-aid for economical cancer. Instead of well developed solutions or doable ideas they come up with cash diversions which will never be funded.  Perhaps trivia is more interesting to the electorate.

    Obama is well versed in what people are angry about. Hillary is pretty willing to get down to the blue collar lifestyle (when useful). McCain is well qualified in the character category.  None seems to have a clue about the real pressures on average Americans each and every day.

    How often do you suppose any of them has filled his own gas tank lately?

    How many times have they shopped for a family meal at the supermarket in the past year?

    Do they know anyone whose job has gone to cheap-labor-land, whose small town has lost its major employer, where there are so many homes for sale no one can afford to move to where any kind of job may be available?

    When they promise a retraining program for those aged 40 to 60 can they think of what that new “career” could possibly be?  How about learning Spanish for, Welcome to Wal-Mart”?

    I t has been so long since I went into a voting both to vote for someone rather than against the other candidate that it is pathetic.

    The one thing Wright had right was that politicians will do what they need to do to get elected… and to get reelected.

    United States Posted by whattheheck on May 8, 2008 at 12:41 PM

    I might add that congress majors in trivia as well. What was the last time they passed any meaningful legislation dealing with domestic problems?

    Social Security?

    Medicare?

    US job losses?

    Health Care and Insurance?

    Dangerous imports?

    Inflation?

    Infrastucture?

    None of the above. They deal with those critical issues like former baseball stars and steroid use.

    United States Posted by whattheheck on May 8, 2008 at 2:57 PM

    U.S. Media Trivializes Campaign 2008

    Naaaah.  The candidates have trivialized themselves.

    I thought John Kerry was the least accomplished major party candidate in history in 2004, and damned if the Dims didn’t come up with their final three who were even less accomplished candidates in 2008.  Do you really think that simultaneously running as a war hero with faked credentials and an anti-war hero with a solid gold record of traitorous talk against your own country qualifies you to be president?

    Neither race, nor gender, nor the dirty tricks BO and Hill are playing on each other are really significant in this campaign.  The only important question is how socialistic the candidate is.  Hill and BO are equally socialistic and therefore we have a tight race.  Edwards matched them in socialistic philosophy, but Edwards was lacking in melanin on one hand and estrogen on the other hand and therefore he could not compete regardless of his rock-solid leftist credentials. 

    At some level, all Americans perceive that LBJ was a socialist, and that he produced disastrous results for the republic.  The most blatant example was the War on Poverty that cost $6 trillion, and the sole practical result was the substantial destruction of black family life in the United States.  Before LBJ, over 80% of black children lived in a home with two parents.  Now the figure is less than one in three.  Destruction of the family and “bourgeoise morality” is a principle of Marxist philosophy. 

    The American people learned a hard lesson from LBJ, and now the Dim candidate in every election has a losing margin exactly tied to how leftist he is: McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry.  The only two winning Dim candidates since LBJ were Carter and Clinton (Bill), and neither of them emphasized their socialist credentials. 

    Since BO has the most socialistic voting record in the entire US Senate, you can bet your ass he will finish down in McGovern territory in the final ballot.  Enjoy.

    United States Posted by scorp on May 10, 2008 at 12:34 PM

    Scorp,

    I hope you are right (Wright?) about Obama’s finish. Americans have very short memories and the media love him.

    Isn’t it interesting how little we hear about the McCains personal charitable and humanitarian work — from those who still think a government program is more effective?

    United States Posted by whattheheck on May 11, 2008 at 7:19 AM

    Scorp, you have some baggage which sets you off on a tangent. The story was about the shallow level of thoughtfulness and discussion which goes into our “elections”, not whether LBJ was a bad president, or a socialist. I have never understood why the term “socialist” gets spat out like a wad of snot by people. It’s certainly no worse a term than “Republican” and they have cause more death and heartache than any of the Socialists in this country. It’s like your swipe at Kerry, calling him a traitor, or attributing the quality of “traitorous” to his testimony about the war. He said the government lied about why we were there, which it did without a doubt. He said American soldiers and Marines were raping and murdering, which they were (No, not all of them, but enough if it was your daughter raped and murdered) These are not traitorous actions anymore than calling for impeachment of George Bush is treason. It’s part of the legal process we used to have in the Republic, back when it was a republic, back before the Fascists took over. Read some of Mussolini’s writings and compare them to the writings of the New American Century Cabal, George Bush or John McCain. Stronger family values, return religion to the schools, make the country strong, turn in your neighbors, attack preemptively especially if the target is weak… It is not treason to understand what happened to this nation and it is reasonable to note that the so-called “news” industry is infotainment at it’s worse. And in the end, with 7 out of 9 Justices, the Executive Branch and the Republicrats in charge of the government and the corporations and Republicrats in charge of the news, to say elections are trivial is to miss the point. Elections in America are not elections. They are money laundering schemes. That’s it.

    United States Posted by WillShirley on May 11, 2008 at 8:41 PM

    If anyone thinks the Wright/Obama 20-year connection is trivial…

    go to the Weekly Standard and read, “Jeremiah Wright’s ‘Trumpet’ ,” (his anti-white, anti-US magazine) which awarded Jeremiah Wright’s ‘Trumpet’ their Empowerment Award and Wright’s praise of Farrakhan as a 20th- and 21st-century “giant.”

    Do we want someone who has been listening to and reading this kind of propaganda for two decades in the White House?

    http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/082ktdyi.asp

    United States Posted by whattheheck on May 12, 2008 at 2:40 PM

    I have never understood why the term “socialist” gets spat out like a wad of snot by people.

    How about a wad of coagulated blood?  Well, let me try to explain it to you in words of one syllable, appropriate to your level of comprehension. 

    The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) killed some 40 million innocent people while establishing their socialist utopia, which collapsed from corruption and inefficiency. 

    Communist China starved some thirty million of their own people while establishing their version of socialism, and then killed more, including some of my relatives, in the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward. 

    There were other deaths at the hands of the KGB and Cuban socialists in South America, Africa, and SE Asia. 

    The total deaths of innocent people by socialists during the last century approached 100 million.

    The EUSSR, generally known as Social Democrats, is now undergoing demographic collapse as the native Europeans fail to reproduce themselves and are being supplanted by Islamic immigrants.  More than half of the children being born in the Netherlands are now Muslim, and other Western European countries are not far behind them. 

    Not only was John Kerry lying about his experiences in Vietnam, the whole of the Winter Soldier “investigation” was a dishonest , contrived political exercise, and some of the “witnesses” had never been to Vietnam.  Like you. 

    As George Orwell, said, only a member of the leftist intelligencia is stupid enough to believe stuff like that.

    United States Posted by scorp on May 12, 2008 at 8:38 PM

    Wow. If you glance to the right of the “post a comment” box you will note a rule set by this site: Please be respectful in your comments. I guess you are not able to contain your disrespect. This drift is not exactly on topic, but since you insulted me several times I feel I should at least try to state my views. To begin with, socialists and socialism is not exclusively the domain of the USSR. Neither is genocide. America started with an official policy of genocide. It was our national policy to kill every single man, woman and child in the Native American race. The soldiers were told to kill every man, woman and child and it numbered in the millions. So socialism is not about killing millions of people since we do it, the Nazis did it, the Pope did it and so forth.

    Your term “demographic collapse” led me to several articles on the concept, non of which refer to wads of coagulated blood, but which describe shifts in population around the world. I assume you are alarmed at the Netherlands shifting to a Muslim country, if it actually should do that. Does this mean you dislike that faith? Kinda bigoted to dislike a particular religion in order to dislike specific people.

    “As George Orwell, said, only a member of the leftist intelligencia is stupid enough to believe stuff like that.”
    Wow, again, but wrong. I am neither a socialist, fascist, Republican or Democrat.  I think a nation should not go to war based on lies, like the Viet Nam Gulf of Tonkin incident. I think we should have let the Japanese surrender to the Soviets rather than vaporize two cities not only filled with sleeping women and children, but the bullseye was a hospital with several British and American POWs. And we lied about that, too.

    “Not only was John Kerry lying about his experiences in Vietnam, the whole of the Winter Soldier “investigation” was a dishonest , contrived political exercise, and some of the “witnesses” had never been to Vietnam.  Like you. “
    Wow, again. With no research and no questions you jump in with the assumption that I never went to Viet Nam. You have no idea how old I am or what my life has been like, but you “know” I did not go to Viet Nam. Interesting. Did you know that people who have been to war always lie about what happened there? It’s true. Their brain cannot face the reality of legal mass murder, which is after all what war is.  And so what if Kerry is a liar? So is Hillary, Bill, John, Obama, Condi and all the rest of the people who rule this country. Liars all of them, it’s what politicians do for a living! Like all the pundits and politicos who call America a “democracy”. Nonsense! Go to the Library of Congress and download a copy of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, two sets of documents which legally define the nature and structure of this nation. Now do a word search for “democracy”. It ain’t there because we are not living in one. We live in a Republic, which is a country ruled by a small group of people selected by a small group of people to make rules which apply to the rest of the people.
    So, Scorp(scorpio, maybe?), I am not left nor right, neither stupid nor genius. I think the so-called debates are sad and not very funny. but they are the best we can do as our nation dissolves into fascism. And I think you should get some anger management therapy and try to write without insulting people. Just my take on things. Go in peace.

    United States Posted by WillShirley on May 13, 2008 at 8:41 AM

    Hello all above - agreeing with the article all and all and in comments with “whattheheck’s” second post listing several of the things which are daily effecting people that the media and our leaders continue to ignore.

    Also agreeing with “WillShirley” AND specifically applauding the point that comments are to be respectful and on topic.

    There’s enough paradoxical humor in the situation the U.S. and the world finds itself in without thinking we’re funny with name calling and innuendos.

    Regardless of past votes, connections, contacts, positions,etc ---
    Shouldn’t every U.S. citizen who plans to vote have been told by the media what every possible candidate stands for/against, what their plans are for tackling the issues facing people daily?

    When will that happen?

    United States Posted by HeyOK on May 19, 2008 at 9:10 AM
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