Since the latest edition of Perpetual Primary was hosted by MSNBC and the Jeff Bezos Gazette, and since the only way that cable-free households could watch it was by downloading the NBC app, and since the NBC app kept freezing up, losing audio or crashing completely on my cheap smartphone, I had to resort to the New York Times live blog to get their elite take on the festivities.
It was weird. because when the Times reporters were carping about Tulsi Gabbard's refreshingly blunt attack on the Democratic Party and thrilling over NBC-WaPo's orchestrated smear of Gabbard through the willing, shrilling mouth of Kamala Harris, this exchange had not yet appeared on my tiny screen. It was a real spoiler from the Times, who never questioned the whopper that Gabbard had spent Obama's entire second term trashing him on Fox News rather than serving in Congress. And when the exchange finally did appear on my screen a minute or two later, the Times live-blog had already moved on to inserting its own video of a Deval Patrick campaign event in order to give private equity's stalking horse equal time.
I don't know whether the Times reporters pimping for Patrick did so to avoid covering one of the few times that Bernie Sanders was allowed to speak, but it wouldn't surprise if they had. I quickly logged off the Times's Deval Patrick gush-fest and turned back to my tiny little sputtering screen.
The best part of the consumer experience for me was Amy Klobuchar's mouth moving and no sound coming out - until the part where she actually said that when she's president, nobody is getting a free car. A free car apparently is her code for guaranteed health care. And then they went to commercial break for another annoying December to Remember Lexus commercial for those willing to work hard, play by the rules and go high when "they" go low.
And that brought back so many unpleasant memories of the earlier part of my wasted day, when I'd watched hours of impeachment hearings, or what the media outlandishly calls The Smoking Gun Episode..Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the E.U., came right out and said that US military aid to puppet state Ukraine was predicated entirely upon Ukraine's president going on live TV and announcing he was digging up dirt on the Bidens and Russiagate. No matter that Trump had already boastfully admitted to this exercise in corrupt diplomacy a couple of months ago on live TV.
For some reason, NBC streamed its impeachment coverage on YouTube, graciously allowing me to watch it on live TV without having to download their horrible app. NBC also treated me to endless loops of Donald Trump bellowing "I want nothing! I want nothing! I want nothing!" as he read directly from notes saying "I want nothing! I want nothing! I want nothing!" in those large block letters so eerily reminding me the threatening letters we used to get at my newspaper from one particular person well-known to the authorities. Those letters were also big on frenzied repetitions, such as "You will die! You will die! You will die!"
Fast forward again to my less than satisfying NBC app of a debate consumer experience later in the day. Remember when you were a kid. and how much fun it was to turn off the TV sound and make up your own dialogue for the characters on the screen, or else put on "Nowhere Man" when Nixon was talking? Well, maybe you don't because you didn't and I was just this weird kid - okay, young adult - having another one of my oddball moments.
But last night when Mayor Pete's face froze right in the middle of a sneer, I imagined him saying "You'll get nothing. You'll get nothing. YOU'LL GET NOTHING! because all I care about is reaching across the aisle and getting STUFF done even if it kills you!"
And when the camera panned to Rachel Maddow and the screen got so fun-house loopy that even her wonkish outsize eyeglasses couldn't sharpen her image for me, I pretty much assumed that all her questions consisted of a noun, a verb, and Russia.
Andrea Mitchell, a/k/a Mrs. Alan "Ayn Rand" Greenspan, did not seem to get a whole lot of airtime, but I assume that there was at least one "but how you gonna pay for that?" in her repertoire.
In the spurts of actual dialogue among the ten candidates that did escape from my phone in tinny little soundbites, I heard a lot of agreement and very little argument, signalling that at least half the candidates on the stage are simply vying for vice president or cabinet positions. Absent the bullying of Tulsi Gabbard, it was an exercise in mutual back-scratching.
Elections, like everything else in Neoliberalandia, are presented to us as pure, for-profit entertainment, at the lowest possible cost to the oligarchs and at the highest possible social cost to us, the citizen-consumers.The consolidated media-political complex controls both the information and the delivery of the information. Both the information and the delivery of the information have become so distorted and so corrupted that the "free" commercialized cheap applications they offer those who are unwilling and/or unable to pay high cable prices to access a simulacrum of democracy are an epic, abject failure. The dialogue intended to spurt straight from the belly of the corporate media beast into our living rooms in one smooth stream of projectile vomitus got stuck right in their own craws last night. They effectively choked on the distorted byproducts of their own gluttony.
They got nothing, they got nothing, they got nothing from their message of "You'll get nothing because you are nothing. So vote for me!"
You might think that if the medium crashes, the messages of the politicians can't get out to the public, and then we all lose as a result.
But I beg to differ. I'll take a frozen grimace and a multitude of silently flapping gums over empty platitudes any time. Their techno-enhanced silences and freeze-ups on the debate stage spoke volumes of unintended truth. They have nothing, they offer nothing, and they know that we know that it's all a big nothing-burger.
It's long past time, anyway, that we mute their distorted volume-product and create our own democratic dialogue.
11 comments:
Aloha Karen, last time I mentioned the fact that the “ Gray Lady and the DNC, will not only ignore, but also lambast Senator Gabbard. As it turns out they are afraid that boobus Americus maybe waking up. I read somewhere a third party candidate could poll as much as thirty percent in the next election, due to the dissatisfaction of the citizens of the republic in the current system. My guess is Jeff and his ilk at NBC, are getting a bit nervous. “Imua”.
Here are three pertinent articles to complement Karen’s astute analysis:
Are Dems Barking Up The Wrong Tree On Impeachment?
David Swanson says there are plenty of reasons for impeaching Trump, but the Democrats' Ukrainegate case is weak and will not galvanize the nation or challenge the Senate to convict.
https://therealnews.com/stories/are-dems-barking-up-wrong-tree-impeachment
November 22, 2019
When Obama Lectures the Left —
Some of the hope and change that Barack Obama inspired is evident in the candidates Democrats are choosing from.
Seeing him question it is to see him chip away at his own legacy.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/obama-democrats-left-criticism-915350/
November 20, 2019 ~ by Jamil Smith
Pity the sad legacy of Barack Obama —
Our hope and change candidate fell short time and time again.
Obama cheerleaders who refused to make him accountable bear some responsibility.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/barack-obama-legacy-presidency
9 Jan 2017 ~ by Cornel West
The viewership for this last debate was low, according to people who follow the public's interests, even though the stakes will be enormously high in the next election. Which party, if any, will present a leader who is most likely to chose life instead of nuclear war or sure extinction by CO2?
Low interest could be due in part to the absurdity of so many debaters willing to confront each other under MSM rules that prefer to play 'gotcha' instead of presenting a forum to explore ideas and examine past performance. In short, waste of time.
Please don't throw bricks if I wonder whether billionaire Michael Bloomberg deserves to be welcomed into the Democratic pack. He can campaign widely and effectively on his own dime, thus avoiding the usual indebtedness incurred by politicians taking money from the rich and the corporations. He is smart, an engineer who is also a successful businessman. He did not inherit his wealth; he sold a valued product to the business world. He has experience running big operations, like his company and the nation's largest city. I would expect a high degree of competence from his administration.
He has the skill and capacity for the job, but what about his political philosophy? Would he allow more money to trickle down from the establishment? Which way is he going on the road to war against Russia or China. Would he ease up on the war against terrorism? He's belatedly asked for pardon for stop and frisk; would he do better next time on surveillance and the use of police power? After looking at the rest of the field I wonder whether I should bet on an experienced, rich and therefore independent politician who might be capable of becoming another Solomon? Or should we put our hopes in one of the little Davids now in the running?
"Obama cheerleaders who refused to make him accountable bear some responsibility."
It was too often those cheerleaders who obstructed Obama in the first place. For exmample, it was Hillary and her DNC team who gave us the wars of Obama, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, Honduras, Venezuela and South Sudan, and would not wind down Afghanistan or Iraq.
It isn't Obama who should be accountable, it is the cheerleaders themselves. It is an important distinction, because they are still there and still doing it, now calling it a need for moderation and centrists.
Jay,
I'd say look at what little David did, and don't be deluded by a candidate's claim of financial independence as reason for support. Look what happened last time.
And look again at what we do have:
Bernie Sanders Is Changing Progressive Politics —
In an exclusive interview, the senator talks about how the movement he helped foster is now so much bigger than just him.
https://www.thenation.com/podcast/bernie-sanders-election-2020/
Nov. 19, 2019 ~ by John Nichols
@ Erik
True, little David prevailed; but that was 3,000 years ago, thanks to one lucky shot. Since then it's been latter-day Goliaths in the winner's circle all the way down to today.
Karen did a piece on Bloomberg a few essays back. He does have big negatives, but there are positives. They guy is talented: he's educated as an engineer and MBA. He speaks Spanish. He's a helicopter pilot. He's done a great deal to advance the environmental cause. He's given his alma mater more than a billion dollars for medical causes. Read all about it in Wikipedia. I don't see that much accomplishment by all the other Democratic candidates combined. And they all come with serious negatives too.
Thanks to Bloomberg's brains and money, he's dangerous to the establishment he reached on his own. He has the POTENTIAL to be another FDR, a rich man saving the day for capitalism by twisting the arms of his fellow rich to provide real help to the lower classes before the lid comes off. At his age (only 6 months younger than Bernie) in his last big job, legacy must loom large in his calculations.
Let's see where he's at after intentionally skipping the early primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Afterwards he intends to campaign actively in the primaries of big swing states.
His website still says nothing about repairing the infrastructure, M4A or foreign policy, to include the wars. For most of us, those are make-or-break issues. Soon he will be smoked out about jobs, Medicare and what to do with the Pentagon.
https://www.mikebloomberg.com/
With the focus on impeaching Trump, Trump's daily outrages, and the many ways the Democratic party is disappointing, I periodically try to find out what is happening to the Obama presidential papers.
Recall, the plan is to digitize them and have them online, but not to use his planned new museum/center in Chicago as a presidential library. There is very little information available online. It seems the truckloads of materials are stored in the former Plunkett furniture store in the village of Hoffman Estates, northwest of Chicago. An online picture shows it as fairly typical mall furniture store, not at all a windowless warehouse.
Questions quickly come to mind. What is the security like, has it been retrofitted with state of the art fire protection? The Obama Foundation web site says that they are funding the digitization of 30 million records, but no time table. How will digitizing costs compete with construction costs in Foundation budgeting? As a back of the envelope calculation, if they could process as many as 10,000 records per day (a number I just made up, but which seems like a lot), it would take at least 10 working years!
By my reading, the presidential records will end up split across several National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) facilities: (1) The digital records online, presumably in some cloud that NARA contracts for; (2) the unclassified hard copy at a NARA storage facility near Kansas City; and (3) the classified hard copy at NARA storage in Washington, DC.
As a pessimist and skeptic, I see a great deal that could go wrong with this, especially given Trump's virulent hatred of all things Obama.
Democrats Don’t Need Mike Bloomberg’s Kinder, Gentler Plutocracy —
If the Democrats trade a faux billionaire for a legit billionaire, then they haven’t learned much from the last four years.
https://www.thenation.com/article/bloombergs-billionaire-democratic-plutocrat/
November 25, 2019 ~ by John Nichols
Sanders campaign charges Bloomberg 2020 run "is against Bernie, not Trump” —
"Multi-billionaires like Michael Bloomberg are not going to get very far in this election," Sanders said Sunday.
https://www.salon.com/2019/11/26/sanders-campaign-charges-bloomberg-2020-run-is-against-bernie-not-trump_partner/
November 26, 2019 ~ by Eoin Higgins
Michael Bloomberg’s Right-Wing Views on Foreign Policy Make Him a Perfect Candidate for the Republican Nomination —
https://theintercept.com/2019/11/25/michael-bloombergs-right-wing-views-on-foreign-policy-make-him-a-perfect-candidate-for-the-republican-nomination/
November 25, 2019 ~ by Mehdi Hasan
Bloomberg’s Scandals Ignored or Underplayed by Press Cheerleaders —
https://fair.org/home/bloombergs-scandals-ignored-or-underplayed-by-press-cheerleaders/
November 25, 2019 ~ by Ari Paul
While we're reviewing the merits of Primary Team Democrats, Trump's ratings in the polls are improving, thanks to the impeachment circus. The impeachment circus is hurting the Democrats' primary circus. As a result, the impeachment circus will be aborted. There will be no impeachment trial in the Senate.
The House Democrats have begun to shift to the idea of only censuring Trump, which is an inconsequential slap on the wrists. In other words, the impeachers are running for the exits.
Moon of Alabama (Nov 26 article) lists the negatives Democrats will suffer if they dare hand off the impeachment process to Senate Republicans. MoA presents an I-told-you-so argument on why a Ukraine-based impeachment was always a bad idea.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/
And if the Democrats do force impeachment on the Senate, the trial, managed by the Republicans, would be converted into a trial against the Democrats. Imagine Biden being called as a witness to explain Hunter's good fortune in the Ukraine.
Either way, impeachment or censure, Trump has won big, now wins big, and will win big. But I'm sure the NY Times will, for the record, come to the Democrats' rescue by putting a better light than MoA on the whole business.
If you were a gambler, would you put your bet on Trump the Swamp Drainer or the best the DNC fishes up from its well-stocked pond of good, bad and ugly specimens to oppose him in 2020?
Post a Comment