Gotta say, it amuses me more than a little that by dint of sheer, year-after-year brute repetition of some plainly visible and deeply uncomfortable truths about our media and our politics, I have slowly become a minor, off-the-record correspondent with a number of media personages who dare not associate with me in public for fear of damage to their career.
Back in the Olden Days -- the pre-Twitter, pre-YouTube days -- when I began blogging I was an executive with the City of Chicago. I was very good at my job and I believe the people of Chicago got more that their money's worth from my labor. And at the end of each long day, I would head back to castle driftglass, catch up on the day's news, and blog late into the night under my pseudonym.
For those of you who weren't there or aware at the time, the environment back in those Olden Days was such that most popular country music group in the world had their careers all but snuffed out overnight for saying twelve words about George W. Bush. Of course, both the Right and the Beltway media have spent an enormous amount of time and money over the last decade pretending that the Age of Bush never happened, but take it from someone who was there at the time and is not in danger of being fired for telling the truth -- until the Republican party nominated and elected Donald Trump, Dubya was the undisputed Worst President in History:
I never ran a fundraiser when I worked at the city because my salary (plus my part-time teaching gig at Columbia College) was sufficient to my needs and because I had to sign an ethics statement every six months disclosing every nickle I got from any source other than the city. And since I was never more than a couple of phone calls away from being fired if anyone caught wind of my nocturnal blogging activities, discretion seemed the better part of valor.
So in principle, I understand the pressure to stay under the radar.
As I have had to patiently explain to countless younger colleagues and college students over the years. workplaces are not democracies. Completely unreasonable demands from asshole bosses are de rigueur and unless you're sacked by someone stupid enough to stand at the door, arms akimbo, laughing and shouting in front of witnesses, "Yes! That's right! I fired you because you're black!" (or for any other cause prohibited under Title VII) you can be fired at any time for any reason or no reason at all.
And if you expect thanks, well...
But here's the difference. During all the years I have been writing about the plainly visible and deeply uncomfortable truths about our media and our politics I was never been a member of any institution that boasts that it exists to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Never had a byline in any publication that proclaims "Democracy Dies In Darkness" from its masthead or uses the First Amendment as its sword and shield and claims "Informing The Public" as its mandate.
I'm just some goof from the middle of corn country with a blog and a podcast I made myself, who writes his own copy, does his own research, doodles up his own graphics who lives by his tip jar.
I have no special insider contacts or secret back-channels and I definitely do not have the institutional firepower to get anyone of any importance to return my phone-calls. And yet, looking over the thousands and thousands of posts that have piled up in my archives over these these past fourteen-going-on-fifteen years I can say with not-so-quiet pride the Liberals like me have been a damn sight more right more often about what has gone drastically wrong in our country, and why, and who it to blame than anyone else.
We have certainly more consistently right about the Right than the entire Beltway media combined.
And yet even as we stand here in of depths of constitutional calamity -- even as we bear witness to the catastrophe that we Liberals have been warning for decades would come for us if the Party of Bigots and Imbeciles and their Both Siderist enablers were not confronted and defeated -- the corporate media still hangs a sword of Damocles over the Fourth Estate.
Still promises professional retribution should anyone dares to speak plain and simple truth that the Left has been right about the Right all along.
But who knows? In another 15 years my secret media friends and "Liberal" allies may be able to shake my hand in broad daylight.
Annual Birthday Fundraiser is Still Fully Operational!
4 comments:
Just saw the news - that 0 House Republicans voted for the impeachment inquiry. While not shocking, I was still disappointed.
This tells me that despite everything, the House Republican leadership has whipped their caucus and gone all in. They are betting everything on this. They are betting that they have come far enough in consolidating federal and statehouse power, gerrymandered the districts and precincts enough, disenfranchised enough, intimidated, threatened, jailed and convicted enough, voting-machined enough, Citizens United enough, and Cambridge Analytica'd enough that we won't have enough juice to stop them. We won't be able to take the Senate, take the White House and keep the House. . . or the Statehouses.
I think, from their perspective, they just need to get through this next election - if they can re-elect this freakshow of an Administration and keep the Senate for another cycle, they will have at least 6, likely 7 of the seats on the Supreme Court for the next 10-15 years. At that point - by which I mean next year - they won't ever have to worry about competitive elections again.
Of course, then we will only have 8 years left, or less, to solve the climate crisis.
Yours, in solidarity from the arctic socialist hellscape.
'Liberals like me have been a damn sight more right more often about what has gone drastically wrong in our country, and why, and who it to blame than anyone else.'
not about right or wrong, not how good or pure or patriotic. not about anything else than not riling up a bunch of deep pockets while spreading just enough swill on the hooples to keep the party going.
bernie's one true super power is focus...because the ultimate answer to 'whaddabouts' is what are the ultimate goals and it's always about money.
money is power, power is money and that's how we keep score. and if you score more you win.
I think Bernie Sanders could offer some pile on; Even Warren is being written about as being something they need to chain to the wall of the torture dungeon for eternity.
For if they had to compete and compete on ideas, issues for everyone. Well, the superior being has insecurities and it would not be fair or something.
To categorize, the same people who deny climate change and it's dangers are the same who are first in line at the bon fire to toss their science books into the flames.
Supposedly leaving everyone with pray and in God's hands. The same God that allows Satan free rein to bend your free will.
How do you get a majority on a supreme court of the United States to rule money is speech. Corporations are people when the Constitution is laying in front of them?
Purchasing politicians to place the train monkey judges in place. Owning the "news" network and having say if you can work in the entire industry at all if you disobey the corporate rule.
Liberty Valance showed the gun was mightier than the Pen momentarily. But that was a movie.
This country fought a civil war over riddance of slavery. It went through a high tide of labor rights fights.
Only to sit back and give away the advances made. Not by one person but te masses of people.
I watched a SCOTUS rule and chose a president. I watched a Grongress in representation of the people let NIXON walk away from prison.
What I ask now, Can the children of prior generations continue to bow and offer all their belongings to Pharaoh? Is building their pyramids be fulfillment enough in life, something to keep occupied with until returning to dust.?
Does greed and selfishness win?
How does so may people get the notion that no bills will come to the floor of the sEnate because McConnell says, "he is the gtim Reaper" and , "He will not bring anything tot he floor unless Trump says he wants it and will sign it".
Fact is, ever senate republican gives McConnell the grim reaper title and every big donor who owns those republicans along with the willing owners of the media networks to convince enough. But we here it is all McConnell.
Well, this is what we are teaching our children. So, if we fail to fix this, they will learn from our example and sell us to be rendered for cat food.
Cause that's what we are doing to them, on so many different fronts. Can't say as I will blame them...
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