FREE SPEECH FOR LIARS ONLY, AND SMUT REIGNS ON SIRIUS RADIO

As promised, I said I would post (on Saturdays) excerpts from my favorite articles that week. .... Without further ado, read on:

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"Wikileaks Exposes America's Dirty Laundry, While Media Clowns Like Glenn Beck Are off in Fantasy Land" by Lawrence Davidson, November 30, 2010
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Excerpt:

"Editor’s Note: Running parallel over the last few months have been the endeavors of two disparate individuals, Fox News host Glenn Beck and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the former espousing a pleasant faux reality for Americans and the latter confronting them with unpleasant truths.
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Not surprisingly, Beck appears to have had the better of the exchange with Americans rallying to the polls to elect a right-wing Republican majority in the House of Representatives and Assange coming under a withering assault for supposedly endangering U.S. security, as Lawrence Davidson argues in this essay:

For those who pay attention to the battle of ideas that constantly goes on in the United States, two people presently have taken center stage for diametrically opposite reasons: Glenn Beck and Julian Assange.

The first is a man whose expertise is in the creation of alternate realities by playing fast and loose with the facts. This sort of enterprise has a long and sordid history to it, and while this fellow is on the rabid right, the tradition has its historical representatives across the political spectrum.

There is never any lack of an audience for such promoters of alternate realities. Usually the size of the audience can be correlated to an economic downturn, a defeat in war, or a popular consensus about government incompetency.

The second man is a champion of the free flow of information. He believes that the only way citizens will avoid being swept into alternate realities, and victimized by the resulting ill-conceived government actions, is to have full knowledge of what policies are being pursued and their real consequences.

Whether most people actually want to know these details is debatable, but this fellow is adamant that they should be available to anyone who cares to look. Now we come to the question of how these two men are perceived by the U.S. government and the "free" people of the United States. Glenn Beck is an undereducated radio and TV personality turned political pundit. He was born in 1964 and has only a high school education. By his own admission, Beck spent at least15 of his early adult years as an alcoholic and drug addict.

Beck became suicidal in the mid-1990s and fantasized about imitating the manner of death chosen by the singer Kurt Cobain. He was pulled back from the brink with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Fifteen years is a long time to baste a young adult’s brain in mind-altering substances, and I will leave it to the reader to decide if that history qualifies such a brain for political preaching. Yet, it is as a political wise man that millions of Americans now regard Glenn Beck. Sporting a style of aggressive jargon that makes him a sure candidate for Eric Hoffer’s "man of words with a grievance," Beck throws out accusations and suppositions which, with uncanny regularity, turn out to be wrong. However, that does not matter, for his listeners seem never to doubt him and so there is little motivation for Beck to doubt himself.

Increasingly popular, his growing number of listeners accepts him as a defender of the U.S. Constitution and traditional American values. And who are the threats that require this stalwart defender? Progressives and liberals, socialists and secularists all those who would destroy that mythical ideal of America that exists as an alternate reality in the minds of Beck and his followers.

Beck characterizes all such enemies as members of "Crime Inc." There is a strong naive simplicity in what Beck preaches. He espouses balanced budgets because "debt creates unhealthy relationships." Somehow Glenn Beck can hold mortgages and still remain on good terms with his wife and kids, but it seems to him sinful that the government sells more Treasury bills than he feels is necessary. The government should be reduced to a minimum.

As to the country’s needy, that can be taken care of by private charity. If there is indeed such a thing as man-made global warming, that can be dealt with by the voluntary "greening" of personal homes.
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What we have here is the projection of small town ways to a country of approximately 350 million.

There have been times when Beck has confessed that he is not a political person but rather an "entertainer." Yet his denunciation of ubiquitous conspiracies, particularly of a leftist kind, and his regularly articulated rhetorical question -- "What’s the difference between a communist or socialist and a progressive....? One requires a gun and the other eats away slowly" -- is clearly not just show biz.

And, what are we to make of the entertainment value of his repeated proclamation that Americans are in a battle to defend the "eternal principles of God" which makes "God the answer" to all our problems?

No, whether Beck was originally playing at "paleo-conservatism" or not, he is now so adapted to his role that what you see is what is there. The actor has been transformed into the character he plays. It is doubtful whether Glenn Beck has ever put forth a well thought-out, fact-checked, position in his life. Yet such a failing has not prevented him from obtaining the backing of the powerful Fox Broadcasting Company.

Beck and Fox are a very good fit. Both are part of a radical right which has now made itself appear acceptably all-American by redefining anything to the left of their positions as neo-socialist. And, they have drawn to themselves the millions of folks who are naive and simple conservatives living in a faux reality that defines the welfare state as communism and President Obama as a Muslim agent seeking to impose Sharia law on places like Oklahoma.

For such folks Beck’s nonsense somehow confirms all their hopes and fears. In their millions they are moved, weekly, to agree with whatever it is that they think he is saying. The U.S. government has made no objection to the Fox-Beck propaganda show. Both are, of course, protected by the First Amendment. And, it is probably the case that at least some of the elements of elected government, for instance the Republican Party’s right-wing majority and the Blue Dog Democrats, are in agreement with all or part of Beck’s message.

The rest of the government, the liberal Democrats, for instance, seem frustrated and confused. They do not know how to respond to someone like Beck and so they hope that he will, in the end, prove a temporary phenomenon.

Who is Julian Assange?

Julian Assange, our second personality, is an Australian-born Internet expert. Born in 1971, he attended the University of Melbourne where he studied physics, mathematics and philosophy. However, he did not stay to complete a degree.

He made an early career as a computer programmer and is the author of both free and commercial pieces of software. A strong anarchistic strain runs through Assange’s early adult period. He was a member of a number of relatively benign hacker organizations and the ideal of information transparency seems to have been a strong driving force in his life from early on.

All of which eventually led him to found WikiLeaks in 2006. It is Assange’s contention that government secrecy almost always harms people and denies them the ability to make rational decisions. The press has the responsibility to fight against censorship but has been seduced into cooperating with the system it ought to be policing.

"How is it," Assange asks, "that a team of five people has managed to release to the public more suppressed information...than the rest of the world press combined? It’s disgraceful." There are those who see Assange as an "Internet freedom fighter," and Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame has asserted that Assange "is serving [American] democracy and serving the rule of law precisely by challenging the secrecy regulations, which are not laws in most cases, in this country.""

read the rest at: http://www.alternet.org/media/149039/wikileaks_exposes_america's_dirty_laundry,_while_media_clowns_like_glenn_beck_are_off_in_fantasy_land_/?page=3

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FOR REFERENCE: WATCH AMY GOODMAN'S DECEMBER 3RD INTERVIEW:
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My second favorite article:
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"Sirius Radio: The Refuge for Frothing Racist, Homophobic Right Wingers Like Dr. Laura, by Tana Ganeva, December 4, 2010"
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Excerpt:
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"Dr. Laura left broadcast radio after screaming the n-word at a black woman. She'll soon join a host of homophobic, sexist, racist right-wingers on Sirius.
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"Last August, after an illustrious, decades -long career calling women whores, screaming about couples who "schack up," and attacking gays. Dr. Laura Schlessinger had to quit her radio show after hurling the n-word, 11 times, at an African-American caller. On larry King Live, Schlessinger announced that she would not let her First Amendment right to million-dollar paychecks and thousands of listeners be trampled by critics calling her out as a racist.
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But thanks to Sirius radio, the flailing satellite company where Howard Stern has plied his craft (grotesque sexism) for five years, Schlessinger's hiatus from the airwaves will last exactly three days; that's the gap of time between when her non-renewed contract with her broadcast station runs out and her new gig with Sirius - announced this week - begins. Obviously she couldn't be happier, gushing "I can't wait to preach, teach and nag about morals, values, ethics and principles ... My brain is buzzing with new ideas for my program's content, direction and expansion, including guest interviews with people who intrigue and inspire me. I couldn't be more giggly if you tickled me!"
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Putting that image aside for a second, how did Schlessinger's fortunes turn around so quickly? According to the shock jock, the day after she announced her retirement the head of Sirius called to say "Come on over here, the water's fine." She claims she met with a crew of Sirius execs two months later. "I sat there and I listened to these men appreciate what I had done my entire career, appreciate my guts in never giving up, appreciate the value I offer on the air, and wanting to support me. That was it. It took me two seconds. I said, 'I'm on board.'"
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They weren't kidding about the water. When her show premieres Jan. 3, Schlessinger will be joining a spate of racist, homophobic right-wingers who make Glenn Beck look good (including Glenn Beck, whose show Sirius runs in syndicate).
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As part of its political programming, the satellite broadcaster offers a liberal station and a conservative one: Sirius Left and the infuriatingly named Sirius Patriot. An outgrowth of the now defunct satellite station America Right, Sirius Patriot boasts the "true voices of conservatism."

One true voice of conservatism on the station is Mike Church, who calls himself "the Dude." Church once lamented the political correctness that prevents him from expressing himself on race, saying on his show that when it comes to race issues, "regardless of ... what you may want to say, you always have to temper it with what is still politically acceptable speech."

If Church's output represents a capitulation to propriety, his uncensored views towards minorities seem like they would involve sheets. The Dude's schtick is putting out vilely offensive (and unfunny) "parody" songs, mostly starring undocumented immigrants. One pits a Mexican namedManuel against Bubba,defender of White American work ethic, in a cleaning contest. The chorus actually goes, "The wetbacks are in Georgia and they're looking for green cards. If you win we'll deport his ass back to Mexico... But if you lose we'll all speak Espanol!" (In case you're wondering, Bubba comes out on top, while Manuel "bowed his head, knowing that he'd been beat, and he lay his welfare money on the ground at Bubba's feet....")

In a tribute to the Minute Men, set to CCR's "Lookin' Out My Back Door," we get, "Just got in from Illinois, cocked my shotgun Oh Boy, got to stop these illegal aliens!/ ... Pretty soon I'm singing ... Shoot, Shoot, Shoot wetbacks at the border!" In "We're Fucking Up America," Church and the gang fret that some (very generous) liberals will "fill our beds with lesbos and gays!"

Church is joined on Sirius Patriot by Andrew Wilcow, who Glenn Greenwald once singled out, among some serious competition, as a symbol of the Right's decline. Greenwald made the choice after Wilcow called Perez Hilton a "vile sodomite." "Perez Hilton, who I am now terming a vile sodomite ...yeah, Perez, you’re a vile sodomite – doesn’t that word have a ring to it – sodomite -- and vile – vile sodomite" chanted Wilcow while subbing for Mark Levin (on a different station).

Wilcow has also expressed his disapproval of gays and lesbians by implying that Chris Dodd's prostate cancer was the result of sex with Barney Frank. Yeah.

And what's a conservative lineup without a religious right elder who's fought for the disenfranchisement of women and gays since the '70s? That slot is filled by Gary Bauer, who hosts a show with Tom Rose, former publisher and CEO of theJerusalem Post. Also on the roster are Cam and Company from NRA News, Rusty Humphries and Mark Levin.

What does Sirius have to gain from playing to the right-wing's basest instincts with these frothing screamers who skate perilously close to the line of hate speech? Or of plucking up a shock jock who was hounded off the airwaves for yelling the n-word at a black woman? A lot -- and almost nothing to lose.

The station has been in deep financial shit for years. Like all satellite radio, Sirius had the misfortune of coming up with paid radio content right before most radio became free online, and people became fused to their iPods. Struggling under a $3.2 billion debt, the company barely avoided bankruptcy in early 2009. Later that year it gave investors another fright by losing 2 percent of its subscribers (it only had growth in subscribers before that), and in August of 2010 year its stock hit its lowest low, at $0.94."

read the rest at: http://www.alternet.org/media/149071/sirius_radio:_the_refuge_for_frothing_racist,_homophobic_right-wingers_like_dr._laura/?page=entire

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Another favorite:
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"HERE COME HOMELAND SECURITY INTERNET POLICE, AND THEY'RE ALREADY SHUTTING DOWN WEB SITES THEY DON'T LIKE," BY JULIANNE ESCOBEDO SHEPHERD, December 3, 2010