The Quiet Revolution
The HuffPo's Jason Linkins summarizes just who gives Snuffleupagus his marching orders:
The blogosphere has been up on this from jump street. On Tuesday, Democratic Underground was among the first to note that Stephanopoulos was "Taking Notes From Sean Hannity for Tomorrow Night's Debates":Hannity asked George what kinds of questions they'll be asking at the debate tomorrow and they discussed a few things. When Hannity asked about the first question below about Ayers and whether George had plans to ask such a question, George replied, "Well, I'm taking notes now Sean." It did actually sound like he was pausing to take notes. And Hannity continued to feed him more:
1) Ask Obama about his relationship with Ayers and WeatherUnderground and Axelrod's comments, "They're friendly"
2) Ask Obama why he attended the Million Man March
Whether or not they had any advance notice of what was to transpire I have little doubt that the bigwigs in Disney's corporate offices were high-fiving each other last night (and probably in the corporate suites of Viacom, General Electric, Time-Warner, and, of course, NewsCorp). While Charlie and Stephy may have aimed most of their fire at Obama the result remains: St. John McCain was the big winner. Glennzilla notes:
National Review's Mark Hemingway excitedly declared that the winner was "McCain by a landslide." Commentary's John Podhoretz said: "Good Lord. Charlie Gibson Turns Into Larry Kudlow." Hemingway quoted one of his readers: "What's up with Charlie Gibson tonight? Especially on capital gains. He sounds downright conservative." Separately, Hemingway celebrated: "Halle-frickin'-lujah. Someone in the mainstream media finally mentions the William Ayers connection," praised Gibson for his questions about Jeremiah Wright, and the praised Gibson again for his questions to Obama about Bosnia sniper fire.[...]
Notably, Charlie Gibson also hosted a GOP and a Democratic primary debate back in January and received rave reviews then, too . . . from the Right. The Far Right site NewsBusters heaped praised on Gibson back then for what they deemed his fairness and decency in questioning GOP candidates. So, too, did National Review's Mark Hemingway ("The Sober, Intellectual Tone of moderator Charlie Gibson and this whole ABC news production so far is very welcome"). The general consensus among Republicans in January was that Gibson did a superb job of moderating their debate, too.
Denunciations of the "Liberal Media" now ring more hollow than ever.
And a disgusted Michael Grunwald of Time writes:
Obama's memoir dripped with contempt for modern gotcha politics, for a campaign culture obsessed with substantively irrelevant but supposedly symbolic gaffes like John Kerry ordering Swiss cheese or Al Gore sighing or George H.W. Bush checking his watch or Michael Dukakis looking dorky in a tank. "What's troubling is the gap between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics—the ease with which we are distracted by the petty and trivial," he wrote.
The "petty and trivial" is precisely what Disney/ABC wants.
I know I harp on this constantly - and I'll continue to do so - but this is the behavior we'll be seeing from the "news" media straight through to November. The corporations that control the media (and so much else) simply can't allow for the slightest possibility that the government be composed of citizens who don't bow and scrape before them.
It's a truism that the first thing done in any revolution is to seize the means of communications. This thirty-year quiet revolution - abetted by the supposed guarantors of our rights and privileges - by a corporate oligarchy has accomplished that without a shot being fired.
Pathetic.
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