Bill Moyers made a very cogent speech recently on the Wright-Obama controversy, that controversy so useful to the Clinton campaign and the mass media. While Moyer's speech does not provide us with political analysis in the usual sense, it says something very perceptive about America, race relations, and the shallowness of our mental thought processes, and how the appetite of mass media for drama and "content" to fill 24-hour-a-day programming has debased politics. Everything is boiled down to simplified, context-less sound bites which reinforce stereotypes and the preferred American narrative that (white) America tells itself, thus preventing any real conversation about differences or disagreements that might lead to resolution of conflicts.
Moyer also reminds us of another of our past disagreements, Vietnam, and how a wise observer, when asked who was really telling the truth about that war, said "they all are," meaning that every individual saw the war through their own prism. How the Wright controversy has played out, like a strobe light, has revealed more about America than about Wright.
I myself wonder: who insisted that Reverend Wright be invited to address the National Press Club, and arranged not only to give the preacher such exposure, but then prodded him and prodded him into outraged and outrageous pronouncements? Moyer even addresses the similar statements by white preachers, who have endorsed McCain, yet McCain has been given a pass--- "it's all about race, isn't it?"
Comments
"Free speech" (Teddy - 5/5/2008 9:09:35 PM)
protections, consolidated control of media outlets by a few major owners, and removal of the "equal time" requirement have produced programming at the lowest common denominator, a toxic brew that today passes for news. This combination is the perfect set-up for deliberate dumbing down of populations and, if the owners and publishers choose, a perfect opportunity to promulgate propaganda.
Goebbels, Hitler's master propagandist, or the agipprop artists of Stalin would drool with envy if they could see what an outstanding instrument of persuasion Rupert Murdoch and the neo-fascists of Bushdom have created.