Schools Matter

I hope you don’t waste your time like I did this morning reading the liberal media's analysis/commentary on what was unleashed last evening on our country—and the world. From my reading, it is clear that the media sympathetic to the Blue team are quickly forming up the circular firing squad and taking aim, even while ignoring the necrophilic zombie hoard that is battering down the nation's institutional doors. 

Here's an example from a Reuters piece that poses as straight news story:

. . . Harris’ campaign ultimately failed to overcome deep-seated voter concerns about inflation and immigration – twin issues that opinion polls showed favored Trump. Her loss underscores a profound shift in American politics over the past decade as blue-collar voters have turned increasingly Republican – a trend Trump appears to have accelerated. 

Harris also struggled to counter another Trump-era trend: a torrent of misinformation unprecedented in modern U.S. elections. An avalanche of misrepresentations and falsehoods about her record was spread by the former president and amplified on right-wing websites and media, including conspiracy theories on issues ranging from migrant crime to voter fraud.

So even before all the votes are counted, the media establishment is racing to tell us that last nite's terrifying electoral result can be blamed on the female candidate for not countering or overcoming the various excuses that America's prevailing white "christian" caste of misogynist, racist men (and women) have disingenuously trotted out for pollsters over the past months to conceal the real reasons they voted to re-elect a racist, misogynist felon whose multiple sexual assaults, criminal convictions and indictments, egregious lies, unadorned stupidity, and narcissistic bullying was much less important to them than, say, the price of eggs.

And while we're blaming Kamala Harris for Americans' shameless capitulation to their darkest natures, let's blame her, too, for not single-handedly countering the Billionaire Boys' Club propaganda machine (foreign and domestic) that spread the magnificent lies spewed endlessly by Trump and his sycophants. 

Surely, Musk's X, Zuckerberg's Facebook/Instagram, or Murdoch's Fox "News" share no responsibility for "countering" what Kamala Harris should have countered alone.

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Fortunately, for me, I found something in my Inbox this morning that's a little more soothing.  It is written by a woman (Rebecca Solnit) and posted by a good man (Anand Giridharadas) that provides some much needed salve for my grieving soul. I hope it does yours, too.

For a month or so after Biden's swearing in 2021, media coverage sort of resembled something we might have called normal back before the Psychotic Age, which was ushered in by the smelly, treasonous scab that the corporate media is now growing and grooming for his return to finish the democracy demolition he started, and damn near completed between 2016 and 2021. But soon Biden World real news and the old normal saw ratings drop, as people stopped hovering over their TVs and newspapers as they had done during the previous four years to see if the Republic would survive another day.  People started to go outside again to get some fresh air.

But on cue, the Insane Clown and his team of interdisciplinary fascists swung into action to give media ratings a boost, producing new conspiracies, new lies, new abominations, to restore the ratings and and to reclaim the headlines for the T____ cancer.

And so the media coverage is starting to look a whole lot like early 1980, when another fascist was marshaling the dark forces of neo-Nazis, John Birchers, Klansmen, fascist fundamentalists, and racists everywhere in America to steam toward the November election of that year.  

And so Biden coverage is looking a lot like Carter coverage, with reporters scurrying to breathlessly document any embarrassment, any gaff, any sign of humility or decency that can be presented as weakness.  And T____ coverage echoes the spin that reporters gave to Reagan, as they chose to ignored then the autocratic and racist undergirdings and implications of the New Right of that era--which look progressive in comparison to the full flowering of a malevolent political madness that has efficiently replaced the Republicans with the T____ Party.

Too, media ownership then seems labor friendly compared to today's takeover of media by billionaires intent to become trillionaires and to show their rockets are bigger, all the while not giving a rat's ass about the preservation of a democratic republic.  

For real facts to be shared, for sound opinion grounded in reason and democratic values to be heard, and for the threat to the country and the world to be understood, then citizens, bloggers, social media influencers, educators, all freedom lovers everywhere must join together to convey one unalterable truth: Joe Biden is a preferable choice to the deadly alternative, regardless of whatever handicap or deficiency that may be imagined, reported on, and trumpeted by all of the media moguls' hired hands that can be assembled.

From the looks of the Tribune Company's recent editorials on NCLB in its Chicago and L. A. properties, some valuable political points are being chalked up as the Tribune Co. seeks a couple of favorable business decisions that will be broken or made by machinations of the Rove-Cheney White House. Is this kind of ignorant and irresponsible kowtowing to the Party line what happens when your media company gets on bended knee to plead for a $350 million tax refund in order to help pay down its debt for going private? Or does this kind of blind and dumb acceptance of the oft-quoted Bush/Spellings lies about NCLB get repeated just to help grease the wheels as Tribune, Inc. tries "to renew Federal Communications Commission waivers for broadcast licenses in cities where it also owns newspapers?"

If the Tribune has signed on with the Bush Team to push its only remaining domestic initiative that hasn't been buried--yet, then at least it would seem they would bother to get someone to write about it who knows even the most basic facts. The affable lightweight, Ron Brownstein, who was recruited to write the L.A. Times NCLB PR script, doesn't even know how many subgroups there are or what subjects are required to be tested. But then why should a few bad facts get in the way some perfectly good opinions that never required any facts to begin with?