The Counter Revolution Has Been Televised.

[Cheswick2.0]

http://barlow.typepad.com/barlowfriendz/2004/01/the_counterrevo.html

As the Dean campaign started to raise serious money and support on the Internet last fall, it became common for the likes of me to go around trumpeting that this election might be for the Internet what the 1960 election was for television.

In the wake of Iowa and New Hampshire, it seems evident that, once again, I'm too early with a prediction that may eventually prove accurate. If anything, this election may reconfirm the preeminent role of the idiot box in American politics, just as the Bush administration is demonstrating the power of plutocracy to an extent not witnessed since Karl Rove's political hero William McKinley was elected.

I have seen the past, and it still works.

Politics as usual was working like God's wristwatch in Iowa, where the RNC and various Republican PAC's outspent many of the Democratic candidates on negative TV ads aimed exclusively at Dean. But more damaging, in my opinion, was the remarkably open bias that the traditional media seemed to display against Howard Dean in their presentation of the news itself. I don't watch much television, but what little I've seen in the last month indicated to me that Dean was being systematically slimed.

I witnessed, for example, an astonishing are-you-still-beating-your-wife interview of Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi by CNN's Paula Zahn. Zahn persisted in drilling in on Dean's having said in an NPR interview that the notion the Bush administration had known in advance about 911 in advance was "an interesting theory," refusing, despite Trippi's protests, to read a bit further in the transcript to Dean's unequivocal statement that it was a theory he didn't share.

Dean was taken to severe task for having murmured something on Canadian television four years ago about flaws in the Iowa caucus system. Fox spent an entire day calling him a liar without ever being specific, in my hearing anyway, about what lies he had purportedly told. CNN repeatedly reported that some Iowa voters were referring to Dean volunteers as "Perfect Storm troopers." Indeed, in my extremely random sampling of TV reporting before the Iowa caucuses, I never heard a single reference to Dean that wasn't at least mildly derisive.

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[Cheswick2.0]

1. kick

[nancyharris]

2. How many of the 84,229 people

that voted for Kerry in the New Hampshire primary do you think were “duped” into voting for him by the media? Do you really think that Democratic Party members are incapable of making a sound judgment on their own regardless what is said in the media?

[Exgeneral]

6. Define sound judgement

surely , we disagree on the notion that a vote for John Kerry exhibits any.

[PAMod]

25. Iowa changed everything. They had to stop Dean there and did.

New Hampshire was all set to vote Dean until Iowa. Lose a primary (caucus, in the case of Iowa), and it sort of invites questions regarding "electability".

If NH would have voted first, Dean would be the presumptive nominee and John Kerry would be back at his desk in Washington.

"Sound judgement" had nothing to do with New Hampshire.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[maddezmom]

4. might want to edit

to Dean supporters so as it doesn't get deleted :)

[Cheswick2.0]

7. what makes you think it was slowed?

Dean is still raising more money than the front runner.

[Exgeneral]

11. You wouldn't know that reading the Wa Post or WSJ

They say he's on the roopes and running out of steam, and that Gen. Clark is "making repeated gaffes"

hmmmmm.

[Cheswick2.0]

12. They are so insistant on sticking it to anyone

Who threatens their storyline.

[kaitykaity]

5. Dean is a threat to the corporate media behemoth,

so they took him out. Fairness Doctrine, busting up the
media biggies (GE, Viacom, NewsCorp, etc.)

Yeah, he got 'Gored'. But don't count him out yet.

[Polemonium]

23. Exactly, we've been calling for someone to be

the non-corporate candidate when we get him, we appear to believe the corporate slander. Unbelievable. I won't be counting him out anytime soon.

[killbotfactory]

8. The media is the special interest you can't fight

apparently.

[Cheswick2.0]

9. Love your Carol Avatar

I hope she is out campaigning for Dean. I miss her presence in the debates.

[Exgeneral]

10. What was done to Dean is criminal

The Kerry apologists in the media seem to rejoice in this
Meanwhile the other escapade of the press, the intentional omission of ANY coverage of Gen. Clark has started in earnest.

Maybe the East coast establishment is just teaching the rest of us in the country a lesson on how not to get in the way of their plans.

Sure seems that way.

[MidwestMomma]

14. Guess you didn't get the memo

The media is fair and balanced now. They're no longer 'media whores' or 'tools of the Right'. Go figure...:eyes:

[library_max]

16. Since when? Who said so?

I'm a Kerry supporter and it makes me sick to see the way the media, especially Fox, has abused Howard Dean. Who at DU has been saying that the media is now "fair and balanced" (sarcasm excepted)?

[mitchum]

13. It was revolting AND televised...

so I guess that you are right

[many a good man]

15. Idiot box politics

Television will always dominate. Our "entertainment culture" has made politics little more than a side show. This way will probably continue until the harsh reality of a crumbling standard of living intrudes into our self-anesthetizing way of life.

All forms of media have become severely segmented over the past few decades. There is a staggering array of choices available to increasingly narrow interests, almost all of it entertainment-driven. There is very little left of shared experience and the public commons. What little there is that does exist is packaged by a small handful of profit-driven media corporations and events are shaped to their interests.

The Internet expands this segmentation further. As the article says:

Moreover, while many of us are convinced that the Internet is a powerful environment for organizing belief, it is also a great cacophony against which even the diminished voice of broadcast retains a kind of clarity. I believe I have just seen demonstrated the power of that signal. Can we create one of our own that is heard as clearly by the public in general?

I believe "the public in general" is too diffused and disinterested in thoughtful political discussion. Vast numbers don't even watch television news. Many get their only dose on the network morning shows. How can we legitimately expect the masses to tune in politics on the Internet? Especially when half don't even own computers?

While the internet is a phenomenal tool for disseminating information, especially information ignored by the major media, it may never be powerful enough to launch a sizable grass roots movement.

I think we have no choice other than to force feed politics on the masses. In the early decades of broadcast television, every home watched one of the three network newscasts. It was our shared experience. We must force all broadcast and cable stations to air political debates free of charge. It must be broadcast on all stations with the exception of the Cartoon channel. The Fairness doctrine must be brought back to television to keep the media honest, because they have shown they can't do it on their own. Only in this way can we return an interest in and respect for democracy in a country that is in danger of losing it.

[George_Bonanza]

17. Dean isn't the end of corporations just b/c he says so

Wasn't Dean the guy that big business absolutely loved in Vermont for "going to bat" for them? Didn't Dean say to the Cato Institute that he was their kind of guy?

I think Dean's an excellent man and politician, but this unsubstantiated fluff about Dean being some kind of savior to the American political system is getting tiresome. Please provide facts. No more ridiculous undermining of the intelligence of Iowans and NHites (funny, they weren't so stupid when they loved Dean by huge margins) or how the evil establishment is out to get Dean. Yeah, that's why Mr. DLC Jr., Al Gore, endorsed Dean. What a bunch of failures if that was their plan. Oh, did they foresee that Gore's endorsement would do jack? Did they foresee Dean's plummet in Iowa? Did they create an elaborate deathtrap for Dean where every piece was in play?

My take on the media is that it was very easy to bash Dean so they did. He's a bit off-the-cuff, and he was such a clear front-runner (Kerry was barely mentioned) that he was their only target.

[Cheswick2.0]

18. at least he is willing to say there should be change

I am sure Kerry will chime in with the same sentiment as soon as he thinks it's safe.

[Cha]

19. LOL! And do you ever

have that Right!

[Cha]

20. I love your

"Dean Page", Cheswick! And that picture of the Dean's is Great!

[library_max]

21. Here's the first thing I found on the subject at the John Kerry website.

That's http://www.johnkerry.com. There's plenty more there, but here's this:

Some of America's top mutual fund companies enriched themselves through excessive fees and helped big investors illegally profit with so-called "late trades" and "market timing." In a Kerry Administration, this will not be tolerated. Kerry believes that we will only be able to fully revive our economy if we restore investor confidence in the markets. John Kerry has a plan to protect every day investors and restore confidence in the market by requiring all investors are treated fairly. Kerry will curb late-trading and market-timing abuses by fully prosecuting Wall Street insiders that steal from American investors.

[DFLforever]

22. Thanks, Cheswick , a very good article with a great title!

a few more provacative excerpts regarding the media:

Given the relentless hammering he took from the media, Dean was lucky to get 26% of the New Hampshire vote. Even so, Dean may be done for. Or, more to the point, done in. Some will say that he strung his own rope, but it looked more like a media lynching to me. Assuming I'm right about this, why did television want to hang Howard Dean?

I may have an answer. It may be that, once again, we have met the enemy and he is us. By pre-announcing the possibility that this might be The Internet Election, we issued fair warning both to the traditional media and the big money politicos that a threat was at hand.

If Dean could actually raise enough money online to match in aggregate the much larger and fewer donations Bush has bought from the plutocrats with his tax cuts, it would shake the system to its rotten core. Worse, if information from the Web and the Blogosphere were to start defining enough personal realities to contest the great mass of tube-zombies at the polls, the gazillions presently spent on television campaign ads would start to wither. An enormous amount of power and money might be at stake,

[Cheswick2.0]

24. Media lynching

That about sums it up. But they will do it to anyone who wants real change. Nothing will ever get better if we are not willing to fight.

[quaker bill]

26. I agree

The media worked Dean over with intent. I suspect that the concept of an internet driven candidate really bothered them.