Listen To You Tell Me Texas Friday 6/27/14
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Our word today is, “penumbra.” Webster defines it as follows:
…a space of partial illumination (as in an eclipse) between the perfect shadow on all sides and the full light
We offer this vocabulary lesson because it is a fact that the ongoing debate about liberal media bias occurs mostly in a penumbra. The subject is discussed in that area between bright, all-revealing light where everything can be seen clearly; and total darkness where nothing can be seen at all.
In that murkiness the arguments are mostly subjective, with neither side able to conclusively make its case.
But light penetrates and the shadows brighten whenever a big scandal arises – and one has.
Purely for the mental exercise, let’s imagine that during the presidency of George W. Bush it came to light that the IRS singled out MoveOn.org or Planned Parenthood or some other liberal group for special scrutiny. Let’s imagine press secretary Ari Fleischer saying to the media that the story is a simple case of low-level IRS employees in Cincinnati gone rogue — an assertion that would be forthwith debunked.
Then imagine if Dubya were to express outrage and pledge a full investigation, only to later say in an interview on Super Bowl Sunday that there wasn’t even a “smidgen of corruption” at the IRS.
Imagine the central figure in the story, some Republican administration analogue to IRS executive Lois Lerner, appearing before a Congressional committee and taking the fifth.
Then imagine that very specific emails from that central figure were to suddenly — and with absolutely impeccable timing — go missing.
Don’t you then imagine that the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, NBC, ABC and CNN would have completely flipped out? Can you imagine any circumstance under which they would not have become positively incandescent?
In my imaginings, they would have done more than cover the story. They would have obsessed over it.
Every front page for days on end would have had a new angle on the story. The TV stand-ups on the White House north lawn would have been about nothing else. Ari Fleischer would have been under siege at every daily White House press briefing. The Sunday chat shows would have been totally given over. One can imagine a prime-time news special.
Yet none of that has happened – a fact that serves as bright, very specular and harshly revealing illumination upon the usually murky media bias debate.
A colleague of mine attributes the media’s disinterest in the IRS scandal to the fact that newsrooms have been decimated by budget cuts and personnel reductions. He’s not wrong about that but his conclusion concerning it is.
When they find a story that fits their world view, the remaining mainstream media practitioners, fewer though they are, nevertheless find a way. For evidence, I would direct my pal to the day-after-day-after-day front pages of the New York Times and the daily first segment-stories on the network news shows during the hot days of the Chris Christie – George Washington Bridge kerfuffle.
The members of the eastern media tribe may yet – against their instincts – have to cover this story. But the fact that they haven’t done so in any meaningful way so far at least does us the service of clearing up any doubt as to the reality of liberal media bias.
To the list of media weasels I’d like to add our own Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, now little bigger than a #10 envelope, but just as corrupt as the big guys.
True journalism has been dead for years. There is no truth in the media except the truths they invent. Until people QUIT putting up with this BS they put out, they will continue to get away with it. WE, THE PEOPLE can do something about it if only we would! And that is to QUIT buying into their garbage!
This is indeed a sad day for the great media of our country.
It has done so many great & fine, lasting things; but alas, this is not one of those fine moments.
Immorality & the hiding or trumpeting of immorality for political reasons is a terrible blot on the country who was founded on truth & placed freedom of the press so high on priceless freedom.
Morality is the real problem here; apparently we now have become our own Gods & the arbiter of right & wrong.
This debacle: “. . . does us the service of clearing up any doubt as to the reality of liberal media bias.”
Is the total lack of concern for the habitual lawlessness of the IRS a characteristic of “liberal media bias” or is it a revelation of their active support of corruption by any evil means necessary to wage war on Constitutional Conservatives? A war to rob us of our free speech rights is not just a political tactic. It is a criminal act that is intended to hide corruption and therefore bears the same burden of illegal activity as a co-conspirator that must be punished by law. Deliberately hiding evidence is a criminal offense under the provisions of chapter 73 of the United States Code, titled “Obstruction of Justice.”
The fact that we can’t depend on the so-called Justice Department (under Obama) to seek out and prosecute these IRS/Media criminals, speaks volumes. For all practical purposes, we now live in a banana republic led by Barack “Idi Amin Dada” Obama, the self-appointed President of the newly conquered country of Uganda-America, where the rule-of-law is replaced by the rule-of-man as necessary to spread the religion of Obama’s dogma of “Social Justice”. When the despicable dogma of a man in the most powerful position in the world has replaced his oath to support and defend the Constitution, we have become the unwitting subjects of the (unaccountable) Obama, our King of Corruption.
Can the tattered remnants of the Constitution save us from a Fascist Dictatorship of the unelected fourth (bureaucratic) branch of government led by King Obama for the next 30 months? I don’t see any strong leadership in Washington to alter the long term trend when the Democrat and Republican parties are more interested in playing their games of “power sharing” in order to keep us conservatives disenfranchised in spite of any elections that might occur to the contrary.
Penumbra is the perfect analogy, as it describes the culmination of many factors which have taken a long time to come together, and then results in diminished illumination. To convert our political watchdog into a lap dog takes years of incremental brain washing in our journalism schools, and it will take years (if indeed possible) to re-establish an unbiased media. Non-military overthrow of any government can be accomplished by gradually changing the mindset of those who should be objectively reporting the news to propagandists who are shaping the news. Another piece of the strategy is to dumb down the electorate through politically correct teaching and denigration of scholastic achievement, which any objective person must agree has already been accomplished. It also helps to have a large percentage of the electorate dependent upon those politicians who are willing to use these poorly informed voters for their own self-interest. Let us hope and pray that this penumbra will also pass, and our wonderful country will once again be exposed to the sterilizing effects of sunlight.