Poor Diggy. The mighty pwogwessive revolution just isn't panning out they way they'd planned it in the weekly e-mail. The tiny bits of access her and her pwoggie bloggie cohorts have been given by their DP masters are proving unsatisfactory and, as if that weren't bad enough, it looks like her presidential boyfriend is about to unleash another wave of craptastic legislation on behalf of his health insurance paymasters.
What to do? Well, you'll probably have noticed by now that when Diggy can't plausibly blame the Republicans, the "System", sunspots or Ralph Nader for her party's failings, she inevitably turns to "THE MEDIA." (Never mind that "THE MEDIA" is owned by the same people who own her party. That inconvenient fact has yet to penetrate the entire pwoggiesphere, much less confines of Diggy's pwoggie bloggie clubhouse.)
Anyroad, in this post, Diggy applies her powerful "feet to the fire" 10th grade civics class analytical skills to the problem and comes up with this Pearl Bailey of Wisdom:
"For a variety of reasons, the press holds Democrats to tougher standards, mostly because of their own failures during Republican presidencies. And because they overreact in Democratic administrations, they inevitably go easier on Republicans. How much of this is political bias is unknown, but it doesn't matter. The effect is the same. "
A classic bit of projection, nu? The fact that media conglomerates are multi-billion dollar businesses never seems to dawn on the pwoggie mind. In Diggy's insulated middle-class fantasy world, THE MEDIA feels shame. It "overreacts." It feels embarrassment and joy and ennui and who-the-fuck-knows what else. Why THE MEDIA acts just like a partisan personality cultist with delusions of political relevance! Imagine that!
But you don't need me to tell you that. Just go through the article, insert the word "I" whenever you see "the press" and it'll become hilariously obvious. (Ya know, maybe it's for the best that the levers of power remain obscured to Diggy. Reality would just upset the poor thing.)
Digby's in the same boat as the wingnuts on the "media bias" thing. If they abandon it, they'd have to start looking at structural critiques or, Dog forbid, class politics. Neither of those are friendly to an incrementally meaner and stupider defense of the status quo. Which, needless to say, is what they're stuck with as long as they're determined get their civic identity fix from the corporate party circuit. It's much easier to chase ephemera, change branding and come up with competing versions of fatuous close readings.
ReplyDeleteFor me, personally, what makes it so contemptible is that there is no penalty of any kind for simply sitting it out, maybe do a little checkbook charity to the ACLU or whatever, whether or not they care to rethink. The rewards for active boosterism are shitty little things and go to very few, at enormous direct cost to their claques, not to mention the rest of the country and whatever country is currently subjected to the export of neoliberalism at gun point.
Of course, in most of the posts here you could change 'pwoggie' to 'freeper' and they'd still scan just as well. (Okay, not much of an endorsement for the posts themselves, but still...)
ReplyDeleteIn your defense, they did promise to wage a civil war against each other, with plenty of aggrieved accusations of post modernism as the rallying cry. It would still, as you say, scan the same but at least there'd be something other than their inane nattering.
ReplyDeleteAre you implying that massive consolidation of media outlets happened during the glorious golden era of Clinton I?
ReplyDeleteBecause I'm sure that can't be true. Also that whole Seattle 99 thing was staged. It was just a few smelly losers duping the innocent masses into thinking that they were being fucked. I'm positive of this. Actually there were only about twenty-seven smelly losers at the entire demo, but they were really good with mirrors and those 3-D puppets, so the crowd looked much bigger.
-- ms_xeno
Media consolidation? During the Clinton Golden Years of Peace and Prosperity? Perish the thought! Why, that's just crazy talk!
ReplyDeleteAnd that whole NAFTA thing was just a prank whipped up by ILM. It's true! I read it on DKo$!