Because You Never Asked

 

9/03

     I believe it was Hillary Clinton, who, along with her husband Bill, weathered an 8 year barrage on their integrity by the usual suspects, who first made mention of a "vast right wing conspiracy". In looking at the last decade or so of American politics, one has to start wondering if there is not some veracity to such a thought. I write this piece not to defend the integrity of the Clintons --- who work in a profession where everyone's integrity is in doubt --- but to suggest who has gotten control of the propaganda apparatus of this country and who is the more prone to throw unscrupulous bean balls at their opponents.

     The logical jumping off point for this essay is an examination of what the Clintons were subjected to and who was doing the pitching. Almost from the first inning, their opposition, which was pretty much the same bunch that is now running the country (and we all know who they are), started bringing the heat high and tight. The Clintons never stopped digging in, but the fact that they had to hit the dirt so many times, slowly eroded their strength and made victory over Al Gore possible.

     If we examine the long and winding road leading to the impeachment of Bill Clinton, one can only marvel at the spurious nature of the charges leveled against him. The Great Inquisitor, Kenneth Starr, is given a seemingly open ended mandate, both financially and time wise, to investigate some shrouded Clinton business deals in the backwoods of his long forgotten Arkansas homeland --- and now comes the real joke --- 20 years before he ever ran for the Presidency! This crusade seems to go on interminably, as if it were an evolutionary process that will take generations to pull itself out of the primordial muck with the lungs necessary to become an identifiable entity on dry land. Eventually, the practitioners of this strategy begin to realize that their creature is a forgettable mutant. Put simply, no one is neither buying nor giving a damn about the whole affair. What next?

     Without ever dropping the investigations in the Arkansas backwoods, there is an insinuation of impropriety in some kind of federal travel agency (was it not referred to as "Travelgate"), a flag raising which virtually no one saluted that died a quick death with hardly an obituary.

     It was time to get serious, which, in the parlance of political scandal, can only mean one thing:

     Women!

     Without ever completely dropping the investigations in the Arkansas backwoods, a handsome array of still palatable middle age women, along with a tramp or two like Paula Jones, are paraded before the American public, all claiming to have something to do with an adulterous discharge from the President. None of them can wait to get on Larry King to tell their story. It's all quite amusing, maybe some of it is even true, but except for the usual kabob of Bible thumpers, nobody really gives a spitball for any of it and Bill seems to have dodged another bean ball.

     It's interesting to note that while the media is giving almost exclusive coverage to all these sourball attempts to derail the Clintons, the things a President is elected to do are happening with unprecedented success. The economy is booming, unemployment is almost inexistent, a long history of federal budget deficits has been replaced with unheard of surpluses, and there has even been some progress made in Palestine.

     For the Bush wing of American politics, this is unacceptable.

     Like a pit bull with its jaws clamped firmly around the calf of its prey, the attempt to defrock Bill continues. And then --- hallelujah! --- the President's weakness for a pair of young lips wrapped around his swollen manhood (he's just so normal), finally gets him in the deep doo-doo.

     One of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the 20^th century has to be how a Special Prosecutor created to investigate the aforementioned business deals in medieval Arkansas, somehow became, like a tyrannical Hispanic mother, Bill Clinton's chaperone watching over his sexual inclinations. The Republican witch hunters would counter by saying they were not prosecuting the President's sexual behavior, but his lying about it under oath. This begs the question as to why they had, under oath, the right to do this. In any event, the Monica Lewinsky gambit created perhaps the greatest feeding frenzy in media history (OJ?, 9/11?) and was the closest thing this nation has ever had to a coup d'etat until .

     Before finishing that thought, the following remark seems pertinent: For those of us sniffing into this right wing conspiracy stuff, what they did to Bill and Hillary is less relevant than what they have not done to George W.

     . the Presidential election of 2000. 

     As the years have gone by, it has become increasingly evident that the Bush Gang stole the national election in Florida, not so much through the detached chad fiasco (though that counts as well), but through the systematic voting list purges of substantial blocks of normally Democratic voters. Although I've had these accusations corroborated in other places, the best account of these "banana republic" maneuvers appear in a book called "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy". Its author is an experienced investigative reporter named Greg Palast. As explained in his book, he has become an out in the open target for right wing practitioners out to discredit him, but he has never been sued for slander or defamation or any other of that grease ball stuff. Even more disturbing than his revelations of electoral tampering (it seems that similar shenanigans were used in Tennessee and will be used by the right as a widespread modus operandi) is how the mainstream media in the United States refused, time and time again, in spite of the well informed professionalism of the work, to expose these facts to the American people. As a result, Palast has been working for quite some time in England, where the BBC and other well-circulated sources regularly air his work.

     These coup-like symptoms are spreading. As I write, the California recall campaign is in full swing. This attempt to wrest away one of the brightest jewels in the crown of American politics is not a spontaneous local reaction to the State's problems, but a concerted effort by the nation's conservative power base born from a complete pregnancy cycle. The true culprit here is the obviously flawed law enabling these subterfuges. I trust most of us would agree that any recall or impeachment law contemplates some kind of malfeasance, illegality, or mental incompetence as the grounds for its implementation. If the law in question here is clumsily vague enough to permit this end run around its true spirit and purpose, the right wing headhunters of a Bush-run America are the first ones to seize upon this perversion. It is truly an assault on democratic principles.

     Let's get to the second Bush Presidency itself.

     Almost from the start, this latest reincarnation of a Bush administration found itself running on a muddy track. Before even reaching the ¼ pole, perhaps the most dastardly corporate scandals in the history of the Republic exploded on the scene. Right in the eye of this hurricane was a Texas company named Enron, whose massive wealth and business power turned out to be a mirage created by corporate illusionists Copperfield could only marvel at. These magic tricks in accounting eventually provided obscene fortunes for the magicians while costing thousands of regular folks their hard earned pensions. These schemes were hatched not by people close to the President --- that would be an understatement --- but by people who could be described as bosom buddy, back slapping, cocktail party intimates of George W. Might the phrase "partners in crime" not be an exaggeration? And yet, in spite of the fact that Enron was the single greatest contributor to the Bush presidential campaign, the furor caused by this sordid affair seems to have slid off the President like water on Turtle Wax. When one considers the 12 rounds of cuts, bruises and knock downs accrued by Bill and Hillary in defending themselves from what can only be seen as trivial accusations compared to this Enron mess, one has to wonder how "Mini-Me" Bush was able to walk through such a heavily mined field with his hair still in place, his tie perfectly knotted, and his smirk still plastered to his face. As always, one has to start wondering about the media's role in all this.

     Over the last ¼ century or so, the increased concentration of media clout in fewer and fewer sources has been an undeniable trend. As it stands now, the "message" is in the hands of 4 mega-media giants: Time Warner, Fox, Disney, G.E. In delivering the "message", TV is the "weapon of mass destruction", but print and radio diffusion also play a substantial role, with monopolization tendencies running rampant here as well. These Orwellian mind controllers not only give us the "news", but almost all our sports-entertainment programming too, where the world according to these corporate giants is pushed without mercy. There is a heavy emphasis on heroic, gorgeously sexy cops and soldiers that do no wrong, a neat and clean definition of "good guys" (us) and "bad guys" (them), sporting venues used for patriotic extravaganzas, reality shows whose participants distinguish themselves with a Maquiavellian ruthlessness deemed proper for the average global economy citizen, along with a pervasive under current glorifying our "way of life" as crafted by them. As these commercial media behemoths become more omnipotent, their interests become more aligned with the "global economy" as pedaled by the likes of the Bush Gang. The media giants are the salesmen of global consumption, paid by Nike, GM, Exxon, Frito-Lay and the rest, and it is all fueled by cheap oil.

     Accusing the American media of Pravda-like mind control is always a hard sell. One of their foremost tricks is the way they portray themselves: free, independent, objective, this romantic idea of public service journalism. They have become the true masters of imagery. These four remaining sources of media domination compete with each other, but within well-defined parameters. There is enough for everyone to get fat on (Coke and Pepsi pioneered this technique). There is nothing about this latest Iraqi war that goes against their interests and they've played it that way.

     In making this argument, it must be stated that the current Bush Oil War is a conservative idea. The left would never have done this. The monopolistic American media, in collusion with the bellicose action, gave us some anti-war demonstrations, some pre-war debate, but in the end it led us into battle with fife and drum and glorified its execution with the usual images of our magnificent troops bringing freedom and democracy to the down-trodden. If it hasn't quite worked out as the Bush Gang hoped it would, the same could be said for media interests.

     How can I prove this to the Oprah crowd?

     We are all well aware of the taboo "n" word with regard to race relations. A similar thing has developed in the mainstream media with regard to how they cover this second Iraqi war. There is now the unspeakable "o" word. We have had almost six months of this war thing and the debate as to its propriety has revolved almost exclusively around such imposters as "weapons of mass destruction", links to terrorism, homeland security, the removal of a wicked dictator, democracy, freedom . excuse me, I'm about to go off and puke somewhere. The truth is simply too painful to mention on TV.

     Oil.

     It is consistently amazing to think that one can sit in front of CNN-Fox et al for days and not hear the dreaded "o" word. Centering the perpetration of this war on the fact that some of the greatest deposits of "o" known to mankind exist under its feet, would discredit it. This is something none of the great power brokers in America want to happen.

     The American media's affectionate view of the Bush Gang is further corroborated by the latest attempts to further monopolize media control in the country. It could be argued that this Administration has championed such a course of action. The most recent monopolization gambit was so outrageous that not even a conservative congress could go along with it. But rest assured, if the Bush Gang can survive the stupidity of their foreign policy, they'll keep plugging away until the "message" is delivered by fewer and fewer sources. I'm sure they'll drink to that at the Big Four.

     Is there a "vast right wing conspiracy"? Perhaps conspiracy is too strong a word. As the "Real World Order" (see series of essays with this phrase in its title) has evolved in the post-Cold War era, certain bedfellows have begun to make wetter, more passionate love to each other. It was a love affair that progressed slowly but naturally: big media, big business, and conservative "free market" government.