Conservative Media - SciForums.com

nirakar

05-07-09, 09:18 PM

I keep hearing the term "liberal media" thrown around by everyone from GWBush to Dale Gribble.

The "Liberal Media Bias" complaint/slogan/dogma has been omnipresent since the about 1990. The "Liberal Media Bias" complaint goes back further than that but 1990 is when the Republicans got organized and began to synchronize their rhetoric. 1990 is also shortly after Rush Limbaugh revolutionized radio by getting the best ratings ever for talk radio with a national radio show that was essentially did nothing but complain about liberal media bias.

Perhaps Limbaugh should be given credit for inventing the "Liberal Media Bias" but he was not entirely wrong.

Pre WW2 every city had more than one newspaper and most larger cities had at least 3 major daily newspapers and usually more than 3 newspapers. Newspapers had political biases (some left, some right some other) and they were not embarrassed about that. Radio stations also had biases and TV did not exist.

Then the War came along and the nation censored itself. Prior to WW2/Pearl harbor their had been FDR haters on the right and there had been isolationists that wanted the USA to get out and stay of World geopolitical intrigue and there had been radical union leftists/borderline communists and their had been pro fascists who liked Hitler but all these voices lost access to the media in which they had been criticizing FDR.

After the War the Cold War began and Television began. The Unabashed diversity of opinion in media that existed prior to the war never returned. The Center left was tolerated but the left was harassed and kicked out of media. The Right were only allowed to criticize the left and be patriotic but otherwise they too were kicked out of media. The Anti-populist Center Right was in charge and the Anti-Populist Center Left was the opposition. Not coincidently Wall street likes it when The Anti-populist Center Right was in charge and the Anti-Populist Center Left was the opposition.

Then along came the baby boom teenagers, exponential growth of Universities and the Vietnam war. Suddenly their was a suburban youth rebellion against Anti-Populist Center Right mind control.

The media condemned the rebellion as it embraced the rebellion. It seemed like all of the cool goovy hip people were part of the rebellion and the media bosses desperately wanted to not lose the cool groovy hip audience and many of the journalists and anchors wanted to be cool groovy hip people, so the media swung from anti-populist Center Right to faux populist Center Left.

By the time Reagan won his election the culture of the media was culturally out of step with the culture of parts of the USA between the coasts and South of DC and less modern, sophisticated and groovy than the culture of the average college student. America was in full backlash against suburban youth culture. Also the youth culture of the late 1960s and early 1970s failed to live up to it's dreams and the economy was getting weaker so the the next generation of suburban youth was more focussed on getting ahead in their careers than in pushing the world into living up to Jeffersonian idealism.

Also the white South had never healed from the losing the civil and the civil rights movement was reopening those wounds and the Christians fundamentalists were tired of being laughed by the college educated and the "fly over" parts of the USA were tired of everything being about New York, DC and LA and the flyover was tired of the smug superiority of the coastal college educated. Also the super patriots were tired of having their patriotism devalued and men who worked hard to be manly men were tired of their manlyness being devalued. Finally tax payers were sick of paying taxes.

Then along came Limbaugh to tap into all this resentment.

Limbaugh and the Limbaugh clones and all the Fox people and the Republican congress people are not from the "Joe the Plumber" archetype and they are not loyal to the "Joe the plumber" archetype they just wanted to pander to the archetype and turn the archetype into dittoheads that could be used to give power and success to Limbaugh, the Clones, Fox and the Republicans in the same way that Mussolini managed to gain power by manipulating the Italian version of the "Joe the plumber" archetype.

Culturally the media of the 1970s really was left of the American people but economically the media has always been to the right of the American people and has been trying to lead the American people to the right. Can you imagine the American people tolerating the outsourcing of the American industrial base without the American media continuously reassuring that somehow outsourcing the American industrial base will be good for America? Notice that Obama, Bush, McCain and both the supposedly liberal and conservative portions of the media keep on insisting that illegal immigration's increasing of the supply of cheap labor is not a serious problem that should be vigorously resisted?

The prominent people, stars and leaders of the supposedly left leaning media and of the right leaning media and Wall Street, and the multinational corporations (and their lobbyists, Law firms and PR firms) and the Democratic and Republican politicians all cohabit the same echo chamber and parrot the same cliches to each other and repeating these cliches passes for intelligence in their circles.

The main difference between CNN + Obama from Fox/Limbaugh + Bush is who they are rhetorically pandering to. CNN/Obama are not left, they believe whatever cliches are popular in the Goldman Sachs boardroom this year. Limbaugh, Fox and McCain also believe whatever cliches are popular at the Goldman Sachs boardroom this year.

25% of the American people opposed the Iraq war at the beginning of the Iraq war despite months of the media acting as if it was a paid war propaganda machine. Only a few people in the media opposed the Iraq war while the majority of the left third of Americans opposed the War so how can the media be considered to be part of the left? This myth of liberal media bias is stupid.

About 65% of Americans oppose gay marriage while the right 1/3rd of the media is clearly against gay marriage and the other 66% of the media waffles about and is evasive on gay marriage which leads me to believe that most of them support gay marriage or are ambivalent so on this issue the media does still have a liberal bias.

As a political strategy propagating the myth of the liberal media bias is probably the smartest most effective thing that the Republicans have ever done towards advancing their goals.