Corporate media and the dangerous right-wing elephant in the room

rampaging elephant

Imagine, if you will, a movement that was spreading through a country, fueled by lies, hate and conspiracy theories, resulting in armed standoffs with authorities and mass shootings. Imagine a mass media that never, ever, EVER reports on the ideological agenda behind that violence, let alone dares to challenge it.

We don’t have to imagine it. It happens every day!

While the Fox News talking heads, talk radio and the Alex Joneses of this world are obvious influences, more insidious is the resolute silence on the part of the corporate “mainstream” media. How much did we hear about the Boston bombers? What books they read, who their friends were, what they looked at on the internet. Plenty, ad nauseum.

How much will we hear about the influences on the architect of this latest atrocity?

No, the shooter’s just another “troubled young soul.” (I just heard a black reporter say that on MSNBC, shaking his head and saying there was “no political solution” for people like that.)

Yes, troubled by a constant drumbeat of extreme, right-wing, racist insanity and conspiracy theories. Dear sweet Jesus.

Even token black Republican Michael Steele pointed out these are influences nobody wants to talk about.

All you media types need to grow up and start talking about the big, fat, racist, violent, right-wing elephant in the room. You have special protection under the Constitution for a reason: You’re supposed to be the watchdogs of the Republic. Do your frickin’ jobs for a change.

You provide no context for right-wing garbage. You rarely talk back, or call a lie a lie. You treat crazy people as if they’re sane, and worthy of support.

No wonder no one respects you. Your idea of “courage” is criticizing somebody’s hairdo on the red carpet.

Blaming the victim

Wish I was surprised, but I’m not:

NRA board member Charles Cotton blamed Clementa Pinckney, a victim of the shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, for his own death. He also blamed Pinckney, the pastor of Emanuel AME and a state senator, for the deaths of the other eight people killed.

As a state senator, Pinckney supported tougher gun regulations and opposed a bill that would have allowed people to carry concealed guns in churches. On TexasCHLForum.com, a message board, Cotton wrote that “Eight of his church members who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church are dead. Innocent people died because of his position on a political issue.”

Shooter ‘wanted to start a civil war’

Dylann-Storm-Roof
You’d think he would have, I don’t know, mentioned it to somebody:

The roommate of the white, 21-year old man who allegedly massacred nine people at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina said Thursday that he thought the suspect had been planning the attack for about six months.

Dalton Tyler told ABC News that he’d known Dylann Storm Roof for about seven months to a year. Tyler told the news outlet that he last saw Roof about a week ago and knew he’d been planning something like the Charleston church attack “for six months.”

“He was big into segregation and other stuff,” Tyler told ABC News. “He said he wanted to start a civil war. He said he was going to do something like that and then kill himself.”

Will NY Dems keep Bernie off the ballot?

Bernie Sanders

I figured this would happen in at least a few states, because they have laws in place to keep out interlopers from other parties. I was surprised yesterday to talk to a friend from Maine who just loves Bernie Sanders but will not support him “because he’s not a Democrat, and I’m not voting to give the nomination to someone who isn’t a Democrat!” That never even occurred to me!

Vermont Senator/Indie Rocker Bernie Sanders is an Independent on paper, which means that he’s going to have a hard time getting his name on the Democratic presidential primary ballot in New York to compete with Taylor Swift fan Hillary Clinton next year.

Why? Meet Wilson-Pakula, a very obscure state law. The Wilson-Pakula act, which passed in New York State back in 1947, bars any candidate from running for the nomination of a political party that he or she is not officially affiliated with. Unless, that is, he or she manages to get permission from that party’s committee leaders.

Sadly, and a bit ironically, Wilson-Pakula helped marginalize some of the political movements that Bernie supports. According to the Washington Post, pre-1947, “communist and socialist candidates had been able to become candidates… after winning support from voters.” In other words, back then, average New Yorkers got to make candidacy appointments.

Under current law, permission to cross party lines is, apparently, very rarely granted. It doesn’t help that the relevant committee in New York State has a lot of Hillary supporters: From Assembly Chair David Paterson, to Governor Cuomo himself who, as Capital put it, “controls most of the party apparatus.”

Undeterred, as of this writing, 4,269 people have signed an online petition to “GET BERNIE SANDERS ON BALLOT IN NEW YORK.” From the letter, addressed to Governor Cuomo and David Paterson:

We believe that selecting candidates to represent us is one of the core functions of the people. Thus, we stand in solidarity with Governor Cuomo’s call to repeal the Wilson Pakula law. The Wilson Pakula law, which requires a candidate from one party obtain permission from party bosses to run as a candidate from another party, is antiquated and not Democratic.

Happy Juneteenth

Link:

WHAT IS JUNETEENTH? Juneteenth is an annual observance to celebrate the date Union soldiers enforced the
Emancipation Proclamation freeing all remaining slaves in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865.  Texas was the last
state in rebellion, following the end of the Civil War, to allow enslavement. Although the rumors of freedom
were widespread prior to this, actual emancipation was not announced in the last state practicing enslavement at
the end of the Civil War until General Gordon Granger came to Galveston, Texas and issued
 General Order No. 3,
on the “19th of June“, almost two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.