Is There No Way For Society To Protect Itself From Modern Day Josef Goebbel Characters Like Beck, Hannity And Dobbs?
>
When I lived in San Francisco one of my smartest, most urbain and savviest friends was Susan Klein. She kind of idolized her kid brother Jonathan, who had graduated magna cum laude from Brown and gone on to work at CBS News. I always had the idea he was just as smart, urbain and savvy as Susan. Apparently the folks at CNN thought so too. In 2004 they made him president of CNN US, "responsible for management oversight of all programming, editorial tone and strategic direction of the network." Aside from a couple of Emmy awards, this guy actually did win a Peabody. And now he's responsible for CNN's editorial tone in the U.S.
I don't think I ever met Jonathan though I feel like I know him, at least enough to be certain that-- other than the way I liked Cher when I ran her record label-- he doesn't like Lou Dobbs one bit. Lately he's been damaging his reputation-- like really damaging it-- by publicly defending Dobbs. He has bosses too and Dobbs' extreme Know Nothing editorial tone attracts a certain crowd that would otherwise be busy watching Fox-News or reading Ku Klux Klan one sheets. Advertisers get measurements of their presense, not measurements of the absense of millions of former or might have been CNN viewers who now watch MSNBC or get their news even less corporately.
The editorial tone Jonathan is responsible for, at least on paper, is now so poisonous and hateful that it's impossible to mention malevolent, treasonous figures like O'Reilly, Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh, Coulter, Savage and Ingraham without, in the same breath also mentioning CNN's Lou Dobbs. His show is repulsive, the way Joseph McCarthy was repulsive and the B.A. Jonathan Klein earned-- summa cum laude-- at Brown was in history. So he knows.
If Jonathan Klein is unable to self-police, no one can. It's impossible. Society will either disintegrate into a brutish reactionary mob ruled by the Law of the Jungle or it will figure out a way to protect itself from this:
Racism is not acceptable, not in America in 2009-- and not as a tactic in a Big Money war against health care reform. We-- our nation-- has to do something about the way the public airwaves are being used to brutalize the population.
Labels: CNN, Jonathan Klein, Lou Dobbs, media
posted by DownWithTyranny @ 6:00 AM
5 comments
|
Reddit
5 Comments:
It's a good question. I absolutely agree and have been wondering about this myself. I keep telling myself that since a large majority of the electorate put Obama in the White House, most of America is not racist. It's the loud, screeching ones that capture the attention of everyone and unfortunately the media plays right into it. They are the first to report the slightest action as racist, i.e., the president's stupidity comment, and turn it into a racial moment. I don't know if it is a sign of the times considering we have our first black president or whether they are trying to drum up ratings. Both, I suspect. How can average people combat this? Through editorials? I've tried that and it doesn't seem to have an impact. Obviously we are not going to get help from the media. Will their hateful screed eventually turn off the center right group?
Margaret Sanger was another one. She put into action the birth control initiatives to help control the population of unwanted peoples. She was basically trying to wipe out minorities. Yet she is considered a demi-god to many people in the US. She was an out and out racist. Hero to the left!
More conversation about your blog post
The major problem with your rant is that the grossest offenders do their worst work on cable/satellite, and therefore do not avail themselves of the "public airwaves."
There are those who do, on over-the-air radio broadcasts, and the stations which carry them should be vulnerable to actions against their licenses, when renewal comes around, especially now that the majority is Dim on the FCC.
he people who thought up our system--the founders, et al--were men who proclaimed and usually lived a sense of honor. They were not prepared for the arrival, in the 20th century, of the utter, honorless, unprincipled "pragmatists" who lied, killed, stole, cheated, and otherwise undid the whole notion of honor. Once the worst of us decided it was okay to game the system, it was over for the rest of us. The system is no longer accountable, att all, on any lev el, to anything except immediate profit/advantage.
Unfortunately, gentlemanly Obama refused to consider the Fairness Doctrine at a time when he could have tried pushing it without losing public focus on health care. After all, who needs to worry about tv/radio late talk shows, spewing 24/7 treasonous attacks on the government in general and the president in particular?
If he's waiting for the nation to rise in horror at the hate folk, he's going to be waiting a long time. Hate radio/tv generates audience. It's been proven time and again. And of course, it generates violence, too. As has been proven, etc.
So what can be done? Short of waiting for health care to produce some results, then starting up the Fairness Doctrine, I can't think of a thing. It just keeps getting worse, and since worse sells, we can only expect this to be the level of discourse offered every day until somebody pulls the plug on the whose stinking practice.
Post a Comment
<< Home