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Posers
by Mike Bryan
December 23, 2003

As the spokesperson for a group that had organized several peace rallies on and after last February 15, I was a guest on a local talk radio show a couple of days after the Iraq war began. Before the show started the two hosts were extremely friendly, then, once on the air they went into attack mode. One of the first questions was roughly, "How can we not invade Iraq after they killed 3,000 people by blowing up the World Trade Center?"

   The very stupidity of that question and the abrupt change in tempo caught me off guard. During the first commercial break the hosts apologized to me. One of them said he even had an anti-war sticker on his bumper. They explained they were just expected to do right-wing talk radio shtick.

   Obviously, the ranting and raving style of Rush Limbaugh and his imitators has proven to be commercially successful and highly effective in forwarding the right-wing agenda. The fact that style of broadcasting has become acceptable to mainstream America - and to many broadcast personalities who see it as the proper way to perform their job, speaks volumes about how entertainment value has replaced true journalistic intent and how the right-wing has managed to take control of our mainstream media.

   The question that no one seems to be addressing - and for which I have no clear answer - is how many writers and broadcast personalities are doing liberal shtick? Do we have people playing the role of the weak liberal opponent to the strong conservative commentator like fall guys in professional wrestling? Have Michael Moore, Al Franken, and others simply found a good angle for marketing their comedy, books, and articles?

   Once the line between journalists and entertainers becomes indistinguishable it becomes hard to trust anyone, or anything they say - except, of course, for those who have bought into the reality of the routines. Street cred has become commercialized.

   Two, maybe three, years ago the presenters on CNN Headline News carved their first pumpkins on air. Not too long ago Robin Meade, one of their morning anchors, sang on air. They have added cooking spots and other network TV-type morning show segments - the very thing many of us thought we had escaped years ago by turning to cable news. Now, cable news has adopted a very similar format to that of network TV: lots of soft and sensational news, very little actual news. The thinking must be that the truth just isn't as entertaining as pop culture, fabrications, happy talk, and shtick - or as good for promoting, or cross-promoting, products within news programs.

   Shtick, of course, plays to expectations - and that element takes the current situation to another, exceptionally grim, level.

   On the right we have the Republicans, representing the interests of big business, extremely rich people, religious fundamentalists, and the vindictive. On the left we have the Democrats, representing progressive ideals and values - oops, that's just the expectations talking.

   The problem with attributing political philosophies to the two major political parties is that the parties assume the role that is most likely to get them elected. The Republicans learned that by appealing to racism and religious fundamentalism they could carry the South and many rural areas. The Democratic Party is an umbrella under which people from both the left and the right stand. Candidates are chosen by party leaders for their ability to raise money, not for their views on the issues or their potential statesmanship. The goal of both major parties is to get in power. Since it takes lots of money to get in power, both parties suck up to those with the most money: big business and America's most wealthy individuals. That money buys the contributors favors from both parties.

   If the Democrat Party truly preferred a progressive agenda, Dennis Kucinich would have already received every possible endorsement from the party's leaders. As it is, the party is doing all it can to keep the slightly left-of-center moderate Howard Dean from receiving the presidential nomination: they fear he might be another George McGovern. Yet when it suits their interests - that of raising money and recruiting more voters - the party poses as the liberal alternative. Groups like MoveOn, an organization formed to prevent the removal of President Clinton from office by impeachment, now use the credibility they gained from their anti-war activism to raise money for Democratic candidates.

   Let's not forget that economic inequities continued to increase under President Clinton, that the Telecommunications Act of 1996, utility deregulation, and welfare reform occurred during his administration, and that Hilary Clinton set back the passing of national health insurance by years.

   Is the lesser of two evils actually what we want?

   If progressive thinkers are truly striving for progressive change, they would not accept an anybody-but-Bush position. If progressive commentators and activists truly want to reach the masses, they would shed radical posturing, epithets, and vulgarities. They would reach out rather than pander to alternative expectations. They would not try to be liberal versions of Rush Limbaugh. Our nation was established based on the progressive ideals of our founding fathers - that ideology is the true American mainstream and should be represented as such.

   As long as the progressive message remains marginalized on the Internet and in tabloids, it can never inspire the populist movement necessary for realization. Until people on all sides of the ideological spectrum see beyond their preconceptions and expectations, they will remain vulnerable to political shtick.

   Folks, we're Germany in the 1930s. Big business and government have merged. Our news media is misleading us with lies in order to forward the agenda of big business and the privileged. Those who are most adversely affected by that agenda are being blind-sided by those lies and by their well-trained beliefs in the icons and conventions of our society: the flag, the office of the president, the superior goodness of our policies, and the promises and possibilities of the American dream. Our military has attacked other nations without provocation. Our president has ignored international laws and authorized war crimes. Our government is locking people away without due process simply because of their ethnicity and suppressing civil liberties in the name of homeland security. Businesses are exploiting the human and natural resources of this and other nations. Quantity of profit has replaced the goal of quality of life.

   These perversions of our nation's identity have no realistic opposition: no foreign military able to resist, no domestic political party willing and able to fight for progressive ideals. It's up to us to make a stand.

   Posing no longer cuts it. © 2003 Mike Bryan All Rights Reserved