Almost forgot to remind everyone of an important anniversary....

[senz]

41. Certainly the media was part of it.

Republicans became media sophisticates long before Democrats knew what was happening. What I noticed in the 80s was a shift from "people next door" programs to stuff like "Dallas" and "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," the increasing glamorization of wealth and materialism. Around the same time I began to notice pronounced anti-government and anti-liberal attitudes in coworkers who listened to rightwing talk radio, and their numbers grew as did the medium and its influence.

On another level, conservatives like Reagan and Clinton allowed progressive relaxation of FCC regulations on media ownership that resulted in more and more media outlets (TV networks, broadcast stations, cable media, commercial radio stations like Clear Channel, movie studios, book publishers, magazine and newspaper publishers) being owned by fewer and fewer conglomerates until we reached what we have now, a huge, tight, media monopoly. There used to be independent media operations all over the country; now, there are five central owners of all major media, megacorporations that decide what the American people are allowed to know. The saying in media studies is that "They don't tell you what to think; they tell you what to think about."

So of course the media is on the Right because they are by definition corporate. There is also the fact of interlocking directorates in which people sit on multiple corporate boards of directors, resulting in a big cozy mutually protective class of powerful individuals.

Media is extremely important, but there's more to what Reagan, Clinton, and Bush started -- deregulation permitting mergers, acquisitions and takeovers that changed the face of American business and the outlook for working people, the disappearance of Main Street and millions of small local businesses with the spread of huge national chain retail outlets, the consolidation of entire industries, the appearance of new health insurance creatures like HMOs, and trade agreements with other countries that permitted "American" manufacturing to outsource its production to places with very cheap labor and no environmental regulations.

And more. It really is a different world now. Life for the American people is much harder than it used to be, and it was all done via legislation on the part of our elected representatives.

Which means it can be undone. Which takes us back to: Go Bernie!!