Guardian UK - What is the Rightwing Noise Machine?

[rndmprsn]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1314554,00.html

please read the full article above...an obvious, but still very sobering story...


It was the year 2000, and Democrats were running on a record of peace and prosperity stewarded by the capable, if morally imperfect, Bill Clinton. It was a race that should have been won by their candidate, Al Gore. In fact, it was won by Al Gore, but the Rightwing Noise Machine kept it close enough to be stolen by the Republicans and their allies at the supreme court.

What is the Rightwing Noise Machine? Conservatives in the United States have spent the last 30 years building a vast infrastructure designed to create ideas, distribute them, and sell them to the American public. It spans multiple think tanks and a well-oiled message machine that has a stranglehold on American discourse. From the Weekly Standard, Rush Limbaugh, Wall Street Journal, Drudge Report and Murdoch's Fox News, to (more recently) the mindless drones in the rightwing blogosphere, the right enjoys the ability to control entire news cycles, holding them hostage for entire elections.

Gore learned this the hard way, as he faced a campaign of character assassination pushed by the right and abetted by a lazy-to-hostile press corps: Gore said he was the inspiration for Love Story. Gore invented the Internet. Gore exaggerated. Gore was boring. Of course, all of this criticism was flat-out wrong or grossly out of proportion to the alleged infraction, but it didn't matter: the media landscape offered no respite. In the US, talk radio was and remains a bastion of rightwing lunacy. Television coverage had become an extension of the Republican party, not just because of the influence of Fox News, but because conservatives had "worked the refs" so diligently that mainstream media outlets piled on their conservative "pundits" lest they be accused of "liberal bias". The political internet was dominated by the virulently rightwing Free Republic - still the largest political site to this day.

There was no way for Gore to get out his message, or launch a counteroffensive. Given the circumstances, it was a wonder he won the race, even if our nation's Republican-dominated supreme court handed the keys to the White House to George Bush.

[NanBo]

1. Thanks

Very interesting analysis and historical perspective on this phenom.

[wurzel]

2. Can this really be done twice?

Kerry is not Gore. Bush has a record. The hysteria of the current Repuke attacks on Kerry reveal that the Gore model isn't working as it did. This not to say they aren't trying. But I'm not sure it will be as effective. And Gore still actually got more votes than Bush.

[rndmprsn]

3. look at whats happening in OH

with the voter registration shit they are trying to pull!

i read an article where jimmy carter say the same exact bullshit is happening in FLA too...he said he could not certify the FLA election vote the way it is now.

[Vincardog]

4. It can only happen if we let it. The only answer is a landslide for Kerry

[rndmprsn]

5. agreed

i am making a promise to myself to do THE MOST i can possibly do to make sure kerry wins.

i'm going to hit the streets hard this weekend registering as many people as i can...blackwell in OH already has an angry email from me and ive signed the ACT petition against the OH voter throw-away situation that is going on.

we need a landslide big enough that they can't possibly try to steal it.

edit

[Rageneau]

6. Gore's faults were Gore's fault.

"There was no way for Gore to get out his message, or launch a counteroffensive.

Unh-unh. Not true.

Yes, Gore had to swim handcuffed and underwater while the RW press towed Bush behind them on waterskis, but it was still Gore himself who ultimately allowed the Pukes to steal the election.

As Kerry HAS to learn (and is hopefully learning), when you fight the Pukes and the Press, you have to use the bully pulpit and you have to play to your strengths. Gore did neither. He didn't even fight hard.

Never once did I hear him refute the "internet' or the 'Love Story" or "Love Canal' stories publicly and with justifiable anger. Never once did I hear him point out the lies being printed about him by the NYT and WaHoPo or the talking TV puppets. He let those charges float in the air throughout the whole campaign while he pontificated about lock boxes.

And when they called him a liar, he just turned the other cheek and changed the subject. And the Pukes giggled behind his back and asked, "Who is this dumbo listening to? And what can we do to show our gratitude?"

He inherited the greatest record any vice-president could have inherited, but he didn't crow about it for fear of giving too much credit to Clinton and thereby diminishing himself and (especially) Tipper.

And when he had the one of the greatest politicians of the 20th century standing in the wings, eager to help, Gore ignored him, snubbed him, practically insulted him by refusing to even ask his counsel.

And when it became obvious that those bastards were going to hijack the country from its electors, Gore smiled and said "It's time for me to go."

And when black congresspeople tried to get just one senator to stand up and do his/her constitutional and moral duty, Gore gavelled them down. Can you imagine Cheney or ANY Puke doing the same thing?

No matter how bad the Press and the Pukes fouled the water in 2000, Clinton would have won the election easily. And Gore should have -- by so many electoral votes that even the freepers would concede defeat.

I sure hope Kerry has learned not to rely on the Press to tell the truth, and to rely upon HIMSELF to get that truth out in ways that every Murican can unnerstan. (I think I've been listening to Smirk too much.)

[wurzel]

7. Yes. The media is the enemy.

I think Kerry gets this. He still has to deal with these whores. But even he is reluctant to get in their face. In the end the behavior of the media is going to have to be controlled by law. Freedom of speech has become freedom to lie.

[dumpster_baby]

9. do you really think there is a remote chance he will take them on?

I seriously doubt it....

[dumpster_baby]

8. Now the real question is, WTF are we going to do about it?

Let is also acknowledge, PLEASE, that this 30 year offensive has ALSO moved the Democratic party to the right. ANd that it has OBLITERATED the Left in America. There is no real Left in America now. And that in order to redeem the Democratic party, we must first create a Left WITHIN the Demccratic party.

And that Left within the Democratic Party CANNOT BE just a partisan political voice, where the details and minutiae of political campaign horseracing is predominant. For an example of this, I refer you to the mainstream media's approach to politics, AND all of the shows on Air America Radio (at least the ones that I have heard).

Instead, WE MUST TALK TO THE VOTERS ABOUT ISSUES, about taxes, about war, about priorities, about propaganda, about what this country is for, about capitalism, about history.

And to that we need SOME SORT of mass media voice. The Internet is not sufficient at this point in time.

THe question is, after the election, will AAR step up to the bat and talk about political issues instead of political campaign horseracing?

The vast majority of DUers (never mind the vast majority of Americans) seem utterly oblivious to these seemingly obvious facts.