http://www.mikemalloy.com/Arguably – and some will say it’s a stretch – there are three basic reasons Al Gore lost the Presidency in 2000. First, the unending media attack he withstood during the entire campaign. No matter what he did the media were on him like white on rice.
The incessant repetition of ugly, apocryphal stories was unlike anything in modern US politics. Stories that were known to be fabrications by the columnists and journalists endlessly repeating them were picked up and chewed on 24/7 by the right-wing vermin who infest cable television. They, the TV thugs, were pissed because Clinton escaped conviction in the Senate, after all their hard and extremely hypocritical work at demonizing his penny-ante affairs and infidelities. So, here, by god, was a way to get even: eviscerate Clinton’s VP, the decent, talented and fully prepared presidential candidate, Al Gore. After a seemingly endless negative media campaign against him, Gore was exhausted and angry and ready to give it up. Second, the understandable refusal on Gore’s part to challenge – really challenge – the voter fraud that took place in Florida. The singularly disgusting and highly successful theft engineered by Governor Jeb Bush and the utterly execrable Secretary of State (and Bush Florida co-campaign manager) Katherine Harris should have been cause for voter outrage across the nation.
But, this is not Serbia or Ukraine or the former Soviet state, Georgia. The voters in those countries went ballistic when election results were tampered with by right-wing thugs. But, not here. No, this is the United States. If we watch an election being stolen we get pissed because the television coverage is pre-empting some horseshit like “Who Want To Be A Millionaire.” When representative government was being destroyed in 2000, we did nothing. And after the election was stolen and the theft was okayed and blessed by five right-wing members of the US Supreme Court, the media did nothing to alert US citizens that we had just experienced a bloodless coup that would take the country into the chaos we now are experiencing. It was left to expatriate journalist Greg Palast to patiently explain to Americans – from the UK, for god’s sake - how they had just moved from democracy to dictatorship.
And, third, the refusal of US media to acknowledge the results of their own investigation of the Florida fraud and theft once Palast had shamed them into at least a look at what had happened in Florida. And, now, with Gore making films about the probable outcome of global warming, giving lectures and speeches on the same topic in addition to pointing out the obvious destruction by the Bush Crime Family of our system of self-government, and, in general, warning us that if we don’t take control of the horrific mess these Bush bastards have gotten us into, we have truly reached a point of no return: rational Democracy is dead; long live religious fanaticism and corporatism disguised as a uniquely degenerate brand of US fascism. And how are media responding to Gore now, now that they have been told by the country’s numero uno law enforcement officer, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, they are subject to arrest and conviction and imprisonment for reporting the crimes of this sick bunch of Bush appointees; that such reporting will be considered crimes against the State; that the precedent for this new clampdown on the free exchange of vital information is to be found in a law passed in 1917 that has never been used to enforce the sort of toxic, totalitarian secrecy now demanded by the Bush Crime Family?
Media are responding by going after Gore yet again. Snarky, patronizing reviews of his film; snotty, jealous editorials and columns about his obvious intellect and his seemingly sudden return to the public stage; it’s as though media are trying to show Gonzales they are willing to get on board. No more investigative pieces. No more whistle-blower articles (unless it’s about the use of NASA computers to download porn). No more embarrassing exposures of corrupt politicians (unless it’s some lower level Democrat from a Congressional backwater). The deal with the Devil, in other words, has been made. From whoredom to the less difficult life of the political pimp, the once-respected US media are finished, done, dead. What a shame. What a shameful ending.
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