don't worry about the government
Not even a Sunday afternoon matchup between Shaq and Yao Ming can withstand Freedom's March*. Start of today's Houston-Miami game was preempted for some occupation-sourced, PR-bullshit solemnly announced as yet another corner turned, but this time without the freaky pictures of the dead Hussein boys, or the weird image of hairy old Saddam pulled out of his hidey-hole; Dear Leader got to do his God-freedom-liberty-terra thing, too, wrapping himself in the American flag and that bastard new Iraqi flag, with some stigmata for good measure.
As I mentioned yesterday, none of this happens without a lap dog media. No context, no real reporting, no hindsight or foresight. More from Herman and Brodhead's book:
Demonstration Elections as Patriotic Dramaturgy
In his 'Symbolic Uses of Politics,' Murray Edelman notes that the public responds "to currently conspicuous political symbols...gestures and speeches that make up the drama of the state." Elections are a positive and heartening symbol; communism and terrorism are threatening. A skilled manipulation of such symbols allows the pubic to be reassured and rendered quiescent, especially where its understanding is vague and information sparse. The success of a demonstration election therefore depends on how the mass media treat the government's attempt to "manage" the public....[The] national media of the United States have been highly cooperative, accepting the government's manipulation of symbols, its agenda of relevant information and questions, and its formulation of the election as a drama between the forces of good and evil.
If we're to take the national media's reporting at face value, the response to the invasion of Iraq in the last six months by both the elephantine establishment press and it's spry, more clever cousin, the dissident press simply did not happen, just as anything even remotely resembling the democratic process has yet to occur in U.S.-U.K.-occupied Iraq. Like another worthless journalist said, "Whammy!"
* Freedom's March. Because we can't be free unless you're free. And by free, we mean mostly dead.
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