When a political party suffers a “political lobotomy” in public during election season, the entire nation’s reputation suffers.
Top international news magazine Spiegel (think Europe’s version of Time or Newsweek) ran an article written by Marc Pitzke calling the Republicans a farce who are ruining our country’s reputation. The article is entitled, ‘The Republicans’ Farcical Candidates; A Club of Liars, Demagogues and Ignoramuses.’ In this article, Mr. Pitzke writes what our press here won’t:
The US Republican race is dominated by ignorance, lies and scandals. The current crop of candidates has shown such a basic lack of knowledge that they make George W. Bush look like Einstein. The Grand Old Party is ruining the entire country’s reputation.
We knew it was true, but it hurts to read it. We won’t often read such stark condemnations in the mainstream press here.
It probably helps that Spiegel has “most likely the world’s largest fact checking operation”. Yes, Virginia, their press actually checks facts unlike ours, who reports what both sides have “said” and the runs away, eagerly clutching their invite to John McCain’s ranch party like an hysterical tween Twilight fan waiting for Edward. This is the same American press that jumped in to defend Fox News from President Obama’s easily and obviously true charge that it was not a news outlet.
The American press has twisted themselves into self-effacing, obsequious contortions of false equivalence in order to appease conservatives until they’ve become an embarrassing parody of a political entourage rather than a functioning fourth estate. Our press are also quite cozy with their corporate bosses who like our news to be so conservatively “balanced” that it tips over with lies and distortions.
Now, thanks to the press, we are “debating” science versus belief as if both are equally factual, which is not the same thing as debating the merits of science versus belief or the necessity of either or the choice, even, of faith over proof. No, we are drowning in an avalanche of deliberately and cynically invoked stupidity that threatens our nation’s standing among other civilized nations; while we are debate if people walked among dinosaurs other nations get on with the business of addressing serious matters.
Republicans have humiliated America internationally time and time again. Whether it was monosyllabic Neanderthal Jim Inhofe in Copenhagen charging that climate change was a hoax sold by liberal elites in Hollywood or a winking Sarah Palin’s treasonous siren call of hatred in China, the hits have kept coming.
Meanwhile, certain other Republicans couldn’t travel to certain countries lest they be arrested for international war crimes, and still the party held its head high and blustered poutrage from their imaginary moral high ground and the American press hunkered down in their bunker of neurotic, co-dependent GOP-pleasing, endlessly apologizing to the outraged Republicans at their first whine of wolf.
The toxic Tea Party brew of Old Testament bigotry and hatred combined perfectly with the Koch brothers neo-Bircher agenda to create a neo-Fascist corporatized and glossily worshiped stupidity.
Held captive by our collective numbing and dumbing down, we were barely shocked when union members were blamed for Wall Street’s destruction of economic opportunity. We had been prepared through years of merely “reporting what they said” versus fact checking reality, and so we fought an uphill battle against a Luntzian meme sold to us from Fox but trickled into the mainstream by the Republican Fan Club of the mainstream press who know that Republicans hold grudges. Access is King.
We were told all points of view were equal. But of course, that’s not true. In the free market of ideas and intelligence, some people are actually smarter than others and some theories are actually supported by evidence. Both of these things should matter when you’re leading the free world if its exceptionalism you crave and meritocracy you tout.
Cowering in shame from Right wing charges of elitism, the press ensured that we were ripe for this year’s clown show. The press now demands that we all lower ourselves in a disingenuous and phony show of respect for the “values” of conservatives (adultery, ethics violations, sexual harassment and Randian death wishes for the poor). This press is so steeped in back-stabbing condescension combined with blindly ambitious self-service as to embarrass the watcher. The press knows better, but they’re happy to go along with the notion that the “ideas” emanating from the most uneducated bigots among us deserve equal air space with the Nobel Laureates.
We call this American exceptionalism because it keeps us from noticing that any chance we had at exceptionalism is now gone, swept away with a distorted capitalistic system meant to enrich the most unethical players instead of the hardest workers. So died the American dream of economic opportunity. The press distracts from this reality by suggesting that Rick Perry or Herman Cain are presidential material, which is a pat on the head to the deliberately dumbed down among us lest they notice how they got screwed.
Yes, you too can be president, see nothing is a matter of merit anymore! Even the most recent study showing that watching Fox makes you more ignorant than watching no news will not convince the Fox Followers that they are being used.
It is only now that “serious minded” (the quotation marks are for their cynical silence in public during the last 3 years, pretending they didn’t see where their party was going) Republicans such as Peggy Noonan and George Will are speaking the truth that the press dares to point out factual inaccuracies in Republican debates. Noonan, calling the line up a “freakshow,” has been perhaps most blunt. Are they to be congratulated for finally daring to speak up, only after they see their party in real political peril?
It didn’t serve the Republicans for the press to speak the truth and so the “serious thinkers” among the conservatives ignored the glaring break from reality as the Tea Party charged the President with socialism. It suited them then, but three years later, they don’t like the result.
And so now they have started to denounce the party, as if they didn’t see this coming when they themselves conspired to sell the public on the absurdity that Healthcare reform was socialism. The pied pipers in the mainstream media are taking their cues and gingerly beginning to call out minor problems with the Republican candidates as if there were any way to do the utter horror show of stupidity justice in one correction.
One imagines the mainstream journalist seeing him or herself as the brave warrior daring to fact check a Republican, when in fact they were given the green light to do so and without such permission would have remained silently complicit in the ruination of this country, bowing down to charges of sexism and liberal bias while selling the entire country down the river of revivalist tent, snake oil mediocrity passing itself off as Republican ideology.
We laugh at the current crop of Republicans the way some people laugh at a funeral; the horror so unreal as to be incomprehensible, the grief for our nation suppressed with a thin layer of hope that this is an anomaly. But of course, it’s not.
Republican party leaders must surely be amazed in private at their ability to sell us anything; even they must be shocked and somewhat saddened that they have gotten away with it all.
The mainstream media knows that most of the Republican candidates ooze hubris the way only a small mind looking for a quick slice of spoiled American pie can. They know that a party running grifters, con artists and carnival barkers as Presidential material shouldn’t be giving a sane President a run for his money — and wouldn’t be, if only they had done their jobs.
But without a horse race the financials of a corporate press look glum. So we are taken along the for the ride of the relentless struggle for the lowest point to which the Republicans can sink without dying, aided and abetted by the mainstream press.
The fact that any of these candidates, save Jon Huntsman, are taken seriously is an alarming indicator of the imminent fall of America. We’ve been dragged down kicking and screaming by a Right wing so attached to its own superiority that it refused to acknowledge when it was wrong.
Instead of reassessing what it means to be a conservative post Bush-debacle, conservatives put a flashier cross on their ideas, more supercilious padding on their epistemic closure and jacked up the hate and division; hence creating the farcical show we’re all being subjected to today.
And they wonder how they got here while we wonder how we let them ruin this country and cause us international embarrassment.
The press won’t stop greedily licking the crazy crumbs off of the Republicans’ floor long enough to have even a moment of clarity, but since the GOP’s political death comes painfully dished out over numerous humiliatingly-televised debates, the press will cover the bleeding demagogues of the Republican Party just as they did Anna Nicole’s death. They will never discuss their complicity in allowing the Republican Party to become the sad clown it is today, let alone behave as the fourth estate should.
The big show goes on, as the foundation of our nation caves under the inestimable weight of the collective ignorance and hubris.
Image: Commentara
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The GOP really has become a clown show, only there’s nothing funny about the embarassing spectacle they’ve become or about the destructive policies they want to keep inflicting on everyday Americans.
The US media are corporate owned…have not believed a whit of the false equivalency BS for years!…
This article came out and was quashed by the USA press because it was spot in!
A rather long rehash but guess many did not see it, last week!
The answer? http://newsparticipation.com/ Citizens tell the news by themselves.
Whats even worse is that any time a Republican congressman, or a pundit comes on any TV show they always say that their candidates are all wonderful and 100% better than Obama. I am not talking about Fox alone. Any Republican on any show on any channel says the same thing and no one from the media ever challenges them.
The mantra I keep hearing is that Obama once said there were 57 states, as if that makes the Reps better.
Where are you hearing this Mantra? I find it hard to believe this. Please post your resources.
Really? They come and post it right here, at least once a week.
it is true that we laugh at the current crop of Republican candidates for president. But little do we realize we are laughing to hide the horror that the Republican Party would even consider putting candidate such as these up for president.
I look at it this way. The Republican Party is not interested in gaining the presidency in 2012. It is however interested in recovering the house and the senate. What better way to hide that from you than to throw out a bunch of absolutely idiotic people to run for president? These candidates are nothing more than a way for the Republican Party to throw out talking points and to create problems and roadblocks, something that the media willingly goes along with.
this is humiliating not only to the people of the United States but it is humiliating to America as a country. George W. Bush destroyed this country overseas and we are trying to get that back. I believe that another reason these candidates are out there is to show this country in it’s worst light under the reign of Obama. Unfortunately that fails simply because the world recognizes that it is the GOP producing this effect. But I don’t think they care
Excellent commentary! Thanks for writing!
Thanks to Sarah Palin’s “lamestream media,” we now have candidates like Romney refusing to Face the Nation or Meet the Press. Heck, he even got his magical underwear in a wad with Faux News. And Newtie can act all cocky during debates and challenge the moderator’s right to question. This began with the grooming of Sarah Palin for the big leagues by the Republican machine, and seeing what a disaster she was in interviews with well-seasoned journalists, the decision was made to make the media the enemy. So now the U.S. press finds itself in the humiliating situation of having to chase after Republican candidates to beg and plead for crumbs. Well played, MSM, you helped make our political system a big fat joke.
@Jolene: I am always taken aback when I see your comments, because we share a first name, and it’s such an uncommon/rare name to see. Every time I do, I do a “whoa” and tell myself, “I don’t remember posting that”, then I read it and realize it’s you. And then I’m always happy because you’re thoughts pretty much mirror mine and we don’t need to worry about someone named Jolene posting some teabagger drivel and people thinking it’s us =) Just a funny! Carry on the fight, people!
Thank you for this exposé on the evils of presstitution, which is at the heart and core of our national decay.
When William Shirer – an American journalist if there ever was one- was recording his “Berlin Diary”, he pointed out how many who had once been giants of a free press in Weimar days had let themselves be co-opted by the Nazi regime, barkdogs and yesmen to its criminal policies. Yet they did this only *after* the Nazi takeover, when the regime had the absolute power not just to punish and reward, but to establish and destroy. Before that, there had been journalistic outlets frankly pro- Nazi – and everyone knew who they were- and as openly anti- Nazi: the Munich Post and Fritz Gerlich did not fall silent until violence shut their mouths. Our current “press” is otherwise. They are actually paving the way for their own suppression, censoring themselves in advance of the menacing takeover. Only a few, such as Rupert Murder’s enterprises, Dominionist outlets, and a few old line reactionaries do this out of philosophical agreement; the rest do it from a mix of what can best be described as exgreediency (isn’t that better than “refudiation”?) and fear. Our current press for the most part reminds me of Tony Blair’s alliance with the Bush doctrine: a ridiculous little beast with the face of a grinning yapdog, pretending it isn’t being wagged by a hugely predatory alligator tail. And the more I see of foreign journalism, the less respect I have for our own purveyors of “news”.
The problems are manifold, but I see two points of attack on this process of journalistic stultification. The first is breaking up the power of Rupert Murder’s blackmail/defamation machine. The second is resisting every attempt of the corporatocracy to impose their own gateways on the Internet. And let us not overlook the increasing power of the Right to command both the allegiance of our lawfully-constituted military and the armed might of their personal paramilitaries. If the next election doesn’t turn out the way they demand, they may dare take matters into their own hands- and our grinning yapdog press is likely to outdo that of post-Weimar germany in their eagerness to please their new masters.
“The American press has twisted themselves into self-effacing, obsequious contortions of false equivalence in order to appease conservatives until they’ve become an embarrassing parody of a political entourage rather than a functioning fourth estate.”
You really nailed it, Sarah! In your opinion, is there anything we can do to help fix this sorry state of affairs?
I wonder if any of these clowns really want to be President or if they are just trying to sell books, or pull a Palin and get a reality show or massive speaking fees? It’s like a train wreck that you can’t look away from. I was so disgusted by the media fawning over Newt and Trump yesterday. As Jon Steward recently pointed out, the media is like the dog in “Up”; Squirrel!
It’s been interesting to me to see how many hits my political blogs get around the world–the more political, the more widespread the hits. I’m sure other countries must be watching in disbelief–there’s something fascinating about observing such a complete train wreck! To give foreign journalists their due, I check with them rather than our own press when I want the true skinny.
Me too.
I read off shore stuff as well
Sarah you rule. That article was so spot on.
Sarah,
Thanks for saying what must be said if America is to regain any of its past greatness. The GOP has destroyed America and has made gross mediocrity and stupidity acceptable–things I spent over 30 years in the classroom fighting against.
I had read the article on Spiegel last week and could not help but wonder why I have to go to foreign press outlets to find out the truth of what is happening here and lamented the sorry state of affair in our press/media. It seems to me that “We, the people” are going to have to “occupy” the FCC to demand the break up of the monoply of the coporations which control the Fourth Estate and to use sites like PoliticusUSA, Alternet, etc. to find out the truth of what is going on here. Until more journalists like Sarah Jones speak truth to power, we as a country are going to continue our rapid descent to becoming a Third World nation.
I like your thinking.
“Republican party leaders must surely be amazed in private at their ability to sell us anything; even they must be shocked and somewhat saddened that they have gotten away with it all.”
In my humble cynical opinion, the are not shocked and saddened. They are gleeful and giddy.
This piesce just re-enforce my fundamental belief that not until the U.S Congress is packed 100% full of strong, humane and responsible Libral thinking women(not men) like Sarah Jones shall we have a real chance going forward. Again, thank you for this write-up
Hear! Hear! I have been convinced for some time now that until women take over Congress we are lost. Most women run for office for the right reasons, rather than power and greed, which seems to transfix our men.
Eek! I tend to agree with that, but let’s not forget the Ms.’s Palin, Angle, those two kooks in CA (thankfully I can’t remember their names), etc. Then again, with the men out of the way, they might behave like adults. I would vote for Sarah Jones for anything!
They hardly qualify to beat what the GOP is currently doing. Nice try, but you missed the boat
No result President? LOL! Ask the CBO that question, ask OBL, ask the 3.3 millions who have jobs because of him.
Sorry again, but your silly talking points are irrelevant
Despite the bleatings of those who still think that there is some sort of parity between an occasional fumfer and outright ignorance, a dose of reality.
This isn’t about some candidate making a “gaffe”. It is about all of them making statements that are deranged and sociopathic in the extreme.
Child labor, homophobia, ignorance of our system of government and the Constitution, religious balderdash, the list is endless.
These miscreants are not only an embarrassment to our country and our culture but to humanity and civilization itself.
Corporate America are destroying people @TheNextWeb: Microsoft’s new Xbox 360 agreement makes U.S users waive the right to sue tnw.to/1C8at this is idiotic
I mean has America so little respect for normal people?
The truth is that it is the American media which has truly become an international humiliation and embarrassment. The people need to take over and become their own voice as the media has sold out.
The article makes a good point, but the other side of this is really the ineptitude of the democrats who have failed to present an alternative to the GOP. The democrtats had an opportunity to lead after the election of Obama, they had the GOP smarting after 8 years of the ‘bush’ doctrine. Then came the Tea party farce with all the socialism and Obama is a muslim rhetoric and the GOP found a way back in and it’s been the mister bean show ever since. As for the media i’m proud to say that i have never seen a Fox news cast, i turn on CNN just to see how they bend over backwards to ‘keep them honest’. Saddly the Fox format has worked so well that we now have a franchise here in canada. It’s mostly right wing talk show hosts who have an axe to grind. This format works because it is not about the news it’s about fear mongering and the lowest common denominator.
There should not be left or right media just media. Unfortunately there is little we can do about the corporate take over of news.In closing, take the corporate money out of politics and the media, real centrists need to take the country back and hash a plan to get out of debt.P.S if you really need to get balanced news watch Charlie Rose and the rest of the PBS line up.
Best article I’ve read in a long time.
[...] Posted by LandLocked66c Great article even if it is from a Liberal source… How the American Media Helped the GOP Become An International Humiliation This is a fluff piece. It is not written by nor references Dyer. No one has introduced [...]