It's
easy to play! Just focus your attention on one person's plight, encourage the Mighty Wurlitzer to come along for the ride and make a drama out of it...
...and
PRESTO!The entire MSM will dutifully tag along, following the lead trailblazed by FAUX News and rabid frothing Christanoid* bloggers. The drama serves to distract debate from:
- Tom Delay's unethical behavior.
- The non-existent Social Security crisis, which is another con-game entirely. See: The $4.7 Trillion Pyramid.
- The looming crisis in Medicaid underfunding.
- The messy Imperialist war in Iraq.
- The bankruptcy bill which is going to screw millions of Americans really hard.
- Pollution, mercury toxicity-- ah, screw it, the whole damn environment.
And when the entire, shameful, explicit debacle is over, you get to pretend that there is a
crisis in the judiciary. Therefore, Fearless Leader should be allowed to appoint all the judges he wants. Sorry, all the rabid, pro-corporate, Christianoid*, judges he wants.
-------------------------------------
Ignoring suffering of everyone who isn't Terri SchiavoThere is a con man's technique that politicians sometimes use to manipulate the public and never has it worked better than with Terri Schiavo.
The scheme involves making a very big deal about the plight of a single person to get us to ignore the plight of hundreds, thousands or even millions of others.
Two-bit hustlers use distraction and diversion techniques to lift your wallet or empty your bank account. Political flimflammers use the tragedy of a single family to distract you from the horror they are inflicting upon your friends and neighbors.
snip
And while President Bush and Congress rushed to intervene in the Schiavo case, saying they were acting to preserve life, they were in no hurry to discuss their proposed cuts to Medicaid, which helps the poor. And they avoided talking about the tens of millions of Americans with no health insurance and how many of them will die for lack of it.
more@link
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Terri Schiavo & the Right-Wing MachineIn the Schiavo tragedy, leaders of the Christian Right and the Republican Party marketed themselves as the defenders of life and painted their liberal adversaries as intellectual elitists lacking compassion for a defenseless woman. Conservative leaders also hoped to rally their base around the need for more conservative judges who would defend the so-called “culture of life.”
With stunning bravado, the Right played on the Schiavo story’s appeal as a round-the-clock cable TV drama: a life-or-death countdown; grieving parents; a husband who could be made into the heavy; supposedly insensitive judges; Republican leaders rushing to the rescue, including both Jeb and George W. Bush.
snip
The apparent logic behind Bush’s differing reactions was that the Schiavo case was a cause celebre for Bush’s Christian conservative base, while the Minnesota school shooting carried the risk of reviving demands for tighter gun control, which might offend another powerful Bush constituency, the gun lobby.
snip
The political theatrics were reminiscent of another case of Republican moralistic posturing: the 1998-99 impeachment crisis over Bill Clinton’s lying about sex with White House aide Monica Lewinsky. Then, the Republican-controlled Congress intruded into another private matter – marital infidelity – where millions of Americans, including many leading Republicans, had personal experience.
more@link
*When I say Christianoid, I don't mean Christians. I mean
Christianoid.
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