Remember that number, $60 million. It is how much money the United States Chambers of Commerce are willing to spend to make sure that
John Edwards, son of mill workers, defender of consumers, champion of the middle class
is not elected president. I am not sure that John Edwards has even raised sixty million dollars in his entire campaign, but special business interests in this country as so scared that he will roll back all their tax breaks and perks and government handouts, that they are willing to fork over a big chunk of the money that we, the taxpayers have been forced to give them to make sure that we are not able to pick the candidate of our choice in the upcoming election.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-chamber8jan08,0,4301350.story?coll=la-politics-campaignhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/feedarticle?id=7217369So far, we have seen the corporate media do a ham handed job of attacking the Edwards campaign.
Edwards is a phony did ok for a while, but recently people have gotten wise to the lie. The
Two Man Race seemed to be working, until Edwards came in second in Iowa.
Now, the corporations are bringing out the big guns, the screenwriters, people who actually know how to write. Luckily for General Electric, they have one on staff already. Lawrence O’Donnell, formerly of
The West Wing . He knows how to turn out gripping political theater for television, so he should be able to come up with some gripping political theater for America, correct?
Maybe not. It ain’t easy to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse.
When Chris Matthews presented the MSNB/GE strategy to arrange the Democratic Party into a circular firing squad last week, the third item on his agenda was this accusation:
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/120 On Hardball Edwards was officially dubbed the spoiler who would prevent Obama from winning. That’s right. He is only staying in the race to steal votes from Hillary haters that rightfully belong to Obama. All his talk of One America and helping the poor is just a lie. He is wasting a year of his dying wife’s life in order to thwart Obama’s dream.
Sounds pretty ridiculous, correct? Like something Tweety would dream up in a fit of excessive motor-mouth. Hmmm. Maybe a seasoned script writer like O’Donnell could do something with the concept. Here is how he rephrased it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-odonnell/john-edwards-is-a-loser_b_81045.html John Edwards is a loser. He has won exactly two elections in his life and lost 31. Only one of his wins and all of his losses were in presidential primaries and caucuses. He remains perfectly positioned to continue to lose with a Kucinich-like consistency. Nothing but egomania keeps Edwards in the race now. All presidential candidates are egomaniacs but some of them have party status worth preserving that forces them to drop out when they hit the wall. A loser like Edwards has no status or dignity to lose. Campaigning and losing is his life. So, he will continue his simple-minded, losing campaign and deny Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton the one-on-one contest they deserve.
If John Edwards stays in the race, he might, in the end, become nothing other than the Southern white man who stood in the way of the black man. And for that, he would deserve a lifetime of liberal condemnation.
Did I read that correctly? Did Lawrence O’Donnell just reduce Barack Obama, the Messiah who represents
everyone rich, poor, Black, White, American, International, because he is Everyman
to just one demographic? And did O’Donnell just say that
Kucinich is a loser? And that Edwards is a loser like Kucinich, only with more followers? Making him the 2008 equivalent of...
Eugene McCarthy?? And did he just say that Edwards is simple minded and born to be a loser? Edwards, born to southern mill workers. Does that mean he does not know his place and that
all southerners born into the working class should accept the fact that they are born losers and should stay in their trailer parks where God intended them to be???And that Obama and Hillary
deserve to have a
Two Man Race , because the corporate media has been saying that they should have one for months and months and Edwards wasn’t supposed to come in second in Iowa????
Oh dear. That is the best that $60 million can buy? I could do better than that for free. I am tempted to say that O’Donnell is pulling the Chamber of Commerce’s leg, setting up a straw man that will be oh so easy to knock down with the faintest of breezes. And maybe he is. However,
the fact that it was written at all, means that bits and pieces of it will be quoted out of context, which will cause no end of trouble within the Democratic Party. If the GOP is lucky, we could have 1968 all over again, White versus Black heading into South Carolina, just as we had male versus female heading into New Hampshire.
Which means that O’Donnell is a bit fat race baiter as well as a bit fat stinking liar. Hand slaps to the Huffington Post for publishing this bs simply for the controversy it would generate. Every newspaper loves to increase its circulation, but the fact that this appears in
the Huffington Post will allow those intent upon starting a war between Whites and Blacks within the Democratic Party to say “Look! Look! A respectable left leaning on-line journal says that Edwards is a racist who is only staying in the race to make sure that no Black man ever becomes president!” At the very least, the Huffington Post has now lost its ability to criticize the New York Times for hiring Kristol. Any time they complain about any other papers’ editorial, that paper can respond “But you called John Edwards a phony and a racist and an egomaniac.”
$60 million dollars will buy a lot of Divide and Conquer. Who knows who is getting a book deal signed or a play put into production or a TV show considered or some other project off the ground, just for putting in a good word for the
No populists allowed cause.
Last week, after the corporate media called the New Hampshire primary wrong, Tom Brokaw said something profound. Here is what I posted about it at Salon:
"BROKAW: You know what I think we’re going to have to do?
"MATTHEWS: Yes sir?
"BROKAW: Wait for the voters to make their judgment."
As if THAT would ever happen.
The problem is that the corporate media does not know how to interfere with the election process to achieve the desired result. If they were skillful enough at weaving narratives to do the job that their bosses have assigned for them, they would be writing best selling novels or screenplays in Hollywood or maybe plays for Broadway. You have to be a pretty competent artist to do what they are supposed to do.
http://tabletalk.salon.com/webx?14@519.Zw0LaejJaWy.15@.773c0c6b/9428
It looks like the Chambers of Commerce have decided not to rely upon the regular journalists of the MSM any longer. There is too much money at stake for them. They have worked too hard to create the wealth disparity that has us at their mercy. This recession could be a real boon for them. They can not afford to have another FDR come along and spoil it.
But they are going to need writers better than O'Donnell. Who will they try next? Oliver Stone? Clint Eastwood? Nancy Reagan? Get ready for some tall tales. Maybe the Democrats should consider hiring some of the striking writers to work for our side. We are the union party after all.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
