Why The American Mind Is So Fucked Up- 4 Newsweek Covers

[Jcrowley]

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14975282/site/newsweek/site/newsweek/

In the US, corporate propaganda has played upon the high level of religious beliefs in the community, beliefs which leave its citizens predisposed to see the world in "Manichean terms''. This outlook leads towards a preference for action over reflection, a "pragmatic orientation'' that is perfectly suited to the corporate aim of identifying positive symbols with business, while assigning negative values to those that oppose them, such as labour unions and welfare provisions.

The organised dissemination of these symbols had its initial impetus in groups such as the National Americanization Committee, which succeeded in manipulating nationalist and patriotic symbols during World War I to associate corporate values with the "American way of life''. The psychological power of this association cannot be discounted: it has proved to be an enduring feature of the political climate in the US today.

Since then the corporate agenda has embraced all areas of society - media, schools, academia and the workplace - with focuses on different levels from "grassroots'' to "tree-tops''. It has succeeded via the mass media in identifying capitalism with democracy and in portraying any challenge to corporate elites as either "subversive'' or "extremist''.

Look at what a former New York Times Journalist John Swinton was saying about journalism all the way back in 1880 in free America:

“I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.”

“The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?”

“We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”

[pooja]

1. wow.... post that on a freeper site

[ikojo]

2. Is there a way to subscribe to the European editions of

Newsweek?

So much for the liberal media.

[PCIntern]

3. Terrific find...

and a great header by you. You are Ed Zachary correct.

[Chipper Chat]

4. Maybe Newsweek will explain it away thusly:

"We felt that a provocative cover with a handsome man would only cause teenage American female hormones to accelerate, so we opted for the benign cover."
What a nice christian response. Falwell would approve.

[acmejack]

5. Damn!

I was looking at my free newsweek and thinking it was an interesting if somewhat odd cover. I had been reading about Annie from the Anniversary issue of Rolling Stone where they had all her greatest cover shots just the other day. I had no clue until this minute what I was missing. It figures.

[Jcrowley]

7. Bread and circuses

Bread and circuses is a derogatory phrase which can describe either government policies to pacify the citizenry, or the shallow, decadent desires of that same citizenry. In both cases, it refers to low-cost, low-quality, high-availability food and entertainment, and to the exclusion of things which the speaker considers more important, such as art, public works projects, democracy, or human rights.

It originated as the Latin phrase "panem et circenses" (literally "bread and circuses"), and is thought to have been coined by Juvenal, a Roman satiric poet of the 1st century AD, to describe the practice of Roman Emperors who gave unlimited free wheat to the poor and costly circus games as a means of pacifying the populace with food and entertainment. Juvenal bemoaned that it was a deplorable apathy towards heroism.

In fact, after Juvenal's time, the system of free or heavily subsidized food distribution was limited to a minority of Roman Citizens holding a special token (tessera) entitling them to a monthly supply of grain and olive oil from the reign of Septimus Severus. The rations were probably too small to feed a family and the receivers were not necessarily poor or in need of free food. This does not change the fact that the food supply to a city the size of Rome was of primary concern to the emperors in order to avoid popular unrest.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses

[lapfog_1]

6. I'm sure the MSM is just trying to keep us

from disturbing our beautiful minds with those foreign cover stories.

Everything is going GREAT in the WOT... * said so just the other day, and repeats it over and over
and over and over and over and over and over... so it MUST be true, right?

:sarcasm:

[Canuckistanian]

8. What an insult

Really, what does that say about the average intelligence of an American citizen?

They can't handle the truth?

[uppityperson]

9. k&r