"I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God." - Newsweek Editor Evan Thomas,
June 5th, 2009.
Since I was fourteen years old, I must have read George Orwell's
Nineteen Eighty-Four a dozen times. I've also seen the great
film adaptation with John Hurt and Richard Burton a number of times as well, though I really miss the
haunting original Eurythmics
soundtrack that has since been replaced with a classical score by director Michael Radford.
Regardless, the film still retains its visceral power twenty-five years later, as does the novel for sixty years running now. I suppose in some ways, it's like returning to the scene of a car accident or some brutal crime I've witnessed. It could not be more repulsive, yet I find myself strangely drawn back to it time and again. Perhaps, on a deeper level, I use it as a mirror to reflect back the world as I see it to look for danger signs.
In that respect, today's 'Main Stream Media' is actually much worse than the Ministry of Truth for which Winston Smith conducted his labor of lies and rewriting of headlines. Big Brother could only wish for the kind of mindless adulation and
choreographed performances the mainstream press prostrates themselves to deliver to us in humiliating fashion. To Evan Thomas, Obama is God. Brian Williams
bows in deference to him. Chris Matthews gets a thrill up his leg. They Love Big Brother. And there are never any black clouds in the news, only silver linings. Hundreds of thousands of jobs lost become jobs
'saved or created' with no questions asked, like the reduction in chocolate rations in Orwell's 1984 being praised as an increase.
Of course, no good Big Brother media program would be complete without a hated
Emmanuel Goldstein. In that respect, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin seems to fit the bill for whatever
bizarre reasons. Yet the Emmanuel Goldstein of Orwell's world only received hate for two minutes at a time. The Two Minutes Hate for Sarah Palin is neverending. It scorches the pages of the New York Times, the
Atlantic and the
Huffington Post without relent. Times columnist Maureen Dowd embodies this love-hate relationship to Orwellian perfection, calling Palin a
'nutty Caribou Barbie' while praising President Obama for his strength of will in
swatting a fly. How Orwellian is that for a Pulitzer Prize-winning 'journalist'?
Yet this Goldstein-like demonization in the mainstream press is epidemic on nearly every political subject there is. If you oppose gay marriage for any reason, you're hated as a homophobe. If you oppose President Obama's policies, you're hated as a racist. If you favor the Second Amendment, you're hated as a gun nut. If you oppose abortion, you're hated as a Scott Roeder-in-waiting. If you oppose the stifling taxation and regulation of Climate Change, you're hated as a heretic on the order of a Holocaust denier. In other words, if you don't adhere to the populist positions favored by today's Big Brother media, you're a Thought Criminal.
That isn't reporting. It's the worst kind of propaganda there is. In fact, it's straight out of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Today's case in point?
Google. 'US Independence Day Marred By Tea Party Protests.' Marred? What better way to celebrate Independence Day than to practice our Constitutional rights of assembly and protest? Rights people are fighting and dying for all over the world, especially in Iran?
I guess it doesn't fit the Google Big Brother program. My bad. Maybe I should be helping Google set up freedom-blocking firewalls and
self-censoring for the Chinese government on the Fourth of July, instead of complaining in a Tea Party demonstration. What was I wrong-thinking?
Yet all that is all just window dressing. Fortunately, with the Internet Underground, there are enough Winston Smiths like me out there to give Maureen Dowd, Evan Thomas, Chris Matthews and Brian Williams Hell on Earth. But the fact the media is even engaged in these kind of extremes between those they worship and those they hate, on such a grandiose scale, is very damaging to our democracy. Everything is reported but the truth. And reporting the truth, regardless of where the chips may fall, is the sworn duty of journalists and reporters everywhere.
But where this kind of blatantly biased reporting is causing the most damage, some irreparable, is on the international front. Photoshopped pictures and staged casualties throughout the Israel-Lebanon War of 2006 were so endemic they earned their own moniker:
Fauxtography. Staged pictures are even
emerging from the current Honduras crisis, in order to demonize the present interim government of Honduras even further than they have been to date. And that is where today's lesson in Big Brother journalism begins.
By all indications, the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya from Honduras was a classic example in booting a wannabe dictator violating the Honduras Constitution by following the Constitution as it was written. The Supreme Court, the Attorney General, the Congress, the armed forces, the majority of the Honduran people, even Zelaya's own Liberal Party expressed vehement opposition to President Zelaya's Chavez-like extra-Constitutional power grab attempts on legal, political and even Constitutional grounds. Even the order of succession upon Zelaya's ouster followed Constitutional procedure.
The Army didn't seize power. It only carried out the government's orders, then went back to their barracks. You wouldn't know that from reading or watching mainstream press accounts of events in Honduras. Only a handful of outlets like the Wall Street Journal, Gateway Pundit and the Honduran-based Fausta's Blog are reporting on the constitutional aspects of Zelaya's ouster from office. So, instead of being praised for following constitutional procedure in order to prevent a Chavez-like dictatorship from emerging in Honduras, the interim government is scorned, ostracized and sanctioned far and wide.
Blatant favoritism in the media, like that shown to President Obama, or vitriolic hatred spewed at Sarah Palin, is one thing. But by misreporting events in Honduras to the
opposite extreme of what really happened, a great many Hondurans, already poor by Western standards, now stand to suffer even more greatly by cutoffs of economic and humanitarian aid, as well as by trade sanctions. People will now be getting severely hurt by it.
Just how far will this twisted travesty of media disinformation and international injustice go? Will the US, along with democratic stalwarts Nicaragua and Venezuela, line up armies on the Honduran borders to reinstate the Constitution-violating Zelaya at the point of a gun? It's really scary. The UN, the EU, the OAS and even the freedom-championing United States of America are turning on a nation that exercised its Constitutional rights and responsibilities, in the face of Zelaya's repeated and egregious violations of same.
In the face of all this, Dear Readers, I and others can only scribble in our Winston Smith diaries at places like here at Digital Journal and other free-speaking blogs, unfettered by any political agenda. My agenda has always been the truth. That's what Orwell taught me. Nobody pays me to write anything. I have no political baggage or obligations. I just call BS as I see it. A lot of people don't like that, so I get the Emmanuel Goldstein treatment, too. I can live with that. What I can't live with is staying silent as the Big Brother media runs rampant over the truth to the point it hurts a great many people.
And here at Digital Journal, and other great blogs like Breitbart's
Big Hollywood site, is where you'll find myself and others speaking out against those who would push lies as the truth and vice versa. I will continue to do the math and call out those who declare two plus two as anything but four. At least until the Orwellian
Fairness Doctrine is enacted. Then we can all enjoy the same restrictions on truth as those enforced by Iran and China. Just like the freedom at gunpoint now being offered to Honduras by our democracy-championing government and far too many others.
And why not? After all,
Freedom is Slavery. Why would I object to the Fairness Doctrine setting me free, and releasing me from the bondage of truth? Winston Smith signing off. Good Night and Good Luck!
