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CounterPunch
January
30, 2003
Free Press?
"There's No Damn Thing"
Flopping Through
the Money Shot
by ANTHONY GANCARSKI
It's appropriate that the cable news airs so many
Viagra spots just now. Consider what Viagra ultimately is about.
So-called erectile dysfunction, of the sort that often as not
accompanies performance anxiety. Performance anxiety is the kind
of thing that snowballs, whether in sex, sports, or any other
performance medium. It's arguable that National League fans chanting
Darryl Strawberry's name as a taunt -- Dar-ryl! Dar-ryl! -- was
a root cause for Mr. Strawberry's repeated run-ins with the law.
Just because he likes a little rock, he's a walking punch line
for every Sportscenter anchor and sleazy stand-up comic within
range of a live mike. Kick the man when he's down, why don't
you? Never mind that Straw was so over twenty years ago that
UTFO recorded "Chocolate Strawberry" in homage to the
slugger and what he represented to Mets fans. Long limbed grace,
a sweet, natural swing. The potential to be one of the greats.
But, of course, Darryl Strawberry is
a joke. Easiest thing imaginable to slap him around in absentia.
Like masturbating, or taking liberties with a corpse, or calling
plays without a defense. The willingness of so many in the national
media establishment to take joy in Strawberry's problems with
laws relating to substance abuse -- I don't see any crack dealers
putting him in jail -- reflects an elemental cowardice in the
corporate media caste. A willingness to destroy the powerless,
to mock human suffering, to reflect their sponsors' interests
by way of selling American citizens on so many despicable lies.
But I'm not saying anything that hasn't
been said before. And it's goddamned un-American too, in case
you're keeping track of such things. Better to front like you're
facing some moral dilemma as you decide what street gang gets
your protection money. Crips or Bloods. US or UN. Focus on the
uniforms and the signs of authority, and don't ask too many questions.
Because it's like Katherine Graham said, there are some things
the people don't have the right to know.
Or maybe it's more like how John Swinton
put it. The former Chief of Staff of the New York Times, in 1953
[the figurative dawn of the national security state], claimed
that "there is no such thing, at this date of the world's
history, in America as an independent press. You know it and
I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest
opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never
appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions
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 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."
Of course, most everyone reading this
knows Swinton is telling the truth here. We see the Democrats
wrestling their consciences, only to take a fall for the payoffs
of defense contractors, and for their continued incumbency. We
saw the media establishment run like hell from Cynthia McKinney,
painting her as a radical because she dared to ask questions
about what the hell was happening to her country. Those creatures
of conscience within the two major parties, and the media adjuncts
thereof, reduced her to a caricature, so invested they were in
this tapestry of lies that pre-dated most of their births.
A tapestry of lies, also known as the
political center, that place where nothing matters except business.
It's always been far easier to stone the heretic to death than
to examine exactly why it is someone bothers with heresy. There's
no payoff in it. As soon as you get heard, you're offed by one
intelligence asset or another. But then you get lionized in eulogy,
and all your opponents -- saw-toothed jackals with complexions
like freshly-waxed floors -- extol you as a voice for peace,
diversity, or some other abstraction trotted out by statists
to convince people that their blood, sweat, tears, and expended
belief wasn't a complete waste of time, energy, and life itself.
Anthony Gancarski, author of Unfortunate
Incidents [Diversity Inc, 2001], welcomes comments at
Anthony.Gancarski@attbi.com.
Yesterday's
Features
Sheldon Hull
An Extended
Promo with No Payoff
Notes on the State of George W. Bush
Emily Zitter-Smith
Watching
TV in Cairo
Linda Heard
Showdown
at the Crawford Corale
Mike James
Smear Pete Townshend, Cover Up Blair's Cabinet:
Alleged Pedophiles in Britain's War Room
Kathryn Casa
The Other
State of the Union
Brian Cloughley
WMD:
Okay, Where Are They?
Gloria Bergen
Work
That Kills
Mark Weisbrot
Another
World is Possible
Alexander Cockburn
Yes, That Was the President
Philip Farruggio
My Flag Held Hostage
Adam Engel
Domicide
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January 25
/ 26, 2003
Ron Jacobs
Iraq
War as Football Game
Bill and Kathy
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Too Many Smoking Guns: Israel, American Jews and the War on Iraq
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Bruce Jackson
Killing an Oak Tree: a Gratuitous Death
Jennifer Berkshire
Porto Allegre Diary II: Building the Party, Lula Style
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Left Turns in South America
Edward Said
When Will Arabs Resist?
William A.
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Anthony Gancarski
America Never Was America to Me
Subcomandante
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Zaps to Basques: Lighten Up!
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Music Lives in Palestine
Marta Russell
Extinguishing Frida Kahlo
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Man in the Black Suit: a novelini
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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