[lbo-talk] no dissent, we're Americans!

R rhisiart at charter.net
Mon Jun 2 22:00:43 PDT 2003


----- Original Message ----- From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Monday, June 02, 2003 6:00 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] no dissent, we're Americans!


|
|
| R wrote:
| >
|
| >
| > No one in the media attacked McCarthy until he attacked Eisenhower and
| > began to be a real nuisance to those in power.
| >
| > Carrol
| >
| > carrol, McCarthy attacked the US Army. remember?
|
| Yes, I remember. I sneaked out of work at the National Security Agency
| to watch it on TV in the PX of Arlington Hall Station. (We didn't own a
| tv ourselves.) And it was pretty clear to everyone involved that the
| attack was on _Eisenhower_, _through_ the army.
|
| > generally, your facts are correct, carrol, but they have nothing to do
with
| > media monopolies, or concentration. the changes you believe are for the
| > better occured largely due to social movements in the 1960s
|
| Of course. That's also why Nixon was the most progressive president
| we've had in the last 30+ years.
|
| > and were due,
| > among other things, to people who fought concentration of media
ownership.
|
| Nonsense. I doubt that the rioters in Watts or West Chicago gave a
| thought to "media concentration." The point is that the media has always
| been capitalist, and concentrated or not concentrated, pretty much
| reflects the current consensus of capitalist politics. You are mistaking
| a symptom for substance.
|
| Carrol

no, carrol, you're jumping to conclusions just to be sassy. i didn't say demonstrators had anything to do with media. generally, people who fought concentration, like bagdikian, were media people who believed in things like "the public's right to know" and "the fourth estate" which today's corp media find contemptable.

you are right about nixon, however. too bad democrats don't realize this, bedazzled by their fantasies about clinton.

but wrong about eisenhower.

actually, as i said, mcCarthy had outlived his usefulness to the power elite, booze and concomitant health problems were killing him; his obnoxious paranoid personality and lust for power were gumming up the works. it was his time to go. the "army/mcCarthy hearings" were the vehicle for this. they were broadcast gavel to gavel on ABC and the DuMont networks, both victims to consolidation. [anyone out there ever heard of the DuMont network before? you, carrol?].

a polished lawyer named robt welch, from a boston law firm, did a marvelous hatchet job, kicked the daylights out of McCarthy and Roy Cohen; mcCarthy didn't know what hit him. the issue ostensibly revolved around a man named G. David Shine. i believe shine was a boyfriend of cohen, who tried to get him special treatment from the army when he was drafted. when the army did not fully cooperate, mcCarthy's HUAC was stupid enough to initiate their usual blather about communists, attacking a sacred cow that won WW II for the good, old USA.

the most important point here (the one we probably should be discussing) is that the army/mcCarthy hearings proved how great an impact the media could have on politics, particularly TV. this fact did not go unnoticed. the exposure mcCarthy got on TV (and the drubbing he got from welch) opened the eyes of the american public to his bizarre and disgusting personality, turning the majority of them against him. and motivated the power elite to gradually destroy the US mass media as a force for anything but the right wing, shattering public confidence in it. a process which inexorably continues right up to today with the FCC vote.

and will keep on going until the american people wise up to fact they've lost control of their own political system, if they ever had any control. and learn to identify and get rid of the shills in both major parties, particularly the democrats, who the shills are working for and who owns them.

R


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