Media Scandal Just the Tip of the Iceberg

The News Corporation Phone Hacking Scandal has faded from sight.  The coverage was almost nonexistent here, but for a reason.  Our relation with the press goes a long way back to the First Amendment.  Back then it was in its infancy doing what it was supposed to do: keep the politicians accountable and reporting the news that’s fit to print. Our media has its color; some of the commentators look like eighth graders or characters from the Doonesbury comic strip.  The stable of blonds at FOX is most distracting.  The antics of the hosts don’t help either.  Throwing a football in front of the camera or verbally beating a guy to a pulp is not my idea of news reporting.  That’s the innocent part as predictable as the rising sun. 

Scant are the accumulated lessons from memory, experience, and critical thought.  It may come as a shock to the newer IPod, Facebook, and Twitter generations that Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t kill Lincoln.  There are Silent Majority Americans who remember when the U.S. population was 150,000,000 and the day when they got electricity.  We’ve seen what really goes down because we’re old enough to have observed the nature of man and politics. 

There has been a checkered development of our “public utility.”  The American Media has created Presidents, removed them from office, and reversed an election.  They controlled presidential succession, covered up an assassination, undermined the Vietnam War, begun other wars, and gained control of the vote tabulation process.  Our Media has championed the worst elements, filtered out opposing viewpoints, elevated from obscurity the worst elements, popularized the basest leanings, made heroes of criminals, ridiculed and attacked nearly every institution: Christianity, the family, the military, marriage, law.  They are the quintessential preservers of the race card and enablers for the ascension of depravities like drug use.  The Media is the mother ship for restless intellectuals.  They are also a haven for our politicians who have become dependent on electronic publicity, not the citizens they are supposed to represent – a conflict of interest as wide as the Grand Canyon.  Politicians flock to the Media’s lucrative warm embrace as consultants. 

To say that the Media is the “press” is to ignore its institutional development.  We were not surprised by scandal in the United Kingdom.  It is the norm here.  They think we do not know that our media, the most revolutionary class in America, has become the government.