Lenin wrote a lot about having
revolutionary newspapers such as the Spark (Iskra), Forward
(Vperyod), and Proletarians (Proletary) appear credible. He sternly
urged to have "news" (and even art criticism!) that appeared to
be dry in style; it was presented as if neutral in order to gain
phoney respectability (accordingly, the bolshevik contributors went
really wild only in op-ed pages, or such was Lenin's vision).
Roger Ailes who runs Fox News is a
career, far-right wing political manipulator. He knows media, sure,
and was even involved in Broadway plays http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/A/htmlA/ailesroger/ailesroger.htm, as well as a botched attempt
to bring the scourge Rush Limbaugh to TV.
"
While
serving as both CNBC's president and Limbaugh's producer, Ailes went
on Don Imus's radio show to promote Limbaugh's reports of a "suicide
cover-up, possibly murder," in the death of White House counsel
Vincent Foster. 'The guy who's been doing an excellent job for the
New York Post [Christopher Ruddy]...for the first time on the Rush
Limbaugh show said that...he did not believe it was suicide.... Now,
I don't have any evidence.... These people are very good at hiding or
destroying evidence.'"
http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/2004/05/12/tv/index2.html
Ailes was never a journalist, though,
but merely someone bent on transforming media into a reactionary
political instrument. Going back aways, he is known for inventing
the original Swift Boat technique of destroying an opponent by a
noisy smear
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/29/weekinreview/the-nation-swift-boats-and-the-lessons-of-dukakis.html,
and he slipped by the Federal Elections Commission with his Willie
Horton abuse of Michael Dukakis only because the legendarily
ineffectual body deadlocked.
In time, Ailes began having trouble
with his CNBC gig and another NBC cable network where he had a one-hour show;
that's when NBC pulled the plug and went in the other direction by hatching
MSNBC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Ailes Briefly cast adrift, Ailes soon met a foreign misanthrope with a huge bankroll and no sense of honor named Rupert Murdoch: Ailes thus
concocted Fox News!
Cut to 2009, and they have admitted
that Fox News did "P.R." for the teabaggers! Admitted
it!!! http://tpmtv.talkingpointsmemo.com/?id=2378425
Just a little "public relations"
work by the "news" network
http://mediamatters.org/reports/200904080025
for anti-Obama Swift Boating. They also like to claim the
"department" that organized Beck's rally uses a different
non-newsy name somehow; thus, the *actual* news group preserves its (objectivity?). BALONEY! It's all run by Ailes and it's all
called Fox News despite their caterwauling that somehow it isn't.
Lenin would approve (and Orwell would recognize the stunt): when you get
caught red-handed, insist that something plainly impossible is somehow
nonetheless true. Ailes had explained his "fair and balanced"
journalistic philosphy as to Obama, upon hiring Beck in 2009: ."I
see this as the Alamo...If I just had somebody who was willing to sit
on the other side of the camera until the last shot is fired [meaning
Beck], we'd be fine." (And don't get me started again about
prostitute extraodinaire, Chris Wallace!)
Having no sense of their risible
absurdity but possessing bottomless chutzpah, Fox wants to bring up
the comparison of when Nixon shut out the New York Times. Because by
isolating a reputable news organization, Nixon had set himself up.
Did I say reputable news organization? Ailes (a Nixon protégé!) is
thus comparing his tawdry farce to none other than the Grey Lady!
A politician should never take on a
news organization; it is true. But as said before, the political
price to be paid for relations with Fox works like this:
since in refighting the Alamo, Fox only smears and denigrates the
President no matter what he does, the only cost that can be
incurred would be that of legitimizing the propagandists by granting
them interviews and access. Because if Fox seems like a news
organization, all their non-stop derision seems to have some
validity, which it doesn't. Since legitimizing Fox is thus harmful,
scoffing and ignoring the scalawags is the right play for WH.
If you or people close to you think
Fox is news, or kind of news, all that proves is that
disciplined, well-staged political organizing works even today, just as it did for
Lenin. Lenin and company put out those newspapers but he was
obviously no newsman either. By the way, intellectuals in Russian
have never understood why the imperial police (okhrana) put up
with Lenin's crap (they could have jailed him, tailed him, whacked him); that cost the whole place 70 bloodthirsty years in
the wilderness! Of course, Ailes is no revolutionary, just a
bubbleheaded Nixonian pimp whose appalling life's work has consisted of arguing with mock indignation that
up is down. Some, like fellow Nixon-crony Cheney (and his freak show daughter Liz!) enjoy this of
course, and are eager to play their roles as willing dupes. But
Obama and the rest of us can opt out: we don't have to be part of
the Big Lie.
[P.S. one may also see btw Countdown from last night on this;
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#33284922]
