Barack Obama made an appearance on Jimmy Fallon the other night, where he takes a mic and "slow jams" the news. The youtube video's gone viral, with over 2.3 million views as of now.
A week or two ago, I caught a story on the evening news as I was flipping stations, where the anchor talked about some CRAAAAAAZY photos of Hillary partying down in Columbia!
It was portrayed as one of those feel-good stories, you know, "hyuk hyuk look at how much fun she's having, hyuk hyuk, atta girl." And that was it. It was "laugh and feel good about this," and then commercial break. Lost was any sort of explanation as to what she was doing in Columbia in the first place, which (call me crazy) is exactly the sort of thing I expect to learn when I turn on the news.
Clinton and Obama were down there attending the Summit of the Americas. The evening news never said that the United States and Canada were the only two nations there that opposed Cuba's participation in the 2015 summit, and that Ecuador boycotted the summit altogether in protest. They never mentioned that every nation south of the U.S. used the summit to call for an end to America's war on drugs, which has sparked endless violence throughout the region. Over 16,000 people were killed in Mexico by drug-related crimes last year alone. 50,000 people have been killed there since 2006. Obama had to stand up there and defend the war on drugs entirely alone, often facing "diatribes, interruptions and even the occasional eye-ball roll." South America displayed a rare force of unity, but the summit was close to a disaster for the United States. The American people have no idea. And for some reason, I sort of doubt they care.
It's not hard to learn these things. Literally my only two sources of news are Democracy Now and The Real News Network. I want to get angry at people for caring so much about meaningless bullshit, but it's hard to. It's really not their fault. Most people have no idea independent media exists, and then they have this shit shoved down their throats. Mainstream media stories are sort of becoming like pop culture to me now; I vaguely sort of know the things people are talking about, but I never pay attention because I just don't give a shit. Oh, secret service agents hired prostitutes or whatever? Cool, those people do that every time they visit a foreign country, and that sort of thing isn't even remotely new or shocking. what I don't why are you still telling me about this yeah they hired the prostitutes I got it american values please leave me alone I dont evne fnefiefsdcxuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
There's been a number of phrases thrown out to describe this system were living in, "participatory fascism, "inverted totalitarianism," "corporatism," "plutocratic republic." But whatever it is, it is not a democracy. A democratic government wouldn't allow a select few billionaires to control what information the American people are exposed to, or buy political campaigns, and thus, our elections. American elections can nearly always be predicted with a good degree of accuracy by paying attention to how much money the candidates get. Whichever politician receives the most money, endorsements, and bribes from billionaires and Fortune 500 companies will win, nearly every single time. Someone did a study on this recently, I can't find it and I can't remember the exact percentage, but I want to say the person who gets the most money will win 80%-90% of the time. As of this writing, Barack Obama has raised nearly $197 million, compared to Romney's $87 million. The election's already decided. Happy democracy.
The Real News Network had a pretty great interview the other day with professor Bob McChesney about the amount of money in media and politics.
You know, most democracies in the world have nothing like the United States in terms of this huge amount of money that gets spent by television ads, most of which are attacking the other candidates, not promoting your own candidate. And the reason for that is that it's driven in the United States by commercial broadcasters, the commercial television stations. And really we're talking about less than a dozen companies that own the vast majority of the stations that participate in selling TV ads. They are making a killing from this cash-drenched system. Literally between 18 and 25 percent of all the revenues of a commercial TV station this year will come from selling TV political candidate ads. And, you know, this is a profit center for them that's beyond belief. They're driving the system.
[...]
The problem, though, is less that than what you were talking about, this whole range of issues that no one in power wants to talk about—the U.S. empire around the world; all our military commitments; the huge amount of spying the government is doing in collusion with internet companies and private companies on private citizens, far in excess of anything we ever really have had in United States before; and then the whole raft of economic issues about the way people's lives are actually going, the collapse of the public sector around the country. These are pretty much uncovered anywhere in the news. The issues that really matter to people in this country are not as interesting as, you know, the physical appearance of a candidate or whether someone said a gaffe or whether someone is sort of a moron."
Nevermind the drone strikes killing hundreds of innocent people. Nevermind the unthinkable surveillance budget, and complete destruction of privacy and civil liberties. Nevermind the unprecedented crackdown on whistleblowers, on excusing torture, and the validation of the Nuremberg defense. Nevermind endless war. When America's only two candidates agree on all of these things, there's really no other choice but to make the 2012 election a popularity contest. If Barack Obama can make me laugh on latenight, and if Hillary Clinton is down with teh internetz, then by golly, I can overlook a few thousand wanton murders here and there! They're just so cool! Mitt Romney is basically Hank Hill and he's so boring and out of touch and I hear those Mormons are pretty crazy right doesn't he just remind you so much of your dad ugh.
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