I have absolutely no idea why I thought to watch a live webcast of Democracy Now on October 30th, 2007. I used to watch it regularly but had not in many months. Perhaps since finding out my local (blank) categorized Democracynow.org to be a porn site and blocked it. 

          It was around that time that I had lost interest. I assumed if there was any merit to that listing or classification, it was because Amy Goodman had let her show follow that well worn path that Phil Donahue’s had gone down more than once. 

          That path being to balance entire episodes devoted to things like World Peace, to be interspersed with ones about bikini-clad Jello wrestlers, complete with the gratuitous "dramatic" re-enactments live on stage. I doubt that still would be far enough to qualify as porn, but it was readily conceivable that the show might have gone that route, and that alone could be disturbing enough for some to qualify for its being blocked as porn.

          Its not that that bothered me so much as to the fact that, if that was the case, I never got to see any of those kinds of episodes. Yes, I still looked forward to seeing "wild and craaazzy guys," (as Steve Martin might term it) Octa- or Septagenarians like Noam Chomsky or Mike Gravel stepping up and doing their "free speech" things, but I wondered which things I kept missing out on that, for ratings sake, could possibly have balanced something like that out. 

          I was certain it must have been something like Paris Hilton dramatically re-enacting her questioning by police (ala the police questioning scene in the movie "Basic Instinct") or better yet with Britney Spears playing the part of Paris Hilton in that, um, dramatization. 

          What I was seeing made me wonder about what I must have been missing to keep that show on the air when all it seemed to have was people talking about war, the erosion of rights, democracy, etc, etc, blah blah blah. I could not even tell anymore from watching it when it was a ratings month!

          Sure I could have tuned in everyday so as never to miss any of those sizzling ratings bait episodes with more skin showing than just Noam Chomsky going tieless (please, for him that was plenty), that justified its pornographic rating, but who has the time?

          But no, the one time I turn it back on again, I see Amy Goodman slurring just about every other word. Because of the time difference, I was about to go to sleep, (not that other millions Americans aren’t going to sleep at 8 am EST even without a time difference), but that was way too sad for me to watch just before going to sleep. "Damn, that’s sad," I thought, "She must have had a stroke. Too depressing to watch live," seeing her seemingly struggling to talk coherently.

          Later in the day, I found out my timing was as impeccably slightly off as always and I must had tuned in just after the "No, I did NOT have a stroke" speech that she began the show with. Well, that would have cleared that up.

          I write this because of something she said in her "No, I did NOT have a stroke" news article to tell or reassure people like me (who missed that part of the show) from feeling too sad from seeing that to watch her show anymore.

          The sentence in that article that got to me was "Why are we shielded from seeing people with flaws and imperfections on TV?" 

          While she was referring to physical flaws, those absent from beauty-queen types, what Don Henley referred to as the "bubble headed bleach blonde who comes on at five" newscasters, I had to ask myself, are they not flawed too? Doth they not have sentences to mangle, facts to tangle, and "democracies now" of their own to slur? 

          Should we, in our drive for equality of opportunity, deprive the mentally challenged newscaster types who, but for living off of their good looks, would be without a means to support themselves in the style they have been accustomed to in a culture based entirely around superficiality and "looking good"?

          One of the rare times I have watched CNN in recent years was on the occasion of the night of the "Election 2006" coverage (Note: and for all the good that change of "parties" has done and the "differences" it wrought!)That was only one of two times I had tried to watch a cable news channel recently and I certainly did not feel I was "shielded from seeing people with flaws and imperfections on TV."

          Not in the least. I watched as a very attractive female newscaster, whose job it was to report on what was considered widely at the time a "very important" election of "historic importance" to the "direction of the country." Her inability to be able to tell, despite being repeatedly corrected (on the air mind you) by her "know-it-all" male co-anchor, that she was mistaken in saying that there were 100 Representatives and 435 Senators in Congress, (more or less because those numbers and those Houses she kept mixing up), such a "flaw" was clearly visible.

          I felt just as sorry for that newscaster (as for Amy’s speech impairment) when she got it wrong for the third time. I almost expected her, if her co-host tried to correct her, yet again, for getting it wrong, yet again, to turn to him in an Alicia Silverstone Valley Girl-like tone and give him a good "WHAT-EV-ER!!!"

          I would have cheered, "you go girl, so what if you are completely misinforming the public about the constitution of their own government structure in the guise of "explaining" it to them, (just as our Representatives (all 100 of them :-) are dismantling it in the guise of "protecting and defending" it). You have reached the top of your profession in spite of your inability to seemingly make new memories, or feel any embarrassment at knowing less than most children about the Constitution of your government, despite that being a part of your job that night. You looked damn good while misinforming the public and that is all that anyone will remember or care about anyway."

          The only other recent time I dwelled upon a News channel, it made that woman look like Edgar R. Murrow. It was of a Fox News "debate". I put debate in quotes because it is hard to say just what it was besides an exercise in brainwashing.

          Many would say, there goes some liberal or progressive or Fox News basher throwing around extreme labels. "Brainwashing" indeed! Hmmph! No, and it was too obvious that the people themselves unlike the CNN anchor who could not make new memories, these people MUST have been aware that that was what they were doing.

          Even people who call Fox News "shameless propagandists" might have a hard time with the word "brainwashing" to describe what I saw, but let me explain it to you. Imagine a "debate" where the people seem to be arguing, not only heatedly, but fiercely, yet they are all talking over each other loudly and quickly, making the same argument and the same points.

          When the points are made so forcefully, literally at times yelled at each other, and so quickly, the "viewer" or observer is inundated and washed over by this "conversation" which is nothing of the sort, but it is not let up enough for them to think that or consider, hey, where is there an opposing viewpoint here? Not until the end, that climax just before the commercial break of reconciliation, that final orgasm of agreement just after the most heated arguing where they finally come to the "conclusion" of the rightness of each others’ and basically, their own (same) opinions. But as the producers would say, "it makes for great TV." 

          No, it makes for a great example of brainwashing, or attempted brainwashing. And none too subtle and would have made a perfect centerpiece of a trial if or when a public would be raised enough not only to realize that is bad, but the worst thing that could spew out of a television at people. Many many psychologists could have easily identified from the lack of opposing viewpoints obscuring the "discussion" or "debate" that was nothing of the sort, but merely to drill a point home into any viewers head by forcefully intimidating deliveries that the "debaters" then accepted as though they were convincing each other of things they did not believe to start with! But would you see such a criticism of it on TV, or on that channel, or even on that show itself? In America? In the age of the Murdock?

          It may seem self-evident to some that I did not agree with what they were "debating" or putting on the worst possible "arguments" against their positions, if they even admitted any contrary arguments existed. While I watched, I saw none even referred to.

          What the "debate" was about was how horrible the Swedish health care system is. There was no advocates for an alternative viewpoint, not anyone there saying it was NOT the worst thing in the world to match their hyperbole to how horrible it would be if America had a similar universal health care system. There was no expert about the system they were trashing, no Swedes, no Swedish Americans, no health care or governmental experts, and nothing to suggest any one of the "panelists" had studied the question in depth at all.

          And yet this kind of slamming, non-stop hysteria is always aimed even greater at anything which could put an end to it or shine any light onto any debate making them real and substanative and making them show, gulp, alternative viewpoints. Ending this kind of monopoly on the airwaves. These kinds of controlling of the debates on what is and is not even debatable. That was the repeal of the Fairness in Media doctrine that required merely an attempt at fairness. 

          If you are going to trash something, especially using techniques commonly used in brainwashing, require someone there to say something different, really different, like say opposed or opposite. And have it come from as reputable a person as possible, not some hack you can shoot the message by making fun of the messenger.

          The questionable opposed unquestionably pliable Democratic Party has taken anything similar to the restoring the Fairness in Media Doctrine (a guideline nonetheless!) as off the table as impeachment, ending the war, or anything else that might piss off their corporate benefactors or masters.

          Though they no doubt would be allowed to have mentioned it, something in Sweden would strike far more fear into these people who have gone so far as to say that corporations have the RIGHT to MISINFORM the public if they so choose to with DISINFORMATION (not even the government which by default if you buy that line of reasoning would be a no-brainer) if they so choose because it is their money paying for the airtime and the salaries of the "newscasters" or "presenters," if you will. Actors, more accurately.

          What they would not even wish to have debated, not that they have not shut down anyone from bringing back any attempt at fairness in the media, and demagoging watchdog groups like MediaMatters.org, is complete editorial freedom of news divisions from their corporations absolutely and without limit. They have this in Sweden and other countries. Public Broadcasting News channels funded by the state, or by companies in exchange for the right to use the airwaves. 

          Without access to public airwaves, the corporations which sell advertising on them would not exist. They would not be able to use the kickbacks to politicians to get them better coverage, give them campaign donations funded back to themselves in advertising, and in even greater whoring of the politicians they fund most once they are voted into office, which is practically inevitable. But could politicians dare to even suggest they might cut off the only thing that guarantees them a 90% likelihood at keeping their jobs for life, or for as long as they would want them? 

          Don’t let a few scandals fool you, their jobs, almost all of them, cannot be challenged and may as well run unopposed. Both parties have defined their turf states like criminal organizations mark their territories and merely fight over the bordering scraps where they sense a weakness on the part of the other. 

          The real game is keeping safe the lifeline to both, and keeping these two free from outside "infections" of ideas which would change the status quo of either, or then, eventually both. Keeping in both parties, keeping the elected ones they select in "safe" states to be walking into office again and again no matter what they do or how often they sell out the average person, that is the overall goal of both parties and they pair off amongst each other which party will take the heat for which unpopular policy like trading baseball players.

          Allowing real challenges to this mindset and control of primary elections, of TV debates, of brainwashing which you cannot even call brainwashing because the news networks are redefining ALL words now, not just "torture" or "democracy" to mean whatever they want them to mean. Speaking out against this, however ineptly, however slowly, hesitantly, unclearly or slurred, is the real pornography, the real thing that will get your ass canned at any "liberal" news network, get your website blocked, get your voices silenced. 

         But the greatest weapon against it, is simply to expose it. Now, later, constantly, without respite. Any letup to keeping control of the media will never happen, and "free" real and legitimate debates will come about only at a large price; a public willing to make sacrifices to demand it of their government, for it to regulate its media, instead of the media’s parent corporations regulating them. Its not about ideology, its about obtrusification, and about a public unable to tell the difference, or even define either one. Most have surrendered the debate, surrendered their minds, surrendered their culture to the media, freedom and your rights was all that you left to lose. Did you think without the others they could last?