Category Archives: Journalism

Keith Olbermann’s Farewell Address

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This post has updates

I am still too angry to blog this. So for now, just watch Keith's final moments on MSNBC. Then get angry too. We're going to need a lot of that anger in the coming years. This is just the beginning of a long and bloody war for the future of media, journalism, and America.

It is not specifically Keith Olbermann I am concerned about. It is the role that Countdown, and he together played as the only really reliable nightly megaphone the left had in this country, of late. Yes, @maddow has also been very important, but Keith was the center of gravity at @MSNBC, and under him, MSNBC became the only nightly conduit that we had to balance anything happening over on the evil thug's network.  Keith may be planning on taking his gravity to a new venue, perhaps one of his own making. Let's hope so. In the meantime, we still have a country that is sliding into the sea, and as of now, we've lost one of the few bulwarks that we had.

 

Updates

I am listing stories here that seem to shed new light or new theories on this issue. I make no representations or warranties about the truthfulness nor truthiness of anything contained herein. Read and conclude at your own risk.

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Colorforms History: How George Bush Will Soon Become A Great President

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"There you go again!"

Once more, as they have so often done, the right wing is going to try to rewrite history, methodically reconstructing 8 horrendous years of the Bush administration, replacing a systemic pattern of crimes, malfeasance, and incompetence with glowing portraits of another unsung American hero who exists only in their minds, and the pages of a carefully crafted script, written by a right wing organization and hand delivered to Fox News for a daily distribution to the masses.

It's begun with the pimping on his memoir, and a slow and steady parade of pundits and commentators "suggesting" that the Bush years may be in for a big makeover.

It will get steadily worse over the next year, as the GOP attempts to place all blame for the nation's economic malaise onto Obama and the Democrats, while recasting every historical reality they can sell to their increasingly (and embarrassingly) gullible Foxified audience

And they know how do do it. They did it with Ronald Reagan. Most people under 40 are still working with bastardized facts, alternate reality fabrications, and outright lies about his miserable presidency, the many policies of which helped lay the foundation for the absolute ruination of the American way of life that Barack Obama is now tasked with holding together with paste, bailing wire and duct tape. 

You can blame Grover Norquist for what a rather brilliant strategy and near perfect execution. I call his technique, Colorforms history. Plastic dress and ornamentation are applied to a skeletal frame, presenting a fun and colorful portrait which suits the makers rhetorical, political, and propaganda ambitions. With enough repetition by a compliant media, the plastic bonds to the frame and the false depiction becomes the permanent reality—even in text books.

It Doesn't Have To Work This Time

Learn Grover's methods and note his tricks. You will soon seen them turning up everywhere—again. The primary devices can be seen in this one brief profile of his most successful project ever:

The Ronald_Reagan_Legacy_Project

Now that democrats are once again in the minority, the GOP will launch a steady stream of investigations, resolutions, and commemorations, all orchestrated by astroturf groups, with the express purpose of convincing the next generation that one of our worst presidents, was actually one of our best.

Please help resist this grotesque manipulation. Each time you see evidence of their efforts to fool us again, lash out hard. Direct people to this post using blog comments, tweets, or any other web tool at your disposal. And of course, retweeting this post often with the little green button will help jump start an effective counter-revisionism right now. Worry not when you do; this blog never sells advertising. Unlike Grover, it's about truth telling… not selling.

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About Grover Norquist

About Revisionism & Propaganda

Money, chatter, and optimism for a new journalism. All good, but it had better hurry

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Ed Wasserman, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University finds cause for optimism in all the venture capital, conferences and media experiments.  But he also, rightly, questions whether it's too little, too late. The entire business model of media now seems to revolve around the incredible lightness of bullshit.

Still, the chatter and innovation, so often illuminated by a few social media watchers like of NYU's Jay Rosen (whom  I refer to as thought pimps), are a welcome development.  Despite our best efforts toward a media-enabled cultural suicide, sometimes unforeseen things— even good ones—can appear.  Accidents do happen. Just ask Snooki.

It wasn't just that the crumbling of the century-old pillars of advertising support had raised doubts about whether a new microeconomics of news was feasible. There was also dark brooding about whether journalism still had a place in public life, or whether a professional practice of fact-based reporting about contemporary realities would vanish, and be replaced by a clamor of opinion mongering, speculation, gawking and manipulation by marketers and publicists.

But suddenly, it seems, the clouds are parting. We've entered a time of dreams and hopes, of growing buoyancy. I know this from the glut of industry gatherings.

Read: The media as enabler  – MiamiHerald.com