They’re not opposites

February 2, 2006

I usually reserve my media criticism for the “Single Storyline” project at the Daou Report, but this one was too egregious not to share.

Sheehan’s T-shirt made reference to the number of soldiers killed in Iraq: “2245 Dead. How many more?” Capitol Police charged her with a misdemeanor for violating the District of Columbia’s code against unlawful or disruptive conduct on any part of the Capitol grounds, a law enforcement official said. […]

Young’s shirt had just the opposite message: “Support the Troops — Defending Our Freedom.” (emphasis added)

This was in the national AP story that ran in hundreds of newspapers across the country.

Forget whether you like Sheehan or not; the AP has to know better than to frame the debate this way. Asking how many more U.S. troops are going to die in Iraq is not “the opposite” of supporting the troops. For most people, they’re one in the same.

But the AP writer is right about the political message. The people who shout “Support the troops!” obviously care nothing about the troops. Their message is, “Support President Bush who can do no wrong.”

Cindy’s message is the exact opposite of that.

  • As annoying, foolish, and juvenile as I find things like the Focus on the Family boycotts of everything under the sun, we do need to look at one part of the radical right long-term program that clearly worked (and which I consider advertiser boycotts to be a part of). Years of screaming “Liberal Media Bias!” – silly sounding at first, but eventually gaining traction as conventional wisdom – has quite evidently been a huge success. The media now lives in mortal fear of that accusation and the headlines the accusers get. So fearful, in fact, that they have lost all critical thinking skills as to the context of their words. So fearful they create false equivalences to appear “objective” (i.e. all of Abramhoff’s personal money and 65% of all tainted money goes to Rs, but a minority of tainted cash went to D’s, so the parties are equally corrupt).

    It appears we need to mount our own counterattack, release our own shrill attack dogs, have our own boycotts, do whatever it takes to make them sensitive to being too biased toward Rethugs. simply cringing to ourselves whenever these devastating but subtle (devastating because they are subtle?) slants arise in mass market media is only going to assure the damage continues.

  • How is it that partisan propaganda and mischaracterization have caused straightforward logic to become so perverted, yet widely accepted?

    “Supporting our troops” has somehow come to mean putting and keeping our soldiers in harm’s way for questionable reasons. It doesn’t mean giving them reasonable, achievable goals, the tools they need to do their jobs, honoring their length of service contracts, or working to bringing them home.

    Partisan hatred and fear are killing America — and blinding us to the fact that we’re doing it.

  • “2245 Dead. How many more?” means bravely loving the troops.

    “Support the Troops – Defending Our Freedom” means fearfully hating the troops.

    Yup, those are opposites.

    Fearful people with power obsessively push to increase their wealth at the expense of others. Fear removes the “common” from the “commonwealth.” Cruelty is an exhuberant emotional release for these people.

    Fearful people without power don’t react, and irrationally increase the power of their leaders in recongnition of their own helplessness. They commonly act in a self-destructive way or against their own self-interest.

    Brave people who fight for the commonwealth and for the rights of the common folk are our only hope. Brave people are required to tell the populace that we are not in mortal danger. The poor soldiers are.

    I wish that Cindy could gather in soidarity with a thousand grieving mothers to march on Washington and demand an end to the war.

    CINDY FOR SENATE

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