P.G. Barnum: Read It and Weap

I don't know that there's much I can add to this great post by Gene Lyons at Salon ("Is the GOP a CULT?"). Those actually paying attention know well by now that there is a small, over-listened-to populace that can do whacky and over-the-top to a tee, and have learned that the associated sensationalism is far more marketable with most of the corporate media than the journalism of old. The Today show and their ilk will fawn over crap like this for days, regardless of no actual useful content. And that whacko minority likely overlaps a good deal with the equally unstable sorts who are desperate to imagine their humdrum existence has cosmic meaning (paraphrasing post on LeHaye fetishism), and will say or do most anything to keep reality from bursting their bubble.

I will excerpt, but you owe it to yourself to read the post in its' entirety. There's some true succulence at the "-clip-" below. And, to me, the opening quote is worth the price of admission all by itself:

"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one." -- Charles MacKay, "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds," 1841

Is there anybody who's forgotten exactly what President George W. Bush was doing on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001? He was in a Florida classroom, reading to schoolchildren. Because it was televised, almost everybody witnessed Bush's stunned reaction to the al-Qaida terrorist atrocity. It would be years before we learned that one reason for the president's deer-in-the-headlights look was: OMG, what if anybody finds out I blew off that CIA briefing?

But that's not the point. Bush had received a minority of the votes in the 2000 election. He was made president by a Supreme Court decision many regarded as farcical. Yet nobody seriously protested his reading to schoolchildren. Urging kids to stay in school and improve their prospects in life is one of those ceremonial presidential tasks like pardoning the Thanksgiving turkey or greeting the World Series champions.

Making a stink about it would be as petty and ridiculous, as Florida (yes, Florida) Republican Chairman Jim Greer's hissy fit about President Obama's alleged attempt to "indoctrinate America's children to his socialist agenda" by urging them to do their homework and earn their diplomas.

On cue, the GOP's influential Henny Penny faction took up the cry. During a slow week, cable news networks featured pundits bickering about Obama's speech. (They'd call tapioca "controversial" if some wingnut did.) On Fox News, one commentator denounced the president's sinister motives. "They do this type of thing in North Korea and the former Soviet Union."

As Josh Marshall pointed out, Obama had to be the first black man since Bill Cosby was a pup criticized for urging kids to study. Even so, school boards in such benighted precincts as Fayetteville, Ark. -- a university town, for heaven's sake -- caved to the pressure. No mandatory exposure to the Antichrist's glowing, hypnotic eyes: "Forsake your families, children, and follow ME!"

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But you can't beat something with nothing. Which is why the Democrats' collective failure to develop a strong counter-narrative remains so bewildering. Are they waiting for what Eric Alterman calls the So Called Liberal Media to step up?

That's never going to happen. To cable TV, in particular, politics is a carnival sideshow; they're peddling tickets. Countering one falsehood at a time keeps Democrats constantly on the defensive. People need to be told a competing story: Who's deceiving them, and why. Take "death panels." Who first concocted the lie? Who pays her? Where does the money come from?

Describing the machinations of the right-wing noise machine shouldn't simply be left to Internet media critics. It should be an out-front political issue at a national and local level.

Sure, they'll call it "class warfare." They already do.