I No Longer Quite Believe ... [Victor Davis Hanson on Orwellian media & science, race relations]

pajamasmedia.com ^ | June 8, 2009 | Victor Davis Hanson

[GOPJ]

Prizes have lost their once sterling reputations and have devolved into better-paying versions of the Pulitzer Prizes, predicated on ideology as much as achievement.

A "prize" that's a monument to bias should bring shame.

[Oatka]

I'm not sure if Rush started it, but the Main Stream Media is outdated and the new moniker is now the State Run Media.

Maybe, besides WASS (We Are So Screwed), we could birth another acronynm, replacing MSM with SRM.

[theDentist]

Relax... have a doughnut. :-)

[Texas resident]

SRM rolls off the tounge much easier than MSM. Didja notice during one of Palin’s televised speeches, the crowd responded to one of her points about democrats being destructive by chanting NBC,NBC,NBC. There are a LOT of us who see the complete lack of objectivity of the press. I believe that they are participating in their own destruction because once they allow themselves to be led by the nose, they will no longer be free. At that point some dictator wannabe like, oh let me think, oh yeah obama will be able to squash ANY dissent the the media will cheer. This is the big reason they are so aggresively going after talk radio, because that is the only place where there is real dissent.

[dforest]

VDH has been appearing on a local talk show here once a week. I love to listen to this guy.

I am more comfortable knowing that people like him are out there and speaking with youth.

What a voice of reason.

[GOPJ]

Nobel Prizes & Pulitzers - now monuments to left wing bias - shame recipients.

[Tolik]

Dentist promoting doughnuts? Sweet, sugary, bad for teeth, delicious doughnuts? Thanks, I’ll have 2.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

"Now comes a more insidious, brave new self-imposed censorship of the Orwellian mode. It is not just the perennial embarrassment Chris Matthews describing his Obama ecstasy on camera, or even Newsweek’s Evan Thomas comparing his President to God, or even CNN execs being exposed trashing the US abroad at Davos, or whitewashing Saddam, but rather a more incremental new groupspeak in which basic words and ideas—from terrorism to war itself—have been reformulated according to political dictates."

It has developed gradually. But there is something deeper to it. The MSM talking heads are alienated and cut off from the Western Christian tradition which in their education should have provided them with the intellectual means to understand the dangers of statism and an Orwellian media. They are so attracted to Obama and Obammunism that they have blinders on now. It's like Marx's "Don't Ask me that question!" ideology which cuts off any meaningful debate. They don't want to see the dangers of these policies.

They talked about the Bush deficits which they apparently thought were bad but now...

[theDentist]

Have 3..... improves business for me... :-)
Remember this cartoon?

... Same concept.

[FlyVet]

I no longer quite believe that Gore is smart enough to pull off his $100 million scam on his own. I wonder who his handlers are. Maybe his daddy’s connections are opening doors for him?

[khnyny]

Bump for later read.

[Blind Eye Jones]

Better yet, the PAPARAZZI (press). State run is true but gives too much importance to the media. Glamour is what is being sold — like the 1930s to easy depression worries; it’s true escapism via Hollywood and American Idol to provide cut-out characters that seem real but who aren’t.

[maica]

My 93 year old mother who closely follows politics said to me yesterday:
Obama IS Big Brother.
We were discussing the takeover of all medical care.

She is a sharp cookie!

[Blind Eye Jones]

The Talented Mr. Gore a reference to the Talented Mr. Ripley? Both psychotic over-the-top characters that dare not be caught or exposed. The money and messiany forever and ever, amen.

[windcliff]

Good article.

[StatenIsland]

“I’m not sure if Rush started it, but the Main Stream Media is outdated and the new moniker is now the State Run Media.”

I coined a different phrase for my blog: State Controlled American Media, or SCAM for short.

And here’s the first couple of paragraphs from yesterday’s post, at http://www.teapartysi.com/

Fourth Estate? Fifth Column.

The term Fourth Estate, of course, refers to the press; “press” being a now-archaic description hearkening back to a simpler time when delivering news was strictly a function of metal, paper, ink, and the time it took to get it to the reader – no electricity involved. We need not go into how different things are today.

To the best of our knowledge, Edmund Burke coined the term in the House of Commons a short time after the French revolution. The first three estates, as defined by Louis XVI some years earlier, were the clergy, the nobles and the commoners. Burke is said to have gazed up at the Press Gallery and said, “Yonder lies the Fourth Estate, and they are more important than them all.”

Likewise, most of us are aware of the phrase “Fifth Column;” it refers to a dangerous enemy unit that operates clandestinely within the borders of one’s own country. The concept originated during the Spanish Civil War with a radio address by insurgent General Emilio Mola, who broadcast the news that his four columns laying siege to Madrid would be supported by a “Fifth Column” of supporters operating surreptitiously within the city.
[snip]
Generally, all Fifth Columns, whether real or imagined, share one commonality: they operate in the shadows. Their members listen behind doors, peep through keyholes, secretly sabotage power plants and transportation hubs and above all, keep their nefarious actions hidden and secret. They wait silently, patiently, until the day finally comes when they can rise up, shed their sheep’s clothing, and proudly affirm their support for the cause that has brought about the destruction of the society in which they so traitorously intermingled.

Not anymore. America’s Fifth Column, fully-operational and horribly dangerous, operates in full view of the public. In fact, they fight amongst themselves for the privilege of being the most visible, as they do their damndest to bring about the destruction of our country as we know it. America’s Fifth Column is its Fourth Estate.

[mick]

ping

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

It’s amazing how much control, manipulation, surveillance, dumbing down, propaganda, conditioning, doublethink, newspeak, and social engineering of the PC and Orwellian variety have developed just in our lifetime. Alarming and disturbing.

[Billthedrill]

The real difficulty with the persistent tendency to elevate race in politics is that it's a spice that cloys very quickly with overuse. One sees that those most capable of invoking it tend to be that subset of the population least susceptible to past abuse - a first-generation African immigrant invoking the memory of Jim Crow laws is, to put it kindly, a scam artist. Someone on one of the Atlas Shrugged threads made the terrific observation that there is a sort of Gresham's Law operating within victimology - bad victims (phonies) tend to drive out the good, the genuine.

And worse, the academic environment has found, through the office of such disgraces as White Studies, a mechanism for perpetuating the illusion of oppression indefinitely through the invocation of a mysterious, invisible, unquantifiable but omnipresent chimera termed White Privilege. These days the incessant statistical flood gushing from such as Sotomayor is to a great degree an attempt to quantify this, or rather to paint the body of fiction over with a thin coat of whitewash - can I still say that? - to give it the semblance of science.

We're not done with this nonsense by a long shot - people such as 0bama and Sotomayor, who have leveraged their way to the highest offices in the land through it, aren't likely to queer the pitch - can I still say that either? If what happened in academia proliferates to government it will, on the contrary, become institutionalized.

[rdb3]

[I no longer believe . . .]…that there will be much progress on race relations under Obama. Indeed, I fear the very opposite will occur.

I sadly agree.

Amazing << Hear this. Feel this, and tell me that this isn't music.

Oh, dear...