MythInformation Watch: Response to WaPo's "Condescending" liberals piece

By GottaLaff

You must read this op-ed by Robert Parry from OpEdNews.com. It gets into a lot of what I've been ranting about lately (media propaganda, Sarah Palin's speech, the death of accurate reporting), only with a twist: Psy-ops.

The trick, [CIA psy-war specialist Edward Lansdale] said, was to plant propaganda in a publication that was perceived to be open and honest because the readers' defenses would be down and thus they would be more susceptible to the message. In other words, they first had to be fooled about who controlled the outlet and what its biases were.

Several things came to mind as I read this: How do you unfool an entire country? Why can't we control the message?

And how do you educate low-information voters?

Pleaseohplease go read the whole thing:

A key strategy of the Right has been to convince as many Americans as possible that the U.S. news media has a "liberal bias," a canard that has stuck even though newspapers have been traditionally pro-Republican and most media outlets are owned by giant corporations reflecting the interests of wealthy individuals. [...]

Alexander's article in the Post is, in essence, a fancily written version of the Right's "populist" anti-intellectualism. Anyone who insists on checking out facts and applying reason must be an "elitist."

That this "condescending" attack line against the Left is being trumpeted by the supposedly "liberal" Washington Post makes it all the more powerful to many Americans.

Now, with the emergence of Sarah Palin as the latest heir to Ronald Reagan's legacy and as a potential next President of the United States it is clear that empiricism will be snowed under again by a blizzard of half-truths, emotional appeals, historical myths and nasty zingers.

Anyone who dares speak up for facts and reason will be portrayed as a pointy-headed intellectual out of touch with "real Americans." [...]

The American Right again has taken on the "populist" mantle of the plucky underdog facing down the "elitist" Obama and his arrogant entourage of House Speaker Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, defenders of Big Government, not to mention the "liberal" news media.

In this narrative, Palin, the Fox News personalities and poor Rush Limbaugh are the real victims who must face the cruelty and condescension of an all-powerful, arrogant Left.

Go read. Now.

H/t: Gr8RDH

Best Domain Redirect Ever?

Rumproast has the details. h/t WT.

UPDATE-- Fox News: Ten reasons why Obama is not really the president... was satire

By GottaLaff

Down thread I posted what little I heard about the following. I was finally able to track down the site of the man who Thom Hartmann interviewed:

Fox News will be report tomorrow that there are at least ten valid reasons why Barack Obama is not really the President of the United States. “The liberal media was so in love with this guy,” said Bill O’Reilly, who will host the program, “that they missed at least ten facts that disqualify Obama from being president. “We will present the facts and then you can decide which reason is the best one to use to remove Obama from the White House,” O’Reilly said.

The Post Times Sun Dispatch has learned that Fox News will claim that Obama cannot be president because:
1. He does not have a valid birth certificate. Fox will say that not only do they not know where he was born, but they don’t even know if he was born.
2. Americans may be ready for a black president, but the liberal media hid the fact that Obama is the first half-white president and American is not ready for that.
3. Obama did not take the oath of office on time, which negates the oath.
4. Obama tripped up on the oath of office which disqualifies him
5. Obama wants to take your guns and your daughters and make you eat arugula and that violates the Constitution.
6. Obama did not wear a flag pin at the inauguration.
7. Obama does not have an American sounding name so no one will know what country he is president of when his name is spoken.
8. Dick Cheney said he shouldn’t be president and you don’t want to disagree with a dangerous man in a wheelchair
9. When Obama speaks, he makes sense which will be too confusing to Americans who expect their president to sound dumber than they do.
10. Palling around with terrorists made Obama an enemy combatant and not eligible to be president.

That's the problem with hearing only part of an interview. I caught the segments that sounded genuine enough... coming from Republicans. It's often hard to distinguish between their reality and satire.