The editors and writers at The Nation rag-azine have put their pointy heads together and racked their collective brain to come up with a way to gain praises from their statist-minded readers and poach profits from Sarah Palin’s book at the same time. Entertainment Weekly reports:

Start-up publisher OR Books will publish Going Rouge: Sarah Palin An American Nightmare, with a book jacket similar to Palin’s upcoming memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life. Also, the publisher will release the look-alike copy November 17, the same day Palin’s book is slated for release.

Two of The Nation’s top editors, Richard Kim and Betsy Reed, compiled the counterfeit for OR Books. The counterfeit will be the first (and hopefully the last) book release from the publisher that “embraces progressive change in politics, culture and the way we do business.”

The Nation, the flagship publication for the statist left, has been an anti-American rag that has consistently supported totalitarian and communist regimes. At the conclusion of World War II, The Nation’s articles parroted the Stalinist line and condemned U.S. involvement in the Cold War.

After the Cuban Revolution, The Nation’s Carleton Beals, praised Fidel Castro as a “hero,” possessing “the finest qualities of true leadership:  self-sacrifice, dedication, patience, confidence and ready pliability in the most difficult situations.”  Beals wrote, “The revolution sweeps on in many directions…these are days of great promises and great hopes.”

The Nation exalted Cuba as “one of the most egalitarian societies in the world,” but it has never criticized Castro’s brutality, his human rights violations, or the poverty that he inflicted upon the Cuban people.

If the truth be told, The Nation’s editors and essayists despise those founding principles that promote individual liberty, personal responsibility, freedom of conscience, and free markets. They are out to destroy Palin because, like Ronald Reagan, she too embodies those principles that have made America great, and they despise her for it.

The leftist elite establishment has blinded the people in this nation through its educational institutions, mainstream media outlets, and the entertainment industry to garner power for a repressive society. While Brother O and his Bread and Circuses Administration zealously dismantle the sleeping middle class, Americans have become unwitting accomplices to a growing underclass.

During education’s ongoing paradigm shift to a postmodern pedagogy in the mid-1980s, a fellow graduate student recognized that tenure and promotion in the academic world depended on the ability to “quack like a duck,” i.e., absorb and regurgitate the academy’s leftist world view and withhold personal opinions. In other words, outspoken conservatives are both persona non grata and underemployed in academia.

The duck motif not only extends to “journalists” in the mainstream media, but as Rush Limbaugh recently discovered, it extends to the National Football League (NFL), a league he greatly admires.

“[T]he NFL … is the most politically correct environment I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Dennis Miller on The O’Reilly Factor. “I don’t even know why Limbaugh would want to be in [it] quite frankly.”

Like many outspoken professors and journalists, Limbaugh now suffers from the pangs of outrageous injustice, being denied his dream for criticizing and mocking the nanny notions of the statist-minded elite. Limbaugh will not be afforded the opportunity that he has earned through achievement to work in the profession he loves for no reason other than his outspoken conservative views are abhorred by the leftist elite establishment.

Since it was leaked that Limbaugh was part of a group intending to buy the St. Louis Rams football team, the propagandists in the mainstream media have worked feverishly to malign his reputation, undermine his creditability, and destroy his character. They overturned rocks for race-baiting poverty pimps and scoured the NFL for nitwit jocks or any feckless team owner they could find to denounce Limbaugh as a bigot and racist before the nation.

The attack and subsequent defamation of Limbaugh adds to the list of media assaults on outspoken conservatives in order to prevent the resurgence of Reagan conservatism from entering the mainstream of American politics and undoing the leftist elites’ socialist agenda. The leftist elite establishment fears the resurgence of a conservatism of individualism, not of country clubs and boardrooms. The establishment dreads the Reagan conservatism championed over talk radio and at town hall meetings and tea parties, which respects the law and reflects the values and traditions of the people.

Statists demagogues live in constant terror of individualists who are independent, loosely connected to groups, and don’t know their place. They commission media propagandists, ready at their beckon call, to seek out and destroy them. The statist diktat is not to refute an opponent’s argument, it is to “wipe him from the face of the earth,” Sarah Palin, Clarence Thomas, and Robert Bork are noted recipients of the left’s scorched-earth and personal destruction politics.

The mainstream media have been frantically trying to deflate Sarah Palin’s ascendancy to the leadership of a national conservative movement since her dazzling acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in September 2008. Had she been a Democrat and espoused the statist ideology of Brother O or Hillary Clinton, Palin’s astounding rise from housewife, to mayor, to governor, to vice presidential candidate would have been praised by propagandists, extolled by environmentalists, lionized by leftists, and fawned over by feminists throughout the nation.

People who use common sense and apply the principles of the Constitution obstruct progressive governance, which explains why the media upended Robert Bork’s nomination and tried to stop Clarence Thomas’ confirmation to the Supreme Court. The media permitted and perpetuated the malicious, baseless allegations of the Democrat smear merchants to damage the reputations and destroy the creditability of both men.

Such reprehensible media campaigns, waged to disgrace both men, “did not resemble an argument so much as a lynching.” Bork was depicted as a judicial tyrant, his wife was falsely accused of being a Holocaust denier, and even his movie viewing habits were called into question. Likewise, Thomas was caricatured as a freakish feel-copping porno pervert in order to humiliate him, strip him of his dignity, and dishonor him for life.

The NFL’s management, owners, and players union along with most of the mainstream media and entertainment industry detest and despise Limbaugh as much as they do Palin, Thomas, and Bork. Yet Limbaugh persists in his love for the National Football League regardless of whether the sentiment is mutual.

Like the pedestaled wife of a fawning cuckold, the NFL graciously accepts Limbaugh’s lavish praises, glowing endorsements, and personal expenditures, yet abhors the very thought of embracing him. When the NFL’s leftist elite establishment denied Limbaugh limited ownership in a football franchise, it denied all outspoken conservatives and sent a subtle message to its owners, coaches, and players to suppress conservative opinion and quack like a duck.

The environment is ripe to don the special sunglasses, face the unadorned reality, and see the hideous leftist potentates and mindless moguls for the despicable fascists they truly are. In the grand scheme of things, the significance of the NFL pales in comparison to that of the USA. The country needs a wake up call, and the time has come for Limbaugh to stop chewing bubble gum and phone it in.
 

Two MSNBC commentators accuse conservative talk hosts of inciting Americans to assassinate political leaders. The media meme suggests that the Tea Party and Town Hall protesters’ placards and rhetoric likening Brother O to Hitler is an implicit or a coded call to incite violence against him.

The anti-government, anti-Brother O sentiment expressed by some of the white protesters has caused two political propagandists to demonstrate their overt hypocrisy. Jolly old Chris “Tingle” Matthews notified TV and talk radio hosts that they would be held accountable for any violence that happens to Brother O.

In Rachel “Mad Mad Mad” Maddow’s world the right-wing media and the corporate-funded anti-reform movement are invoking political assassination by deliberately and systematically using Hitler as a rhetorical weapon against Brother O and the progressive Democrats in Congress. Mad Maddow says she’s afraid that the right-wingers don’t understand the implications of their actions and is even more afraid that they do. 

If MSNBC’s Chris Tingle and the stark raving mad Maddow are really concerned for Brother O’s well being, why didn’t they alert Americans to the dangers of the Nazi slogans, Hitler placards, and vituperative language when members of leftist groups used them to demonize George W. Bush and his administration?

Better yet, how would the two peas account for their anti-Bush rhetoric had a leftist “looneytune” “fruitloop” committed a violent act against Bush? Would political commentators have held them responsible for complicity and for unleashing anti-democratic, anti-American forces in this country?

Paul Williams has pieced together a video montage exposing the blatant hypocrisy of leftists Chris Tingle and mad Maddow. Williams uses the audio portion of a mad Maddow interview, in which she asks Frank Schaeffer whether or not calling Brother O Hitler is an implicit call for politically motivated violence.

Williams overlays the audio portion with video snippets of demonstrations that occurred when George W. Bush was president; the end result is quite revealing.

The hypocrisy of Chris Tingle, mad Maddow, and Frank Schaeffer is rivaled only by Seth Pecksniff, a character Charles Dickens likened to a sign post, “which is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there.”

Instead of filing charges against ACORN employees for criminal violations captured on tape by hidden camera, Baltimore City State’s Attorney is looking to prosecute two investigative reporters for violating Maryland’s wiretap laws in filming the group’s lawbreaking acts.

State’s Attorney Patricia Coats Jessamy, a Brother O supporter and contributor who worked on the Maryland Women for Obama Steering Committee, issued the following statement concerning the criminal acts committed by the Association of Community Organizations For Reform Now (ACORN) employees at its Baltimore office:

“The only information received in reference to this alleged criminal behavior was a YouTube video…. [T]he audio portion could possibly have been obtained in violation of Maryland Law, Annotated Code of Maryland Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article §10-402, which requires two party consent.

If it is determined that the audio portion now being heard on YouTube was illegally obtained, it is also illegal under Maryland Law to willfully use or willfully disclose the content of said audio. The penalty for the unlawful interception, disclosure or use of it is a felony punishable up to 5 years.” [emphasis mine]

Jessamy, who has held the office since 1995, is looking to prosecute 20 year-old journalist Hannah Giles and 25-year old film maker James O’Keefe for failing to acquire ACORN’s permission to expose its heinous underbelly to the world. A nonpartisan state’s attorney would be looking to prosecute ACORN as a criminal enterprise under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statutes.

In the video, O’Keefe and Giles show up on ACORN’s stoop seeking advice for purchasing a house to serve as a brothel. O’Keefe poses as a pimp with plans to run for Congress, and Giles is his prostitute girlfriend who intends to staff their brothel with smuggled teenage girls from El Salvador.

After making their intentions known to the ACORN workers, O’Keefe and Giles are given instructions on how to go about getting a loan to purchase the house, with further advice to list the girls as dependents on their tax returns and to train them to keep quiet about the prostitution activities.

Jessamy seems to be more interested in prosecuting violations of unauthorized taping than in prosecuting “child abuse, interstate transportation for purposes of prostitution, tax evasion,” and illegal immigration violations that may have been committed by the ACORN workers.

If Jessamy has an obsession with enforcing Maryland’s unauthorized taping law and prosecuting its violators, she fought her compulsion to selectively apply Maryland’s law on at least two occasions in 2006 and in 2000 when WMAR-TV in Baltimore used “undercover journalists with cameras to record people without their knowledge, and won awards for their efforts.”

But that was then, and 2009 is now, so when two young journalists with hidden cameras go undercover to expose a group of lawbreakers that support Brother O’s politics and policies, for Jessamy it’s more a matter of aligning with kindred spirits than with the rule of law.

Jessamy is obviously more interested in protecting fellow travelers and in enforcing the law against those who threaten Brother O’s power and policies than in carrying out her sworn duty and in upholding her oath of office.

If Jessamy presses to file charges down-the-road, will any fair-minded person look on her prosecution as anything but retaliation for uncovering the criminal activities of her president’s favorite group of community organizers? Will fair-minded people regard her authoritative actions as anything other than a tread-lightly warning for anyone who dares to uncover and expose the misdeeds of Brother O’s Obots?

I think not.

Unconstrained by print and broadcast media, editorial policies, physical distribution, and budgets, internet journalism is replacing the traditional modes of information and idea sharing. And newspapers are failing. Clay Shirky, adjunct professor in New York University’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program, discusses the revolution in this article — Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable:

….It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public — has stopped being a problem….

Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.

When we shift our attention from ‘save newspapers’ to ‘save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work….

This is a good read, very well done. Shirky talks about the print media from the revolution started by Gutenberg, the new revolution which will kill publishing in general, and points at CD publishing as well. All will die, because the problem they solved with their infrastructure, distribution, simply no longer exists.

The same is true for broadcast or cable TV, actually, if you think about it. Distribution no longer requires any particular centralized infrastructure. You can get virtually any programming you want over the internet without any television channels involved.

Which leaves journalism itself. The internet will increasingly be all that is needed for any of it.

Related:

1.  Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. delivered the leynote address at the nation’s first-ever conference on News Literacy, held March 11 - 13 at Stoneybrook University in New York.

Journalism – whether published in newspapers or magazines, broadcast on television or on the radio; or consumed online or on a mobile device – is under enormous stress, both from the permanent shifts set off by the Internet and from the cyclical forces unleashed by this current severe economic downturn.

But something even more fundamental is going on around us and it’s at the heart of this conference and our common desire to carry the banner for News Literacy far and wide. Journalism is being transfigured by the new information ecosystem and its very definition is changing. Given the volcanic explosion of Web sites, search engines and social networking channels, how could it not?….

Sulzberger, it should be noted, is chairman of the board of The New York Times Company, and in his speech at Stoneybrook argued for the survival of traditional journalism:

While Wikipedia and online aggregators serve their purpose, serious news gathering operations are more necessary than ever as the public and private decision- makers and the concerned public gathers the news and information needed to more thoughtfully progress into a most uncertain future….

…what do we need to do to earn enough revenue to maintain robust newsrooms and uphold the rights and privileges granted to us by our Constitution?….

At The New York Times Company, we are focusing on three key levers to achieve this breakthrough moment: attracting more users, deepening their engagement and then earning revenue from their usage. To do all this will require making bets on how this new medium will evolve and making investments in that vision….

2.  David Carr, columnist for the New York Times, wrote an article on the subject the week before the News Literacy conference was held — United, Newspapers May Stand:

Even casual followers of the newspaper industry could rattle off the doomsday tick-tock: a digitally enabled free fall in ads and audience now has burly guys circling major daily newspapers with plywood and nail guns. The Rocky Mountain News is gone, The San Francisco Chronicle is on the bubble, and dozens of others are limping along on the endangered list….

Most aggregators are not promoting newspaper content; they are repurposing it to their own ends. Newspapers’ audiences are harvested and sold divorced from the content that attracted them in the first place….

Carr argues for the “walled garden” approach to news — no more free content on the Web, tiered Web access, charging aggregators for referrals, regulatory reform. Carr is in fact the poster boy for those journalists that Shirky describes as obsolete and in a state of denial.

During the last presidential campaign in Ecuador, Rafael Correa used the media to discredit the opposition and brainwash voters to vote for him. Once in power, Correa became a dictator. He is working with Hugo Chavez, imposing “socialismo del siglo XXI” (Marxism) in Ecuador and collaborating with Islamic terrorists. Informed Ecuadorians could not understand how the media could be so biased in favor of the leftist candidate Correa.

Many believe the media became corrupt because Hugo Chavez not only funded Correa’s multi-million presidential campaign, but also paid the media. Anyone trying to inform Ecuadorians regarding the real Rafael Correa was ridiculed, discredited, vilified, sued, accused of infractions or crimes, and finally silenced. As it happened in Ecuador, the mainstream media in the United States has also demonstrated unethical and unrestricted support for the leftist candidate, in this case, Barack Obama.

On the one hand, they have refused to report on important and relevant topics that reflect negatively on Obama. On the other hand, they have focused on trying to destroy Presidential candidate John McCain and Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.  While most news reports about Obama are positive, most news reports about McCain are negative. And ever since Sarah Palin was nominated as the Vice Presidential candidate, the media have gone wild criticizing, ridiculing and insulting her at every turn. Most of those attacks have been factually wrong and intellectually dishonest.

In addition to attacking McCain and Palin, the mainstream media is also attacking anyone who tries to show Americans the real Obama. Even Joe the Plumber has been vilified for asking a question that prompted Obama to uncover his plan to “redistribute the wealth.”

The Mainstream Media and Jerome Corsi

The smear campaign against Jerome Corsi is a case in point.  Dr. Corsi (PhD Harvard) is a senior staff reporter of World Net Daily (WND) and the author of the New York Times No. 1 best-selling book, The Obama Nation.  An independent and courageous journalist, Corsi put his life and well-being at risk to travel to Kenya to dig up the truth about presidential candidate Obama. Corsi was rightfully concerned, as any thinking American should be, about Obama’s connections to Kenya’s thug Raila Odinga.

CNN attacked Corsi and defended Obama. “Book on Obama blasted for ‘vicious innuendo’” wrote the title of a CNN article. “There’s a new book out about Barack Obama that some say is riddled with pretty much every unsubstantiated rumor you’ve ever heard about the Illinois senator.”  CNN continued with negative comments against Corsi from the Obama camp, but it never bothered to cover the most important issue for Americans, the issue presented in Corsi’s book: the connection between Obama and his Marxist relative Odinga. (Source: CNN Politics — Book on Obama blasted for ‘vicious innuendo’.)

The New York Times also focused on attacking Corsi’s credibility calling him a “gadfly.”  ”In the summer of 2004 the conservative gadfly Jerome R. Corsi shot to the top of the best-seller lists as co-author of “Unfit for Command,” began the New York Times article. (Source: New York Times, Politics — Book Attacking Obama Hopes to Repeat ’04 Anti-Kerry Feat.)

Showing complete lack of ethics, the mainstream media has failed to properly inform Americans about what Obama did in Kenya.  They have justified ignoring this story based on comments from the Obama camp and details that perhaps need to be confirmed. However, the underlying (more important issues) are verifiably true. In August and September 2006, Senator Barack Obama traveled to South Africa, Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya. While in Kenya, Obama consistently appeared at the side of fellow Luo Raila Odinga (“your agent for change”), who was running for President.

Obama’s partisan support for Odinga was so transparent, that the Kenyan Government spokesman, Alfred Matua, complained of political posturing to aid Odinga’s election chances: “It is very clear that the senator has been used as a puppet to perpetuate opposition politics.” (Source — Walking The World Stage, Newsweek 9/11/06.)  Obama used his elected office — and taxpayers’ dollars — to support Kenya’s Odinga, a violent Marxist thug who made a pact with the Muslims to institute Sharia (Islamic law) although only 10 percent of Kenyans are Muslim.

Odinga’s followers killed some 1000 people and burned 800 Christian churches, including one with 50 people, many of them children, inside. During a KTN interview in Kenya, Odinga admitted signing the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Muslims, but said the MOU did not include anything regarding Sharia because he’s an Anglican. Listen to him… Raila Odinga’s KTN Interview – 15/11/2009

 
However, Odinga LIED. In the MOU Odinga signed, he promised to “within 1 year facilitate the establishment of a Sharia court in every Kenyan divisional headquarters, to order primary schools to conduct daily Madrassa classes, to impose a total ban on open-air gospel crusades…” Read the MOU… Memorandum of Understanding Between Hon. Raila Amolo Odinga Representing the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) and National Muslim Leaders Forum (NAMLEF).

Why is the U.S. media so desperate to support Obama as to hide important information Americans have the right to know? In their efforts to keep Americans ignorant of negative information about Obama, the U.S. mainstream media has lost all credibility.

As so often happens we write a post that lends itself to an update. Well, last week I wrote the following:

The Obama campaign is driven by being an antidote to the Bush administration which, like it or not and for many different reasons (partly George’s own fault, partly through media projection), is a laughing stock not only in NZ, but around the world. Anything but Bush. Mark my words: The Obama camp is going to drive that point hard over the next two months, that McCain will be “four more years of failed Bush policies,” and the McCain camp would be wise to do as much as they can to distance themselves from the Bush administration.

OK, so that may not be the most prophetic statement ever made and may be quite obvious to anybody with a pulse who has been paying attention to the campaign with only one eye half-open — but it is nevertheless true. And here is a perfect example of the left doing just as I predicted:

…The point is that Palin, and the circus she’s brought to town, are simply a bountiful collection of small lies deliberately designed to distract the country from one big truth: the havoc that George Bush and the Republican Party have wrought, and that John McCain is committed to continuing.Every second of this campaign not spent talking about the Republican Party’s record, and John McCain’s role in that record, is a victory for John McCain.

Her critics like to say that Palin hasn’t accomplished anything. I disagree: in the space of ten days she’s succeeded in distracting the entire country from the horrific Bush record — and McCain’s complicity in it. My friends, that’s accomplishment we can believe in.

Just look at the problem John McCain faced. George Bush has a disastrous record, and the country knows it. John McCain — the current one, not the one who vanished eight years ago — has no major disagreements with George Bush (and I’m sorry, wanting to fire Donald Rumsfeld a bit sooner doesn’t qualify) and wants to continue his incredibly unpopular policies for another four years. The solution? Enter Sarah Palin, a Trojan Moose carrying four more years of disaster.

So there it is: Voting for McCain is four more years of Bush according Arianna Huffington, a very popular and influential blogger on the left. It’s all on.

But let me point out a few things. Whatever were the reasons that McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, it wasn’t them or the GOP who started sounding any horns about it. They put her out there, and the MEDIA created the firestorm — not the GOP. We can sit around and discuss all day long the idea that this is just what McCain and the GOP hoped for, and that is probably a valid topic for discussion. My view is that the media, like most of the rest of the population, has a short attention span. We have collectively short memories, and the media is no different. Nobdy had heard of Sarah Palin until she was announced as McCain’s VP running mate, and the media scrambled for stories to report on. Then they became a dog with a bone: They will chew it for all it’s worth, and when the bone is pulp and has lost its flavor, the media will be onto the next bone. Just keep that metaphor in mind.

There were some other points made in Arianna’s article that need to be addressed to keep matters in perspective. Huffington continues:

And the plan has worked beautifully. Just look at what’s being discussed just 57 days before the election. Is it the highest unemployment rate in five years? The bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? The suicide bombing yesterday in Iraq that killed six people and wounded 54 — in the same market where last month a bomb killed 28 people and wounded 72? That the political reconciliation that was supposedly the point of “the surge” is nowhere near happening? That Iraq’s Shiite government is now rounding up the American-backed Sunni leaders of the Awakening? That the reason 8,000 soldiers may be leaving Iraq soon is so more can be deployed to Afghanistan where the Taliban is steadily retaking the country?

First she cites the “highest unemployment rate in five years” which is true, but it’s only slightly higher than where it had been hovering until now; a rate of umemployment equal to that which existed during the Clinton administration when that was considered OK. A pending recession in the balance, the Fannie/Freddie bailout, and the slumping housing market is not solely germaine to the United States. This is global. Here in New Zealand we’re already in recession, and the housing market has declined severely. Property values are low; nobody in their right mind is selling; it’s a buyer’s market. In a country of only 4.1 million people 39 finance companies have gone belly-up since May 2006, leaving many investors with virtually nothing. The whole world is feeling the pinch.

Regarding the Iraq situation, all I can say is that war and conflict is fluid; the dynamics change every day, sometimes every hour. It’s not a scripted one hour TV drama. And whatever happens overseas, the war will ALWAYS be a drum the left can beat like a life insurance policy that guarantees them a certain return on the investement.

The funny thing is that most people who have an interest, I believe, already have their minds made up regarding for whom they will vote. All this back-and-forth slinging of mud by sycophants on both sides is just media fodder. It’s nothing more than a really bad bloody soap opera, reminding me of this line from Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”:

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Or the lyrics to the song, “Limelight“, from drummer/lyricist, Neil Peart (a big Ayn Rand fan, BTW), of the musical band Rush, paraphrasing Shakespeare in the last stanza:

Living on a lighted stage
Approaches the unreal
For those who think and feel
In touch with some reality
Beyond the gilded cage.
Cast in this unlikely role,
Ill-equipped to act
With insufficient tact
One must put up barriers
To keep oneself intact.

Living in the limelight
The universal dream
For those who wish to seem

Those who wish to be
Must put aside the alienation
Get on with the fascination
The real relation
The underlying theme.

Living in a fisheye lens
Caught in the camera eye
I have no heart to lie
I can’t pretend a stranger
Is a long-awaited friend.

All the world’s indeed a stage
And we are merely players
Performers and portrayers
Each another’s audience
Outside the gilded cage

The vocabulary we internalize defines the boundaries of what we are able to conceptualize. First, we get our intellectual tools from our parents, and then from close family and friends. Next we go to school, where we add to our arsenal of words and hopefully, enlarge the borders of our understanding.

Every culture has its thought police, whose most effective weapon in channeling or limiting our ability for independent thinking is to define what vocabulary terms are allowable. With the cooperation of the media, they can eliminate old patterns and introduce new ones.

At their best, they can erase traditional hatreds and prejudices from the public discourse. We have seen in the United States, for example, a shift from slavery and lynch mobs to equal opportunity. And no one ever calls Brazil nuts by the slang nigger toes anymore. In Iraq and Afghanistan, modernists are working diligently to refocus primitive tribal rivalries into national coalescence and public safety.

There is a downside. Manipulated vocabularies can lull us into complacence about virulent dangers when we should remain alert. They can be used to subtly persuade us to accept outcomes we would have prevented, if only we had seen them coming. Illegal immigration and welfare abuse are two examples from contemporary American life.

Now we have a guidebook of sorts. Paul Payack is a Harvard graduate who majored in comparative literature, and developed a love of linguistics. Professionally, he served in executive marking positions with several leading high-tech computer industry firms. He is also a widely published author of essays on wordsmithing. And he has established a Global Language Monitor.

Right up front, it delivers the bottom line:

Then a series of articles provides the details on the erosion of our cultural linguistic heritage:

The Top Politically inCorrect Words and Phrases for 2005:

1. Misguided Criminals for Terrorist: The BBC attempts to strip away all emotion by using what it considers neutral descriptions when describing those who carried out the bombings in the London Tubes. The rub: the professed intent of these misguided criminals was to kill, without warning, as many innocents as possible (which is the common definition for the term, terrorist). The phrase was selected by GLM as but one example in line with the published BBC Editorial Guidelines where it is noted that the word ‘terrorist’ itself can be a barrier rather than aid to understanding. Suggested alternatives include: bomber, attacker, insurgent and militant, among others. These and similar words are deemed to have no emotional or value judgments. However, the word Terrorist can be used as long as it appears in a quoted attribution….

You may want to bookmark this website. The downhill slide from illegal immigrant to undocumented worker has already taken its toll, and long ago welfare payments became public assistance. But there may still be time to save our winter festivities, as Payack alerts us to the big shift in 2005:

“God Rest Ye Merry Persons” for “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”: A Christmas, eh, Holiday, carol with 500 years of history is not enough to sway the Anglican Church at Cardiff Cathedral (Wales) from changing the original lyrics. There are those who suggest going one step further: “Higher Power Rest Ye Merry Persons”….

Happy Holidays or Season’s Greetings for Christmas (which in some UK schools now label Wintervale). However, the word holiday is derived directly from Holy Day, and in the word X-Mas, the Greek letter ‘chi’ represented by the Roman X actually stands for the first two letters of the name Christ.) Now there are published reports of organization banning the traditional Christmas Colours of red and green.

At the end of 2005, humor columnist Erik Deckers weighed in on the seasonal celebration controversy:

We’re nearing the end of 2005, and I want to wish everyone a belated Merry Wintervale.

What’s that? You don’t know what Wintervale is? That’s what some schools in the United Kingdom are calling Christmas. Apparently, “happy holiday” and “season’s greetings” weren’t soulless and sterile enough, so they came up with that little winter winner instead.

Apparently, the PC simps didn’t like the fact that “holiday” stems from “holy day,” and they didn’t want to be “greeted” by anyone either. So school administrators kowtowed to them in an attempt to be inclusive, thereby excluding everyone….

As funny as that one is, the one all of us at ADMC are most concerned about is the penultimate threat to our free way of life. Deckers adds:

The GLM is a Political Correctness watchdog — excuse me, security animal companion — that keeps track of the linguistic decisions made by idiots — excuse me, bureaucrats — around the world….

Topping the 2005 list is the British Broadcasting Corporation and their use of the term “misguided criminals” instead of “terrorists.”

“The BBC attempts to strip away all emotion by using what it considers neutral descriptions,” said the website. Apparently they didn’t want to offend the terrorists who killed 52 people in the London bombings this past July by expressing outrage and emotion over it….

1.  A brief analogy comparing the geology of drainage to the information flow at CBS written by……….[American Daughter

 
2.  [MathMan] calls our attention to this interesting article.

 
3.  [Bad Moon Rising] discovered this gem.

WE ARE 100% BEHIND THE MARINE WHO HAS BEEN SO VICIOUSLY ATTACKED BY SOME IN THE MEDIA FOR DOING HIS JOB. THESE TALKING HEADS ARE THE REAL ENEMIES OF DEMOCRACY. TOO COWARDLY TO WALK THE WALK OF THE MARINES, THEY HIDE BEHIND THEIR NETWORK ICONS AND TALK TRASH.

 
In discussing the NBC video of a Marine shooting a wounded insurgent, some talking heads have abandoned all pretense of being rational. Worse, they have displayed a callous indifference to the lethal danger they are creating for our sons and daughters in harm’s way. Aware of the potential for adverse news coverage, some of our forces will hesitate — in an environment where hesitation can mean death. We have several posts on this subject:

 
1.  [Good Cop] sends this photo essay, Rules of Engagement. He was a Marine platoon commander himself and says, “GET THIS if nothing else — engage the insurgents.”

 
2.  [Good Cop] forwards this letter from the mother of a Marine on site, including her son’s comments on the incident.

 
3.  [MathMan] links to this article** by Thomas Sowell. Sowell describes the media:

…the obscenity of sitting in peace and comfort while second-guessing at leisure some life-and-death decisions that had to be made in a split second by men 10,000 miles away.

(**This link is no longer good.)

 
4.  [MathMan] links to this blog** about the Marine incident in Fallujah.

(**This link is no longer good. It was to an article at “Froggy Ruminations” titled They’re Called Security Rounds)

5.  [Amelia] comments on the information war that is being waged in the Blogs over this incident.

 
6.  [American Cowboy], pictured here with Ollie North, links to this article** on the incident by his friend. (**This link is no longer good.)

 
7.  To put things in perspective, [Web Lady] suggests watching this presentation by singer/songwriter
Dustin Evans.

 
8.  Also to put things in perspective, [MathMan] suggests we take a look at these pictures from Iraq** that are too shocking for the mainstream media to show us. (**This link is no longer good)

9.  Federalist Patriot weighs in.

 
10. [MathMan] forwards this letter from a friend, Sad Duty.

 
11. [Bad Moon Rising] sends this personal story, Little Girl. He says,

“I disagree with media embedding in the military. Even the good ones will sell your ass down the river for a story that enhances their career.”

 
Note: Kevin Sites is a freelance solo journalist currently on assignment for NBC. He is a self-promoting opportunist reporting events out of context to advance his own career. Such “yellow journalists” should not be embedded with our troops, putting their lives at risk……….[American Daughter]