Lipstick on a Pig: The Folly of Media Reform

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28 Nov 2005 11:15:37 -0800

Lipstick on a Pig: The Folly of Media Reform

 

 

 

 

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Lipstick on a Pig: The Folly of Media Reform

 

By Stephen Dunifer

 

As the saying goes, no matter how much lipstick you apply to a pig, it

is still a pig. Such is the case of media reform. In the final

analysis, it is a discussion about making the jail cell more comfortable.

 

No matter the nature or degree of reform proposed, media reform

advocates are blind to the greater context out of which the Federal

Communications Commission (FCC) arose. Surrendering the broadcast

airwaves to corporate interests is the accepted narrative surrounding

the Communications Act of 1934, enabling legislation that created the

FCC. True as this narrative may be, a much larger political gestalt

was in motion.

 

Put succinctly, the corporate media empires are large cogs in an

engine of imperial war and conquest. This relationship was formalized

by the Communications Act of 1934.

 

As much as the left tends to wax nostalgic about the 1930's, it

ignores the largely covert war preparation program that was put into

play by Roosevelt with domestic economic recovery, social uplift and

job programs providing the cover story. Roosevelt implemented a

sweeping mobilization of resources and programs to place the United

States in a position to conduct a major global war in the Pacific and

Europe.

 

Beginning with the Committee on Public Information (aka Creel

Commission), whose World War I propaganda efforts are well documented

by Noam Chomsky in the book Manufacturing Consent, the US government

continued with both overt and covert efforts to regiment the public

mind—aided and abetted by academia, media institutions and industry.

Witness the extremely racist cartoons created in the 1930's to portray

the Japanese in the worst possible way. If your intent is to move a

population from a relatively pacifist or isolationist position to one

that is supportive of a global war, then it would make perfect sense

to place the broadcast spectrum in trusted hands—RCA, Western

Electric, etc. Certainly not labor unions whose definition of a

bayonet is " a sharp instrument with a worker at each end. " Further,

you sweeten the pot with the prospect of obscene war profits—according

to some statistics, corporate America made $1,000,000 of profit for

every US service person killed during World War II. Finally, you take

the propaganda machine that has been running since 1916 or so and

supercharge it once the war has begun. At the end of WW II, this

machine was not switched off. Instead, it was turned full bore on the

American public. Many major media figures, both frontline journalists

and corporate bosses, had prominent positions in this war propaganda

apparatus. For example, William Paley, CEO of CBS, served as deputy

chief of the psychological warfare branch of General Dwight

Eisenhower's staff. When that is not sufficient you buy journalists by

the dozen as the CIA did in the 1950's. Now most of them are such

skanky whores they do not have an asking price.

 

Given the integral and vital role of media in creating and maintaining

a hyper-saturated propaganda environment domestically and an ongoing

campaign of media imperialism abroad one would have to be delusional

to think that any degree of reform is going to fundamentally alter

this reality, or be allowed to have any meaningful effect by the

ruling elite. As long as reform is maintained as the only " viable and

realistic " option available, and its advocates can roam about their

comfortably appointed play pens, underwritten by liberal foundations,

then those who run and service this mechanistic Moloch, to which all

must be sacrificed in the name of profit and greed, can rest undisturbed.

 

Further, most advocates of reform fail to recognize that every citizen

of the United States is the target of an ongoing psychological warfare

campaign. It is terra-forming of the human internal landscape. An old

movement slogan had it right, " It is hard to fight an enemy who has an

outpost in your head. " When someone is carpet bombing your mind every

second, minute and hour of the day, blowing the hell of out of your

sense of self-esteem, self-identity and self-worth, would any

intelligent, free thinking person believe that media reform aspirin is

the solution and cure? No fucking way!

 

Yes, many worlds are possible. Only if we step outside our jail cells

and reject the narcotizing effects of reform. Our only option is to

continue to create our own systems of media and information with

massive campaigns of electronic civil disobedience on a global scale;

screw their broadcast regulations, intellectual property laws,

v-chips, internet filters, self-appointed gate keepers, proprietary

software, indecency standards and all other impediments to the free

flow of news, ideas, cultural expression and artistic/intellectual

creativity. Stick your thumb in the Cyclopean eye of media monopoly

and thought control. Hack the planet, hijack the starship!!!

 

Lipstick on a Pig " first appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of Confluence.