Reply #135: My question is... [View All]

...who's paying for all of it?

What would an attempt to follow the "money trail" show?

In 1960 there was a rough 1-to-1 equivalence between journalists and P.R. people.

Today, it's something like 5 or 6 or 7 to 1, P.R. (paid-for messengers) to 'truth seekers.' (However compromised they may be, given the constraints of the editorial policies of the publications/news outlets they work for.)

All the viral e-mails, the tea party funders (what was it you needed to fork up, to attend that Tea Party convention, a few months ago?), all the elements that combine to 'manufacture consent?'

...What would an attempt to discover that bottom line show?

I happened to be in a country that used to be called, "Yugoslavia," in 1988. It was a university-sponsored academic excursion. For me, a chance to practice up on my first language. (I had to learn English when I started kindergarden, I didn't know a word the first day.)

What I saw there, then -- the kind of stuff that was being flung back and forth, in the magazines and daily press -- reminds me all too much of what I'm seeing here, now.

...But it's not as if I'm posting this, expecting an actual reply, or anything.

I also want to know who was it that paid for all that hate speech on Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, in Rwanda, in the early 90's.

Fat chance of that ever happening.