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Edited on Sun Jul-22-07 06:55 PM by arendt
Campaign Maintainence Organizations - The Media Privatizes Politics
by arendt
2007 was the year that the corporate media completed its privatization of politics. In the past, they have "screamed" Howard Dean out of the race and failed to debunk the obvious liars that "swiftboated" John Kerry. But, selective targeting is no longer good enough. After their failure to deliver the election to the GOP in 2006, the CM decided that there shalt be a permanent campaign for president, and that only candidates with enough corporate sponsorship to raise tens of millions of dollars two years before the election would be deemed "serious" or "first tier".
The CM has inserted itself into the selection of politicians as a controlling middleman. It runs the debates; it picks the venues and the questions; its moderators dole out air time; it decides whom to "throw off the island". In the process, it enriches itself by collecting massive amounts of money for the endless TV ads and political polls that dominate the permanent campaign.
I call this re-intermediation of politics the "Campaign Maintenance Organization" or CMO, because it maintains a permanent stream of campaign profit for the CM without having the slightest interest in the health of the political system or the voting process. Seen any hard-hiitting CM exposes of electronic voting machines and the fundamentalists and former felons who manufacture them?
Political parties were neutered decades ago by the need to raise buckets of cash for TV. For a long time, we have had 535 independent campaign organizations - one for each officeholder. The CMOs are just taking the next step: "rationalizing" and consolidating the market in political advertising. What used to be called "smoke-filled rooms" are now located in the executive offices of the CM; and those office doors have signs that say: no progressives or dogs allowed. Witness the treatment John Edwards, much less Dennis Kucinich, gets from the CM.
As was the case with the last corporate land-grab - the HMOs, the CMOs promptly proceeded to shortchange both of the ends it connects: voters and politicians. The CMO shortchanges its customers (voters) and its providers (politicians) by eliminating "retail politics" -standing at a factory gate, going to a local diner, giving a speech to a small audience without the oppressive glare of the media. Instead, we have nothing but "wholesale politics" - politics on a media-event assembly line, using only talking points, venues, and supporting speakers that meet the self-censoring, pro-corporate guideliines created by the CMO. Hence, John Edwards visits to poor people are dismissed as hypocritical. Hillary Clinton gets coverage for cleavage, not policy; and Barack Obama gets typecast as a rock star instead of a poltiician. (To use a completely different metaphor: Corporate-produced politics is as drained of nutrition and full of additives and filler as corporate-produced junk food, and just as unhealthy.)
Voters, like HMO patients before them, are told what kind of political services are "covered" by the CMO. The CMO does not cover open opposition to corporate rule, honest and complete indictment of the criminal Bush mis-administration, or the environmental protection rollback and the denial of Climate Change. Political providers offering those services are "out of network/ not covered". Sort of like "cosmetic surgery". But, as with HMOs, corporate Viagra, such as the endless war on terror and the occupation of Iraq, are covered without deductible and without limit.
Eight years ago, before the reign of the new Caligula, many politically active Americans thought that the only issue was Campaign Finance Reform, preferrentially in the form of Federal funding of elections. That option is now completely destroyed. All "serious" candidates have refused to sign up for government funding because the rake-off demanded by the CMOs is beyond the means of indigent politicians on government welfare.
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I'm not offering any solutions to the CMO enclosure of the political commons. If we can't even sue the HMOs, ten years after they declared themselves above the law, what chance do we have of getting some regulation of media bias or some delicensings for failure to provide public service in return for their rental of the public airwaves?
However, I am offering a metaphor. People hate HMOs. They should equally hate the CMOs and the crippled, self-serving, nuisance-shifting, ripoff that they have foisted on voters and politicians. The next time someone breathlessly tells you how well their candidate did in the latest pre-scripted CMO media pseudo-event, ask them if any real political events are happening in the real world.
Is anyone stopping the Occupation of Iraq, investigating the no-bid contracts? Is anyone stopping the carbon copy propaganda run-up to bombing Iran? Is anyone stopping Bush from flushing what little is left of the Constitution down the toilet? Is anyone doing anything about the budget deficit, other than defunding child health insurance? Is anyone making any progress impeaching Alberto Gonzalez for his blatant perjury, obstruction of justice, and violation of his oath of office?
I think you know the answer. Those conditions are not covered by your CMO. Isn't the free market wonderful?
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