By Mark T. Harris
December 5, 2006
I couldn't help but overhear the young man in the retail chain
store last week. He was the fellow wearing the T-shirt with
the word "security" emblazoned in large block letters.
He was talking to a young couple as they browsed the store's
music section.
At first I thought the young man, who looked like he was in
his early 20s, worked for the store. But a closer look at his
T-shirt revealed in smaller letters the word "eternal" above "security," and
below that a biblical reference to John 3:16. It was not an
unusual message in this part of the Midwest. But what really
caught my attention was what the young man was saying. Apparently,
the other man was planning to enlist in the army in a few months.
The man in the Jesus shirt was telling the couple about his
military tour of duty in Iraq. How they shouldn't believe all
the media reports about how terrible it is in Iraq.
"I mean, when you're over there and you hear that a million
people got electricity last week, it's awesome, man," declared
our evangelist for Jesus and foreign occupations. "Some
of these people live in mud homes." The young couple he
was addressing smiled and nodded their heads agreeably. "You'll
see, it's not like they're saying. There are amazing things
happening," the young man assured the future soldier.
Listening, I was also amazed. I wondered what this fellow
knew about the modern history of Iraq. Did he know about the
U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency report from 1990 that discussed
methods at the outset of the first Gulf War for sabotaging
Iraq's water treatment system? Did he know about the U.S. bombing
raids then on Iraq's dams, pumping stations, municipal water
and sewage facilities? Or how the post-war economic sanctions
against Iraq included a ban on the chemicals and equipment
needed to repair water and sanitation treatment facilities?
Did he know about the approximately 500,000 children estimated
to have died during the sanction years, deaths caused in significant
number by disease related to the deterioration of the sanitation
system?
Ironically, Iraq actually began exporting electricity to Turkey
in 1987. In those days the country's electrical system had
been modernizing for a couple decades. In those days the Reagan
Administration was also an ally of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship.
Then Saddam's world of helicopter gunships, chemical weapons,
torture and dictatorship were not a problem for the Republican
White House. In those days Iraq was at war with Iran. Then
Iran's nationalist revolution was considered the major threat
to U.S. oil interests. If you're a torturer with oil, Washington
has a way of rationalizing unpleasantries when they happen
to dovetail with the year's policy agenda.
But despite the encouragement (and arranging shipments of
arms and money) from glad-handing Reagan envoy Donald Rumsfeld,
Saddam's war with Iran exacted a heavy price not only in lives
lost, but also in a shrinking gross domestic product. Thirteen
years of economic sanctions and two wars later, Iraq is a country
where prospects for a better life look about as bright as a
distant star on a smoggy Los Angeles evening.
The Land of Sound Bites and Sycophants
While the young veteran in the store may believe the U.S. mission
in Iraq is a noble enterprise, you just have to wonder how
anyone can continue to support a war that has been so discredited?
It may be because the right-wing media warriors who whipped
up pro-war sentiment four years ago are still at it. Indeed,
despite the shattered reality of life in Iraq, you will be
hard pressed to find any genuinely critical accounting of
the war's course from its many talk media boosters.
At a time when an old-line right-winger like William F. Buckley
bluntly admits the U.S. mission in Iraq has failed, when even
professional reprobate Henry Kissinger says a military victory
is impossible, talk radio stars like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh,
Laura Ingraham, and others remain intrepid defenders of the
heroic rightness of the President's war. In the brave new world
of the media warrior, the only challenge remains "finishing
the job."
These are folks who once predicted candy and flowers for our
troops (hey, Dick Cheney told them this!) and got instead a
nation where polls show 61 percent of Iraq's population now
supports attacks on U.S. and British troops. They also made
the mistake of taking seriously the not-so-sage wisdom of Defense
Secretary Rumsfeld, who in the weeks following the invasion
could not imagine resistance to the occupation lasting more
than six months.
Of course, Rumsfeld's grotesque misreading of Iraqi reality
was only an early clue to what was coming. No Weapons of Mass
Destruction (WMDs) found. No textbook lessons in helping a
grateful nation learn the ABCs of building a fledgling democracy.
No end to terrorism. No peace. No security. A war with no end
in sight.
Death everywhere.
In the build-up to the invasion of Iraq, the mainstream news
networks and press largely gave a pass to all the duplicitous
nonsense emanating from the White House about Iraq's secret
cache of weapons. But it was the talk media industry especially
that played a critical role in turning the White House's recipe
for disaster into a dish palatable enough for the public to
swallow. Yet as the public grows ever more disillusioned with
the war, the more the media warriors sound like some crude
Stalinist propaganda machine, all self-righteous bluster in
the name of the beleaguered theory of America as the world's
only moral force for good. But beneath the bombast, the media
warriors travel increasingly in desperation and delusion.
In place of edifying political thought, we instead get people
like CNN host Glen Beck, a glib talker who thinks torture in
the name of the red, white, and blue is highly commendable.
Or the bluster of Hannity, who prattles loudly on radio and
TV about things like "moral character" while explaining
away the blood-drenched streets of Falluja under U.S. siege.
Then there's Bill O'Reilly, whose national platform on Fox
News allows him to advocate things like incarcerating "all
those clowns" at Air America for treason. At least O'Reilly
is opposed to the death penalty, unlike radio host Michael
Savage. The latter believes former Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright should be tried for treason and hanged for not preventing
North Korea from buying two nuclear reactors during the Clinton
era. No word from Savage on whether he would also march exiting
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld up the gallows steps, since he was
on the board of the engineering firm ABB when it was hired
by North Korea to build those nuclear reactors.
In place of productive discussion, we instead get anger, packaged
in self-righteousness and delivered as cheap entertainment.
There's syndicated radio host Mark Levin, a Republican lawyer
and frequent guest on Hannity's program, who regularly delivers
some of radio's nastiest name-calling rants against liberal "appeasers" of
evil (meaning basically anyone who disagrees with Levin). Levin's
radio moniker is "The Great One" and he's a case
study in the crassness that pervades talk media. Levin is the
kind of guy who in a radio exchange with actor Alec Baldwin,
a Bush critic, attacked Baldwin with mocking taunts about his
weight and divorce proceedings. During the recent military
conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, Levin more notably incited
his listeners with high-decibel declarations on the need to "crush
the barbarians" in Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria, to "rain
hell on them so they'll know what hell is like before they
get there." If you happen to think otherwise, prepare
to have a payload of outrage dumped on you. It's all apparently
designed to appeal to Levin's perpetually aggrieved fan base.
It also just gets worse. If hell is other people, as Sartre
once said, then the Mark Levin Show is the show those people
listen to.
They also might read the thuggish columns of Ann Coulter.
On almost any topic this talk media fixture offers a grab bag
of predictably disgraceful thought. To the news that a former
spokesperson for the Taliban government in Afghanistan is now
attending Yale University, for example, Coulter in her May
10 column asked why the man hasn't been "beaten more senseless
than he already is?" Where is "an angry, club-and
torch wielding mob when you need one?" asked our word-processing
vigilante?
But the times are not only crass; they're ironic. To the suggestion
that the trial of Saddam Hussein is flawed since the defendant's
lawyers are routinely killed, Tony Blankley, editorial page
editor of the Washington Times, declared on Santa Monica's
KCRW radio's "Left, Right, and Center" on June 23
that he's never been a big fan of the "Nuremburg precedent." In
the true spirit of civilized life, Blankley admitted he's always
thought it better for the winning side to just shoot the leaders
of the losing side. Leave it to a former policy analyst for
President Reagan to want to obliterate the concept of surrender
for the justice that comes up against a wall.
It's all typical of the type of extremist thinking now prevailing
in the conservative cauldrons of American politics. Indeed,
in any major market scan the radio dial on any given day and
you're likely to hear some media warrior going on about how
insurgent Iraq and the rise of global anti-U.S. sentiment is
explainable only as the product of crazed enemies who "hate
our freedoms." Better to stick with that cartoon analysis
than strive to actually understand the deeper roots of global
conflict. The latter is in fact a suspect activity in today's
right-wing culture, where interest in understanding the phenomenon
of terrorism is equated with condoning terrorism. This is derivative
of the line of philosophical argument that evil is basically
inexplicable. So instead we hear opinions such as those of
actor James Woods, who in a recent Tonight Show appearance
explained that unlike previous wars, we Americans now face
a barbarian enemy unlike no other, who has no demands but the
crazed desire to kill us.
Unfortunately, defining barbarism for the media warriors has
become more an expression of partisan political loyalties than
political integrity. Responding to criticism of Israel for
air raids that killed hundreds of Lebanese civilians, Chicago
WLS radio host, Eileen Byrne, for example, declared in her
July 28 website blog that "an ambulance or a school bus
is the first place I'd look for Hamas or Hezbollah." The
word "look" we assume is Byrne's euphemism for air
strikes by jetfighters and helicopter gunships. "Oh, How
could Israel hit an ambulance? Oh the humanity!" mocked
Byrne, unaware or unconcerned that in her sarcasm she endorses
acts constituting potential war crimes." In a similar
vein, Limbaugh explained in an Aug. 15 broadcast critical of
the U.N.-sponsored cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah,
that the West is in fact in a religious war, one that allows
not for negotiation or compromise, but only total victory!
Brave General Limbaugh is apparently otherwise quite content
with an outcome that left a large area of south Lebanon unlivable
because of unexploded cluster bombs.
Real Anger, No Solutions
The right-wing media trades on the grudges, resentments, and
frustrations of a section of the popular culture defined
by almost endless disgruntlement. It's a world of faux populism
where an unjust war is painted in red, white, and blue hypocrisy,
while issues such as unaffordable health care or a pension
system under attack fade before the burning evils of gay
marriage or stem cell research. In this media world, evolutionary
biology is bad news, but political evolution toward a more
just, compassionate, and progressive society is just some
laughable Hollywood fairy tale.
The trouble is the media warriors exploit the public's various
frustrations and fears and offers nothing in the way of real
solutions. This is a milieu that thinks it's having a serious
discussion when it solicits callers' comments on the topic
of whether the minimum wage should ever be raised, or even
exist! Their product is especially toxic when what's for sale
is a belligerent brand of patriotism, the kind that equates "supporting
the troops" with unquestioned support for an administration
whose fogged vision has meant death for nearly 3000 troops.
In the end, right-wing talk media is less some bellwether
of democratic discussion than just sordid. It's a corporate
propaganda system whose gauge for what is considered "responsible" debate
is set to stiflingly narrow parameters. In this media system
the global drama of human struggle and conflict exists only
in relation to its significance to U.S. foreign policy interests,
as interpreted by a domestic(ated) press corps and the sludge
of retired military generals and professional terrorism "experts" who
now moonlight as network consultants. This is a world whose
center of gravity is defined by all things corporate and all
things American, beyond which exists only a global community
less to be understood than contained
With the exception of Air America, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann,
and a few other hosts, the talk media industry largely reflects
the rise to prominence of the far right. No longer is the loopy
agenda of those who equate government social programs with "nanny
state" socialism limited to monthly John Birch Society
newsletters. But with the rise of talk media has also come
an increasing coarseness in the culture. Never before has boorish
incivility been so valued on a radio host's resume.
Listening to one of Hannity's recent typically strident discourses
on Iraq, I couldn't help but note that the war's duration has
brought no run of media warriors leaving their radio and TV
hosting responsibilities to enlist in the military. That job
they rather comfortably leave to the mostly working-class young
men and women who are fighting and dying in Iraq. Listening
to Hannity, I thought about my recent overheard chain store
conversation, wondering what would be the fate of the fellow
with plans to enlist. Where would he be a year from now? In
Iraq, possibly? Alive? Dead? Would he become one of those young
faces on the local television news, his formal military portrait
haunting the screen while the announcer gives details of his
upcoming memorial service?
Later, I gave a friend's high school-aged daughter a ride
to a sports practice. She told me in the car about how one
of her girlfriend's plans includes joining the Marines after
college because she wants to fight in Iraq. Being a sophomore
now, this means her stint in Iraq would be scheduled for exactly
seven years from now. My friend's daughter had objected that
we don't belong in Iraq now, but we will certainly not belong
in Iraq seven years from now! The other girl explained that
our government wants to leave, but can't as long as the "terrorists
in Iraq keep blowing up bombs against us." To those who
have opposed the U.S. war in Iraq from the beginning, such
ideas might seem frustratingly, dangerously naïve. But
they are also indicative of the corrosive effects on American
life of the right-wing extremism that has emerged on the main
stage of both American politics and media.
The architects of the Iraq war are people without humane vision,
as inured to death as they are attuned to the profits and geopolitics
of the region's oil and gas reserves. With control over the
largest military force the world has ever seen, they confuse
their power with being right. The media warriors only confuse
their access to cables and satellites with genuine power, the
kind that comes from critical thinking, searching self-reflection,
and the capacity to form opinions that are not for sale.
The news talk floats through American culture now like a drone
of white noise. It's all a kind of detached backdrop to the
real America where the fragmented reality of private life prevails.
In this America everyone's "informed," few are involved,
and the live network feed from Baghdad on the latest roadside
bombings has the effect of a chronic IV drip of anesthetic
on the public spirit.
This is a democracy in decline.
www.Mark-T-Harris.com
Mark T. Harris is a freelance writer living in Bloomington,
Illinois. He has written for Utne, Z magazine, Dissent, and
other publications.
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