Cenk Uygur Says No Thank You to Insider Cronyism and MSNBC’s 'Manufacture of Consent'

As far as I am concerned, it is a time for celebration.

Cenk Uygur escaped this week with his soul and his scalp from MSNBC. One way of celebrating may be to take a sledge hammer to your television. Just a thought.

I so wanted to dig into an angry blog about MSNBC, its false-left propagandizing of the Trojan Horse for oligarchs, Obama, its demonizing of only half of the Congressional rabid rat bastard criminal political class in Washington, and its attempt to neuter Cenk of his search for and assertion of truth to power.

But, alas, I had totally stopped watching MSNBC when Rachel Maddow so heartbreakingly jumped the shark a serious while ago by becoming head cheerleader, part time sycophant, for Obama.

I don’t watch much tv any more. Even the Newshour. The jump the shark moment there, one of many, was when Carol Browner, who served as director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2011 and previously served as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration from 1993 to 2001 (which you would think would assure some reliability) just after the BP disaster (as if there has been a serious “after”) assured Judy Woodruff that Mother Nature had miraculously cleaned up oh maybe was it 80% of that toilet bowl of a Gulf of Mexico and it was only a matter of time before she (M. Nature, that is) finished the job.

Can you imagine the audacity of that Obama-administration-scripted lie? I watched and waited. I mean, I ask you? Who on God’s formerly green earth would believe such an assertion in the midst of another shock and awe environmental calamity, this time totally and directly man-made. I saw the incredulity flash across Woodruff’s face. Good. But Ms. Woodruff rallied herself to be civil and non-challenging. True tv news reporter? Or maybe more what Glenn Greenwald calls “stenographer.” I wanted her to say to the woman, “You are so full of sh*t right now, no wonder your last name is Browner!” Yeah, like the astute yet demure Woodruff would even think let alone say that. But a viewer can dream, can’t she?

The media empire has a very strong and tight leash. We don’t always get to appreciate it until, say, the king of snark, Jon Stewart, crazymakingly scolds the nation for not being civil enough. Say what? Jon Stewart has made his fortune with truth to power incivility. But the network undoubtedly YANKED HIS LEASH and Stewart was a good doggie chastising his nation of followers not to emotionally inconvenience the rabid rat bastards destroying our world. Good doggie, Jonnie.

Or a dazzlingly bright Rachel Maddow sells her soul for celebrity and money. That GE paycheck can turn around an anti-war stance faster than a speeding bullet.

Remember when Phil Donahue got kicked to the curb so many decades ago with his anti-war position? There is the demographic on the left desired for ratings and dollars by the media moguls. But safely left. Don’t cross that electric fence of censorship or you get tasered with ostracism, slander, violence, whatever. Bringing up scientific logic about 9/11 will trigger profound marginalization, don't you know. A real journalistic career ender.

Tch, tch. That’s all Phil Griffin, prez of MSNBC, was trying to warn Cenk about. Don’t go falling off or nearing too closely the edge of the envelope. That's all. NO ONE gets to cross over, at least for long, to give too much truth or DISRESPECTFUL TONE to power. Isn’t that so, Keith or Bill Moyers or whomever?

Cenk Uygur was “advised” to clean up his TONE, because he was disrespectful to the white collar criminals in the corporate and political world who have economically raped this country and have militarily, at the very least, enabled the murder of hundreds of thousands. This week we get to see just how saturated with evil, cronyism and power addiction the “establishment” of which the media is such a HUGE PART is. Griffin reminded Cenk he was now part of the ESTABLISHMENT. BLECHHHHHHH.

Now why can’t Cenk be a good little establishment sycophant like say David Gregory on Meet the Press?

I could only imagine what the late great George Carlin would have to say about this. A string of well deserved delicious expletives I can now only dream about.

But this is what The Excavator of "prison planet" had to say which gave me some catharsis:

There was a great desire for ratings in an earlier time in the television news industry, but not today. What news producers and news managers consider more important is suppressing the truth and protecting the criminal political establishment at all cost, even if it means their ratings will be less. Their job is to keep news anchors in line, manipulate the news, spread government propaganda, and make sure that nobody steps outside the fake “republican-democrat, conservative-liberal” political trap.

snip

It is good that Cenk decided to leave a rotten, corrupt and morally bankrupt industry. Television news is poison for the mind. Modern society is contaminated with state propaganda. Individuals who sell government propaganda to the public as factual news and tell lies for a living have no sense of patriotism or civic duty. They are the villains of our time and of our society, not terrorists, not Bin Laden, not Saddam Hussein, not Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, not Muammar Gaddafi, not Kim Jong-il, not any foreign tyrant.

Until we understand that fact, we won’t ever put an end to Western state terrorism, government-media propaganda, and the transnational totalitarian system that is bringing America, Canada, England, Australia and other Western countries down to the level of the Soviet Union.

Well said!!! Truth to power and anybody else who might be listening!

I was so overtired last night but kept on googling desperately, wanting to add some kind of insight into the MSNBC/Cenk issue but realizing I had detached so from the tv arena as a participant (though that is oxymoronic now, isn’t it?) I had no specifics to use as exhibit A for my exasperation.

Then I happened across a stunningly brilliant as well as apt article in The Vigilant Citizen with some revelational historical jewels about media and propaganda. I will drop them before you for your pondering and my own further consideration.

I also want to full out agree with the deeper blogs I glanced over last night that the incident with Cenk Uygur is very much a "Howard Beale" moment (those who remember Paddy Chayefsky’s brilliant movie Network -- and if not go rent it now) and should not go seriously unaddressed and CELEBRATED by those of us in the spiritual counterculture movement taking on the bastards of the universe.

Speaking of bastards of the universe, a historical one, or at least a brilliant enabler for future bastards of the universe, was Walter Lippman. The Vigilant Citizen reveals it was Lippmann who presented the concept of “manufactured consent” -- and as a very good not negative thing.

Walter Lippmann, an American intellectual, writer and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner brought forth one of the first works concerning the usage of mass media in America. In Public Opinion (1922), Lippmann compared the masses to a “great beast” and a “bewildered herd” that needed to be guided by a governing class. He described the ruling elite as “a specialized class whose interests reach beyond the locality.” This class is composed of experts, specialists and bureaucrats. According to Lippmann, the experts, who often are referred to as “elites,” are to be a machinery of knowledge that circumvents the primary defect of democracy, the impossible ideal of the “omnicompetent citizen.” The trampling and roaring “bewildered herd” has its function: to be “the interested spectators of action,” i.e. not participants. Participation is the duty of “the responsible man”, which is not the regular citizen.

Mass media and propaganda are therefore tools that must be used by the elite to rule the public without physical coercion. One important concept presented by Lippmann is the “manufacture of consent”, which is, in short, the manipulation of public opinion to accept the elite’s agenda. It is Lippmann’s opinion that the general public is not qualified to reason and to decide on important issues. It is therefore important for the elite to decide ”for its own good” and then sell those decisions to the masses.

The Vigilant Citizen points out, also, that Lippmann was one of the founding fathers of the Council on Foreign Relations, the “most influential foreign think tank in the world.” Founded in 1921, it is the key link the VC asserts between the large corporations and the federal govenrment. “Invulnerable positioned men and women behind the scenes, the elite, shaping events." The CFR created the UN, the IMF and the World Bank, by the way.

The f-word has cropped into my head suddenly. FASCISM!

Current members of the CFR, CV elaborates, include David Rockefeller, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Rick Warren and the CEOs of CBS, Nike, Coca-Cola and Visa among elitist others. What The Viigilant Citizen calls the “illuminati”. Quite the “‘eclectic” group one might say, or MAYBE NOT, AFTER ALL! PONDER THAT. Maybe not so eclectic when the cronyism of the super rich and super powerful bevels the edges of their differences, their dispensable sensibility of decency in the common purpose of commandeering the masses, power and profits. I think of the mythological gods and goddesses of Mt. Olympus. These real life surreal power wielders are even less benign than those narcissistic often violent and bratty gods and goddesses were. Arranging or at best ignoring plights of human beings, from those drowning after Katrina, those being raped in the Sudan, the state-starved and bullied Palestinians in Gaza, the scores of innocent civilians being droned in Libya (and elsewhere), in Libya's case under the steroidal shameless pretense of SAVING them.

You get the picture. PROFITS UBER HUMANITY with what seems profound sadism and power and control addiction thrown in. Corporate-personhood's psychopathic personality profile. Common good, public trust so outmoded now. So quaint. No social partnership and cooperation. Darwinian might makes right.

The Vigilant Citizen also revealed that the number of corporations owning the majority of U.S. media outlets went from 50 to 5 in less than 20 years.

FIVE CORPORATIONS OWN THE VAST MAJORITY OF U.S. MEDIA OUTLETS. FIVE!!!!!!

Formerly 50, which should make us all nervous already, but now in 2011 we are at FIVE???? FIVE COLLECTIVE OR INDIVIDUAL CORPORATE-AGENDA-ED BASTARDS OF THE UNIVERSE CAN NOW HANDILY AND EFFECTIVELY PROGRAM PROPAGANDA FOR THE GLOBE!

These five multi-media-headed top corporations?

AOL/Time Warner, VIACOM, Walt Disney Company (a/k/a "the devil" -- my and others', not in this case VC's, coinage), Vivendi Universal, Sony.

Vigilant Citizen:

“A limited number of actors in the culture industry means a limited amount of viewpoints and ideas making their way to the general public. It also means that a single message can easily saturate all forms of media to generate consent (i.e., "there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”)

Did you hear that? “There are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” Over and over and over and over from there and there and there and there. Must be true. We are hearing it so often and from so many sources. HAH!!!!

Or how about “Obama is a combination of MLK and JFK?" Or "Gaddafi is killing his people"! Or "extraordinary interrogation is NOT torture". Or "Saddam Hussein was working with al Qaeda." Or "Assange is a sexual predator." Or "Bradley Manning is an enemy of the people and jeopardized lives." Or "Obama is trying to protect us from the Republicans who are destroying public security and welfare programs.”

You could easily make your own list. You probably take issue with parts of mine. Good. Shows you are applying critical thought. How much critical thought do you and I apply to the media giants' slicker 24/7 delivery of messages washing over us?

The Vigilant Citizen:

The merger of media companies in the last decades generated a small oligarchy of media conglomerates. The TV shows we follow, the music we listen to, the movies we watch and the newspapers we read are all produced by FIVE corporations. The owners of those conglomerates have close ties with the world’s elite and, in many ways, they ARE the elite. By owning all of the possible outlets having the potential to reach the masses, these conglomerates have the power to create in the minds of the people a single and cohesive world view, engendering a “standardization of human thought”.

Again from VC, Edward Bernays (father of public relations) in Propaganda wrote:

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.

The Vigilant Citizen then shares this analysis of “systematic desensitization” provided by the crony corporate media for the sake of the political ruling class:

In the past, when changes were imposed on populations, they would take to the streets, protest and even riot. The main reason for this clash was due to the fact that the change was clearly announced by the rulers and understood by the population. It was sudden and its effects could clearly be analyzed and evaluated. Today, when the elite needs a part of its agenda to be accepted by the public, it is done through desensitization. The agenda, which might go against the public best interests,  is slowly, gradually and repetitively introduced to the world through movies (by involving it within the plot), music videos (who make it cool and sexy) or the news (who present it as a solution to today’s problems). After several years of exposing the masses to a particular agenda, the elite openly presents the concept the world and, due to mental programming, it is greeted with general indifference and is passively accepted. This technique originates from psychotherapy.

In the 1930's, the Vigilant Citizens points out, there was a school of thinkers in Frankfurt that included Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse that was wary of the impact of the “cultural industry”. They asserted three main problems:

1) it could reduce human beings to the state of mass by hindering the development of emancipated individuals, who are capable of making rational decisions;

2) It could replace the legitimate drive for autonomy and self-awareness by the safe laziness of conformism and passivity; and

3) it could validate the idea that men actually seek to escape the absurd and cruel world in which they live by losing themselves in a hypnotic state self-satisfaction.

The Vigilant Citizen goes on:

The notion of escapism is even more relevant today with advent of online video games, 3D movies and home theaters. The masses, constantly seeking state-of-the-art entertainment, will resort to high-budget products that can only be produced by the biggest media corporations of the world. These products contain carefully calculated messages and symbols which are nothing more and nothing less than entertaining propaganda. The public have been trained to LOVE its propaganda to the extent that it spends its hard-earned money to be exposed to it. Propaganda (used in both political, cultural and commercial sense) is no longer the coercive or authoritative communication form found in dictatorships: it has become the synonym of entertainment and pleasure.

snip

A single piece of media often does not have a lasting effect on the human psyche. Mass media, however, by its omnipresent nature, creates a living environment we evolve in on a daily basis. It defines the norm and excludes the undesirable. The same way carriage horses wear blinders so they can only see what is right in front of them, the masses can only see where they are supposed to go.

Finally, this from Jacques Ellul, also from the VC article:

“It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale. The orchestration of press, radio and television to create a continuous, lasting and total environment renders the influence of propaganda virtually unnoticed precisely because it creates a constant environment. Mass media provides the essential link between the individual and the demands of the technological society.”

All the more reason, don't you think, to celebrate “emancipated” man Cenk Uygur's momentary smiting of the monstrous media matrix this week?

[cross-posted at correntewire]