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Video: Alternative
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Censured Casualties
features rare footage
of war crimes against the Iraqi people suffered during
and after the Gulf War. The footage is from former Attorney
General Ramsey
Clark in his attempt to document the injustice
of United States military actions in the region.
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Video: Alternative
Views
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Another Unknown
War
features a film on the
struggle of the indigenous people of West Papua to remain
sovereign in the face of an Indonesian invasion backed
by world capital. Footage of Noam
Chomsky on Western involvments in the region and
the relation to East Timor.
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Doug's New Books & Related
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TV/Radio
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Sunday, October 31, 2004
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Saturday, October 30, 2004
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How the bloggers have driven the news agenda
bloggers driving news agenda, traditional media following
Independent News: "How the bloggers have driven the news agenda"
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Revealed: Blair's secret mission to woo Kerry
Blair sucks up to Kerry, a good sign the Brits think its going to be Big John
Independent News
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Salon.com | Happy days are here again!
Jim Hightower is optimistic that Kerry is going to win because of all the progressive
groups mobilizing against Bush. Excerpt:
"Prediction: I believe George W. is a one-term president, just like his daddy was.
I don't say this glibly, nor is it wishful thinking. My prediction is based on what I've seen at the grass-roots level all across the country. As many of you know, I've been travelling practically nonstop since mid-July, going to 50-something cities and towns as part of my "Show Bush the Door in '04 Tour." Using my new book ("Let's Stop Beating Around the Bush") as a focal point, I've been crisscrossing America, speaking with folks in salons and saloons, labor halls and cow barns, bookstores and art museums, churches and theaters, on country fairgrounds, in civic centers, on campuses, in parks, and even inside neon-lit dance halls.
I find that people are onto the Bushites -- and why wouldn't they be? Bush Inc. has spent nearly four years downsizing the middle class, offshoring our best jobs, ignoring the growing cries for healthcare, gutting worker rights, unleashing corporate polluters and plunderers, defunding public education programs, bashing gays and lesbians, sending hundreds of thousands of our loved ones into a deadly war of lies, empowering federal agents to stomp on our liberties, making wholesale arrests of peaceful dissenters ... (gosh, so much to list, so little space).
Bush's policies are all big fat ugly hogs, and while the White House has tried to pretty them up with a coat of bright glossy lipstick, who wants to kiss a hog? Even many of the people who voted for the "compassionate conservative" in 2000, have since found themselves up close and personal with the raw ugliness of the Bushite agenda, and they want no part of "four more years" -- a partisan chant that most Americans now view as a direct threat.
This is a BIG TIME for America. It's not just another election -- and I find in my travels that people not only are aware of this, but they're preparing to spring an election surprise on George W.
Take the polls.
OK, I'm out on a limb here, but I dare say that this will not be that close of an election: Kerry will win going away. This has little to do with our boy John -- and everything to do with an electorate that is fired up and on the move.
Lest you think I'm juiced up on jimson weed, let me make three points about the conventional wisdom of the pollsters, who assert that it's a nip-and-tuck race. First, pollsters are like cats watching the wrong mouse hole, for they're only telephoning "likely voters" -- those who've been voting consistently in past presidential elections. This leaves out half of America's eligible voters. This time -- Surprise, George! -- a substantial number of the other half, the "unlikely voters," are going to show up at the polls, eager to punch out the Bushites who're running roughshod over them.
A big indicator of this is the massive surge in voter registration. Election boards are swamped with new registrants, particularly in the so-called battleground states, where they're having to add staff and work around the clock to absorb the influx. For example, Philadelphia has had the highest number of new registrations in 21 years, Cleveland has more than doubled the number of new voters it had in 2000, St. Louis says it'll have the largest number of registered voters its history, etc., etc. Even in supposedly Bush-safe "red states," the surge is phenomenal -- in my Democratic town of Austin, Texas, new voters are up 64 percent over 2000.
What's going on? People are realizing that it matters. Bush's loss of the popular vote and his enthronement by the Supreme Court last time -- combined with the extremist agenda he's pushed since then -- has motivated folks to believe that they can make a difference this time ... and must. "I've been too lazy," says Kurt Saukatis, a 43-year-old Pennsylvanian who did not go to the polls in 2000. He has two 16-year-old sons. "The thought of a draft is scary," he says. Plus, he's worried about his job and the middle-class possibilities for his family: "All that money spent on Iraq, then old people can't buy medicine. Figure that out!"
Second, there's not only a tsunami of new voters, but also an intensity of opposition to Bush/Cheney/Ashcroft/Rumsfeld & Gang that the pollsters can't measure. This intensity translates into real political action -- people willing to volunteer, give money, argue with their dittohead brothers-in-law, talk to their family and friends, and otherwise reach out personally to others.
Third -- and this is a giant one -- the pollsters are almost completely missing the coming youth vote. Since 1972, there's been a precipitous decline in turnout by the under-26 voter. Only about a third of these young folks have been voting, with the result that presidential campaigns have been ignoring them on the grounds that kids "don't do politics" anymore. Yoo-hoo ... the kids are back, registering in record numbers! A March poll of college students found that 62 percent definitely plan to vote in November. "I am determined that my vote be counted this year," says 25-year-old Rachelle Reposa of Oakland, Calif., who did not vote in 2000. "I do not want to go into war with other countries and waste billions of dollars when we need it over here."
There are 24 million of these 18-25 youngsters -- yet few ever get a call from a pollster. This is because most of them don't use regular phones, instead relying on their cellphones. It's estimated that 21 million of them own cellphones. Pollsters can't reach them, so their voting preferences simply are not being counted. "The people who are using telephone surveys are in denial," says noted pollster John Zogby, who has predicted Kerry will win on Tuesday. "They try not to mention cellphones. They go ahead with a method that is old and wrong."
Salon.com | Happy days are here again!
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TNR Online | Caught on Tape (print)
One of the peculiar features of the election is the growing Bush cult. Ryan Lizza provides a frightening description of the cultism, which borders on fascism:
"Inside Columbus's Nationwide Arena, Bush's 20,000-strong crowd seemed re-energized. They roared with approval at all the cult-of-personality stimuli that mark a Bush campaign event in these final days. A four-person African-American a cappella group warmed up the crowd with a song in which the word "love" was replaced with the word "George":
George!
So many people use your name in vain
George!
Those who have faith in you sometimes go astray
George!
Through all the ups and downs, the joys and hurts
George!
For better or worse I still will choose you first
At first you didn't mean that much to me
But now I know that you're all I need
The world looks so brand new to me
Now that I found George
Everyday I live for you
And everything that I do
I do it for you
As they sang, a group of clean-cut white kids marched into the stands. They wore black athletic shorts and red shirts emblazoned with the letter W and sat down in a pattern that formed a giant scarlet W in the stands. Up on the Jumbotron, a rock-video-style short film opened with quick cuts of various GOP all-stars shouting Bush's name. "George W. Bush!" said Jeb Bush. "George W. Bush!" said Laura Bush. "Viva Bush!" said George P. Bush. After the film, one side of the arena shouted "B-U" and the other side returned "S-H." When Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bush arrived, the crowd cheered for seven minutes straight."
TNR Online | Caught on Tape (print)
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Salon.com News | Kerry: Bush blew it on bin Laden
Kerry comes out swinging on Bush's failure to get bin Laden.
Salon story=
"Oct. 30, 2004 | APPLETON, Wis. -- At a rally in Miami Friday night, John Kerry said Bruce Springsteen had provided the theme for his campaign: "No retreat, baby, no surrender." But then Kerry delivered a speech in which he seemed to do a little bit of both. On a day when a new videotape showed pretty conclusively that Osama bin Laden was neither dead nor "on the run," Kerry said nothing at all about the terrorist leader or the Bush administration's failure to capture him.
Saturday morning in Wisconsin, Kerry had his backbone back. At a rally on a muddy football field in Appleton, Kerry made the point that many in his party were waiting to hear from him: If Bush hadn't diverted the military's attention from the war on terrorism to the war in Iraq, bin Laden wouldn't be making any videotapes today.
"As I have said for two years now, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida were cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, and it was wrong to outsource the job of capturing them to Afghan warlords who a week earlier were fighting against us," Kerry said. Instead, Bush should have relied on U.S. troops, he said, soldiers "who wanted to avenge America for what happened in New York and Pennsylvania and Washington."
"It was wrong to divert our forces from Afghanistan so we could rush to war in Iraq without a plan to win the peace," Kerry said. "I will lead the world in fighting a smarter, more effective, tougher, more strategic war on terror, and we will make America safer."
Kerry's speech was a clear signal that, after a moment of hesitation in Miami Friday night, he won't be cowed by Republican charges that he has politicized the bin Laden tape. Kerry said nothing at all about bin Laden at the Miami rally, his only public event after the tape aired Friday afternoon. But the campaigns weren't done with bin Laden yet. Late into the night Friday, aides to Kerry and Bush played a high-altitude, cross-country pissing match about which candidate was "playing politics" with the tape.
On the late-night flight from Florida to Wisconsin -- usually a time for drinking and sleeping -- Kerry aides worked reporters on the press plane. Back in Washington, Kerry advisor Joe Lockhart held an unusual late-night conference call with reporters. Their predictable point: While the Bush team was accusing Kerry of making inappropriate, politically driven remarks about bin Laden Friday, the president crossed the line first and with much more partisan fervor.
Bush was apparently briefed on the tape Friday morning on Air Force One. After that briefing, he launched into his usual attacks on Kerry: He doesn't understand that Sept. 11 changed the world; he views the war on terrorism as a law enforcement action; he thinks the United States "must get permission from foreign capitals before we act in our own defense"; and he has "chosen the position of weakness and inaction."
Kerry learned of the tape later in the day, just after he spoke to a rally in West Palm Beach. As he frequently does, Kerry conducted a round of interviews with local TV stations immediately after the rally. In one of the interviews, Kerry said what he has said a thousand times before: Bush dropped the ball on bin Laden in Tora Bora by leaving Afghan warlords rather than the U.S. military in charge of the hunt. A few minutes later on the tarmac at the Palm Beach Airport, Kerry made a more cautious statement about the tape -- one he repeated in the course of his speech in Wisconsin Saturday. In the airport statement, Kerry said that "Americans are absolutely united in our determination to hunt down and destroy Osama bin Laden and the terrorists."
Bush followed with a strikingly similar statement Friday, saying that "Americans will not be intimidated or influenced by an enemy of our country." He added: "I'm sure Sen. Kerry agrees with this." But then, a short time later in Columbus, Ohio, the president railed against Kerry for his comments about Tora Bora, calling them "especially shameful in light of a new tape from the nation's enemy."
On the late-night call with reporters, Lockhart said Kerry knew only of the tape's existence -- and not its contents -- when he made the Tora Bora comments Friday. He then complained about the Bush campaign's loose association with the truth. "One more time, this administration can't tell the truth, and everybody on this call, I think, has a personal experience with being deceived by someone in the White House, of being lied to by someone in there, and you just have to go back in your memory bank and think whether you can trust what they say or whether you can trust what we say."
Saturday morning, the Bush campaign pushed back, e-mailing reporters excerpts from columns by David Brooks and Bill Kristol excoriating Kerry for talking about Tora Bora on the day the tape was released. Kristol wrote: "Is there any development in the war on terror, however grave, that the Kerry campaign won't try to exploit for partisan advantage"?
Of course, Bush has built his entire campaign around the gravest "development" in the war on terror, the attacks of Sept. 11. He talks about the attacks every day on the stump, just as he did Saturday morning in his weekly radio address. "Since September the 11th, 2001, I have led a relentless campaign against the terrorists," Bush said. "We have strengthened homeland security. We removed terror regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. We are on the offensive around the world, because the best way to prevent future attacks is to go after the enemy."
Bush then said, "My opponent has a different view," before launching again into his usual attacks on Kerry.
Speaking to reporters in Appleton Saturday morning, Kerry spokesman Mike McCurry said the Kerry campaign "will not yield at all" in arguing that the "diversion of resources to Iraq left Osama bin Laden free to wander the globe."
Why didn't Kerry stay on the attack Friday night in Florida? McCurry said Kerry sometimes uses the Tora Bora argument in his speeches and sometimes doesn't, implying that the decision to exclude it in Miami was somehow just a coincidence. But nothing a candidate says -- or doesn't say -- this late in the game happens by accident, and the Kerry campaign was clearly struggling to find the right message Friday.
By Saturday morning, McCurry seemed confident that the campaign had settled on a "winning argument" -- about bin Laden and about everything else. He said the bin Laden tape, together with the story of the missing munitions from Al Qaqaa, "crystallizes" the question facing voters Tuesday.
But like everyone else, McCurry acknowledged that it's too early to tell whether the bin Laden tape will move voters -- or where. "What will be the impact of this, I don't know and you don't know," McCurry told reporters who crowded around him inside a school gymnasium in Appleton. "You can teach it round, you can teach it flat. We'll know Tuesday night."
Salon.com News | Kerry: Bush blew it on bin Laden
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WIRED BUSH?
Here's my overview of the Wire story; spread this far and wide!
Media Spectacle and the Wired Bush Controversy
By Douglas Kellner
During a media age, image and spectacle are of crucial importance in presidential campaigns. Media events like party conventions and daily photo opportunities are concocted to project positive images of the candidates and to construct daily messages to sell the candidate to the public. These events are supplemented by a full range of media advertising that often attempts both to project negative images of the oppositional candidate and positive images for the presidential aspirant that the ads seek to support. In an era of media spectacle, competing parties work hard to produce a presidential image and brand that can be successfully marketed to the public. In a forthcoming study of media spectacle and election 2004, a draft of which is available on my website, I sketch out some of the key structural elements of the media campaign spectacle, discussing primaries and conventions, advertising and spin, and the presidential debates, illustrating them with examples from the 2004 which is emerging as one of the most highly contested and media-mediated in recent history.[i]
Election Spectacles and Resonant Images
The primary season requires that candidates raise tremendous amounts of money to finance travel through key campaign states, organize support groups in the area, and purchase television ads.[ii] While the primaries involve numerous debates, media events, advertising, and then state-wide votes for delegates, usually a few definitive images emerge that define the various candidates, such as the negative image in 1972 of Democratic party candidate and frontrunner Edmund Muskie crying on the New Hampshire state capital steps while responding to a nasty newspaper attack on his wife, or front runner Gary Hart hitting the front pages with a sex scandal, replete with pictures, in the 1984 primaries. Michael Dukakis was arguably done in by images of him riding a tank and looking silly in an oversize helmet in the 1988 election, as well as being the subject of negative television ads that made him appear too liberal and soft on crime and defense. Bush senior, however, was undermined during the 1992 election with repeated images of his convention pledge, “Read my lips. No new taxes” after he had raised taxes and doubled the national deficit.
Beyond political primaries, spectacles can make or break campaigns for the presidency as well. In 1980, Ronald Reagan’s decisive seizing of a microphone in the New Hampshire debates and insistence that since he was paying for the debate, he would decide who would participate produced an oft-repeated image of Reagan as a strong leader; in 1984, his zinging of Walter Mondale during their presidential debates (“There you go again!”) and making light of his age arguably assured his re-election. By contrast, Al Gore’s sighs and swinging from aggressive to passive and back to aggressive behavior in the 2000 presidential debates probably lost support that might have been crucial to his election and have prevented the Bush Gang from stealing it.[iii]
In the 2004, Democratic Party primary season, Howard Dean was for some time positively portrayed as the surprise insurgent candidate. An energetic Dean was shown nightly on television and he received affirmative publicity as front-runner in cover stories in the major national news magazines. Dean raised a record amount of money from Internet contributions and mobilized an army of young volunteers. As the time approached for the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries, however, images of an angry Dean increased and intemperate remarks, or critical positions taken out of context, made Dean look like a fire-breathing radical.[iv] While he received significantly more media coverage than any other Democratic Party candidate in 2003, Dean received almost totally negative coverage in 2004 and his campaign came to an abrupt halt the night of the Iowa primary. Coming in a distant third, Dean tried to energize his screaming, young supporters and to catch the crowd’s attention when he emitted a loud vocal utterance, which followed an energetic recitation of the states he would campaign in. Dean’s “scream” was perhaps the most-played image of the campaign season and effectively ended his campaign
The Presidential Debates and Images of the Wired Bush
The Democrats went for “electability,” chose John Kerry, and anointed him at their convention spectacle. Unleashing an unparalleled barrage of negative advertising, including the Swift Boat campaign, the Republicans sought to impugn Kerry’s integrity, paint him as a hopeless flip-flopper, and finally as a tax-and-spend “Massachusetts liberal.” After dropping “Stronger, Safer” ads that were intended to re-elect George W. Bush, the Republicans unleashed a wide repertoire of positive ads of Bush combined with negative ones of Kerry, culminating in the infamous pack of wolves that were intended to scare the nation into voting for Bush.
The Democrats, in turn, unleashed a barrage of attacks on Bush for his disastrous war, failure to get Osama bin Laden, and failed economic performance. Both parties used their conventions to sell their candidates, and while the Democrats chose, perhaps unwisely, to go positive, the Republicans unleashed a unparalleled spectacle of mocking attacks on Kerry, including ritual “flip flop” displays and displays of small purple band-aids to highlight the Swift Boat campaign message that Kerry exaggerated his war wounds and did not receive a purple heart.
But it was the debates that provided a relatively direct confrontation of the candidates and that was probably the most revealing and perhaps important spectacle of the campaign. Television tends to exaggerate small defects and provides images of the candidates that their handlers might not wish to circulate. Al Gore was excoriated for his alleged signs during the first 2000 presidential debate and George W. Bush was taken apart for his petulant, testy, and often confused responses to Kerry’s sharp criticisms of his positions, and most commentators scored Kerry the decisive winner in all three debates.
But perhaps the prototypical and most surprising television moment of the spectacle was revelations in the first debate that George W. Bush seemed to have a wire running up his back. One of the most intriguing stories of the weekend after the first debate concerned images circulated in regard to the mysterious bulge in Bush’s coat evident throughout the first debate. Speculation mushroomed over whether Bush was wired with Karl Rove feeding him answers, or if the wire misfunctioned or was jammed, causing Bush evident grief. Indymedia and other Internet sites circulated the images of the bulge and speculated that it was an electronic wire telling Bush what to say and a website quickly appeared collecting all the information and key stories on the phenomena at http://www.isbushwired.com/. Once Salon broke the story on Friday,[v] all of the major Saturday newspapers had a story with lower-level Bush spokespeople saying it was “preposterous.”[vi] Yet the story persisted and on Sunday ABC’s morning show featured the images of Bush with the bulging coat that by now was blamed on his tailor. Yet the TV footage of the debate clearly showed what appeared to be a wire running along his back with a noticeable bulge around it.
Hence, when the third debate began on October 8 at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, many were looking closely to see if there were any signs of a tell-tail wire on the back of Bush’s coat. While his shoulders and rump revealed rather strange tailoring, there was no evidence of a wire, as there was throughout the first debate, on Bush’s back until the end of the debate and he bounded on stage to meet with his and Kerry’s families. A picture in Salon suggested that the wire popped out as an astonished Kerry daughter looked at the strange hump in the back of Bush’s jacket.[vii]
Speculations continued to fly over the Internet concerning whether Bush was wired, whether he had diabetes and the bulge was an insulin device, whether he had a heart attack (he had allegedly postponed his yearly physical this year), or whether the tell-tail bulge was just a flack jacket. Tailors weighed in and most said that the tell-tale bulges could not be explained by poor tailoring. The New York Times had an Op-Ed feature that showed pictures of New Yorkers walking down the street with big bulges in their clothes, but in these cases one could discern money-belts, shoulder pistols, flack jackets, and other devices. Critics like Dave Lindoff began looking at other tapes of the Bush presidency and finding evidence of a Wired Bush:
I just got a look at the full Fox tape of President Bush's May '04 joint news conference with French President Jaques Chirac. In that tape, as in several other tapes I've seen, Bush can be heard seemingly getting prompting from another voice. About 12 seconds into the piece, the leading voice says, "And I look forward to working to" Bush comes in with "And I look workin'And I look forward to workin' to" The verbal slip-up makes it clear that this is no electronic echo or sound synchronization problem.
At another point, about one minute and sixteen seconds into the tape, the leading voice lets out a loud exhale of breath. Bush does not follow suit. There is no preceding voice when a reporter is heard asking a question. Also, at one minute and 28 seconds into this tape, Bush reaches up and manipulates something in his ear, at which point there is a static noise and the sound of a speaker acting up, until he removes his fingers from his ear.
There is no wire going up to his ear, indicating that the earpiece in his right ear is wireless.[viii]
My own contribution to the Wired controversy emerged from a viewing of the extras on Michael Moore’s DVD to Fahrenheit 9/11 where one node features Bush’s press conference right after the 9/11 Hearings meeting between he, Cheney and the 9/11 Commission. A subdued Bush swaggered out to the White House lawn to make a statement and meet with the press and after fumbling he finds the words to describe the meeting and generally provided brief answers to reporters’ questions, often after a concentrated pause. As Bush turns around to return into the White House at the end one can clearly observe a bulging tell-tale sign in his jacket similar to the bulge observed during and after the first and third debates.
Of course, the bulge could have been a bullet-proof vest, but oddly the Bush handlers have not made the claim and in any case a flack jacket could easily hold and conceal a wiring device. A Wired Bush could explain his tendency to give answers in brief code words rather than sentences, although it is also possible that he is simply linguistically challenged. Wired or not, once again most commentators indicated that Kerry was the winner of the third debate on style and substance and that regarding the debates as a whole the Democrats scored a big grand slam over the inept Bush and the sinister Cheney. While Bush didn't flub as bad as the first two debates, his performance was full of misstatements, evasions, and empty rhetoric. He smiled inappropriately both when he and Kerry were speaking and his eyes wildly blinked throughout. His painful attempt to smile was undermined by the right corner of his mouth turning down as though a botox injection had gone bad and blog commentators complained about spittle hanging over the corner of his mouth for much of the debate.[ix]
Although John Stewart, Jay Leno, Dave Letterman, and other comedians continued to make Wired Bush jokes, the controversy was ignored by the mainstream media until Charles Gibson confronted Bush in a Good Morning America interview. In the summary of Washington Post columinist
As you recall, the bulge, most clearly photographed during Bush's first debate, raised conspiracy theories that Bush was possibly getting audio cues over some sort of wireless device.
This morning, in part two of his interview with Bush on ABC's "Good Morning America," Charlie Gibson spit it out. Brandishing a copy of the photo, he asked: "Final question. What the hell was that on your back, in the first debate?"
Bush chuckled.
Bush: "Well, you know, Karen Hughes and Dan Bartlett have rigged up a sound system -- "
Gibson: "You're getting in trouble -- "
Bush: "I don't know what that is. I mean, it is, uh, it is, it's a -- I'm embarrassed to say it's a poorly tailored shirt."
Gibson: "It was the shirt?"
Bush: "Yeah, absolutely."
Gibson: "There was no sound system, there was no electrical signal? There was --"
Bush: "How does an electrical -- please explain to me how it works so maybe if I were ever to debate again I could figure it out. I guess the assumption was that if I was straying off course they would, kind of like a hunting dog, they would punch a buzzer and I would jerk back into place. I -- it's just absurd."[x]
So it's the shirt? Sure doesn't look like a shirt.
Salon weighed in with another story on the mysterious bulge images as a NASA and Caltech scientist did an electronic enhancement of the image that clearly showed that something looking like a wire device was in the back of Bush’s jacket. In Kevin Berger’s summary:
George W. Bush tried to laugh off the bulge. "I don't know what that is," he said on "Good Morning America" on Wednesday, referring to the infamous protrusion beneath his jacket during the presidential debates. "I'm embarrassed to say it's a poorly tailored shirt." Dr. Robert M. Nelson, however, was not laughing. He knew the president was not telling the truth. And Nelson is neither conspiracy theorist nor midnight blogger. He's a senior research scientist for NASA and for Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and an international authority on image analysis. Currently he's engrossed in analyzing digital photos of Saturn's moon Titan, determining its shape, whether it contains craters or canyons. For the past week, while at home, using his own computers, and off the clock at Caltech and NASA, Nelson has been analyzing images of the president's back during the debates. A professional physicist and photo analyst for more than 30 years, he speaks earnestly and thoughtfully about his subject. "I am willing to stake my scientific reputation to the statement that Bush was wearing something under his jacket during the debate," he says. "This is not about a bad suit. And there's no way the bulge can be described as a wrinkled shirt."[xi]
It remains to be seen if the Wired Bush controversy and photo widely circulates through the Internet during the last days of the campaign, makes it into the mainstream media, and has any effect on the election. Yet the phenomena reveals how television can scrutinize and capture minute details of behavior, personality tics, and focus attention on issues –- or ignore them. The Wired Bush controversy was clearly initially an Internet phenomenon that snuck into the margins of the mainstream media, but so far has not penetrated the center. Failure of the mainstream corporate media to not more seriously investigate the phenomenon shows the incompetency, cowardice, and pack journalism conformity of the mainstream media. And yet when the mainstream picks up on an issue, it can be devastating, as the Dean Scream spectacle proved for Howard Dean and the Watergate saga for Richard Nixon. Watergate was initially a highly marginal story, which briefly appeared before the 1972 election, and then returned to haunt Nixon and drive him from office after the election. And so marginal images and stories can proliferate and can unforeseen consequences and effects. In an age in which politics is mediated by media spectacle, those who live by the media can also die by it.
Notes
[i] This text extracts from a forthcoming book to be published by Paradigm Press, Media Spectacle and the Crisis of Democracy: Terrorism, War, and Election Battles. Thanks to Dean Birkenkamp for support with this project, and to Rhonda Hammer and Richard Kahn for discussion and editing of the text. A draft of the text is available at http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/election2004.pdf.
[ii] By August 2004, a record billion dollars had been raised by both candidates, double the amount for the previous year. See Thomas B. Edsall, “Fundraising Doubles the Pace of 2000.” Washington Post, August 21, 2004: A01.
[iii] For details, see Douglas Kellner, Grand Theft 2000. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001.
[iv] Many media pundits were cool for Dean from the beginning although he got much good press when the long-shot contender became a surprise front-runner. On the very negative coverage of the Dean campaign by the media punditry and corporate networks, see Peter Hart, “Target Dean. Re-establishing the establishment.” Extra! (March-April 2004: 13-18).
[v] Dave Lindorff, “Bush's mystery bulge. The rumor is flying around the globe. Was the president wired during the first debate?” Salon, October 8, 2004 at http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/08/bulge/.
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[vi] See Mike Allen, “Bulge Under President’s Coat in First Debate Stirs Speculation,” Washington Post, October 9, 2004: A16.
[vii] Farhad Manjoo, “The bulge returns. As this screen shot from the Wednesday night debate indicates, the Bush mystery will not disappear.” Salon, October 13, 2004 at http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/13/bulgefoto/print.html. Tongue partly in cheek, the Salon writer noted: “Salon looked hard for evidence of the president's mystery bulge this evening, but for much of the debate, on the ABC feed we screened, Bush's back remained out of view. At the end, though, as the president crossed the stage to thank his opponent, we caught this glimpse of something strange pushing out of the commander in chief's tailored coat. Is it part of an in-ear prompting device? Is it a back brace? Body armor? Confirmation that Bush is an alien? The mystery deepens ... “ Earlier in the day, trying to make light of the whole affair, a Bush spokesman had said that the pictures of Bush’s humped back reveals that Bush is an alien.
[viii] Dave Lindoff, “At each ear a hearer: Bulletin on the Bush bulge,” Counterpunch, October 18, 2004 at http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff10182004.html.
[ix] See Ayelish McGarvey’s 01:54 a.m., October 13, 2004 commentary on the American Prospect webblog “Tapped” at www.prospect.org/weblog and the same day’s Salon “War Room ‘04” weblog at http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/.
[x]Dan Froomkin, “Bush Tackles the 'Bulge to washingtonpost.comTuesday, October 26, 2004 at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63949-2004Oct26.html.
[xi] Kevin Berger, “NASA photo analyst: Bush wore a device during debate. Physicist says imaging techniques prove the president's bulge was not caused by wrinkled clothing,” Salon, October 29, 2004 at http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/29/bulge/print.html.
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AlterNet: Election 2004: The Left's Well-Oiled Machine
this time progressives are well-organized and could deliver swing votes for Kerry and are pumped up and will be a force to be reckoned with if the Repugs try to steal it again
AlterNet: Election 2004: The Left's Well-Oiled Machine
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washingtonpost.com: Impact Of Tape On Race Is Uncertain
the effect of the cryptic bin Laden tape on US election is uncertain, there are too many issues and too big differences to have much effect, unless... let's not go there
washingtonpost.com: Impact Of Tape On Race Is Uncertain
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A crisis of trust: dirty tricks on both sides mean result is likely to be decided in the courts again
unless Kerry wins big and decisively it will be a hung or stolen election; this time, however, it will be nasty as both sides are pumped up
Independent News
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Friday, October 29, 2004
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Karl Rove: Political diehard who plays dirty for Bush
Karl Rove: an amazing metamorophosis from Turd Blossom to Bush's Brain; if, as we hope, Bush loses there will be hell to pay for Rove
Independent News
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Bush campaign hurt by missing arms and Halliburton inquiry
Bad News for Bush campaign the last week of the election
Independent News: "Bush campaign hurt by missing arms and Halliburton inquiry"
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Guardian | Bin Laden warning to America
it seems that Bin Laden is still around and threatening anew; hard to say what the effect will be on the US election; for al Qaeda its obviously timed to get maximum global audience with sharp interest in US election
Guardian | Bin Laden warning to America
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The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > The Campaign: Candidates in Attack Mode as They Cross Swing States
the Bush campaign is unravelling in the final days as the Kerry campaign picks up the Big Mo. Excerpt:
Bruce Springsteen "opened for Mr. Kerry at enormous rallies in Madison, Wis., and again before tens of thousands here at Ohio State University, where he endorsed Mr. Kerry in between performing his workingman's anthems "Promised Land" and "No Surrender."
"As a songwriter, I've written about America for 30 years," Mr. Springsteen said between numbers in Madison, as 80,000 or so packed the wide avenue that leads to the Capitol. "I've tried to write about who we are, what we stand for, what we pray for, and I believe that these essential ideas of American identity are what's at stake on Nov. 2."
In Toledo, Mr. Kerry pressed his attack over the explosives, which have dominated the campaign this week as Mr. Kerry has seized on their disappearance as emblematic of everything wrong with the administration's conduct of the war.
Mr. Bush spoke on the subject for the first time on Wednesday, accusing Mr. Kerry of making "wild charges" and "denigrating the actions" of troops in the field. On Thursday in Toledo, Mr. Kerry said that American troops were performing admirably and that it was the commander in chief who was not up to his job.
"I'm going to apply the Bush standard to this," Mr. Kerry said. "Yesterday, George Bush said, and I quote him: 'A political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief when it comes to your security.' ''
"Well, Mr. President, I agree with you," he said, adding that Mr. Bush had "jumped to conclusions" on links between President Saddam Hussein and the Sept. 11 attacks, on Iraq's unconventional weapons and on how Iraqis would greet American troops.
"Mr. President, here are the facts that every American can understand, it seems, except for you," he said of the explosives. "They're not where they're supposed to be. You were warned to guard them. You didn't guard them. They're not secure.
"And guess what? According to George Bush's own words, he shouldn't be our commander in chief. And I couldn't agree more."
QED
To add to the fun:
"The assault on Mr. Kerry reflected the nervousness in the Bush campaign five days from what is widely expected to be an exceptionally close election. Although Bush officials continue to strike a publicly upbeat note and repeat that they always expected a close race- a campaign official called it a "dogfight" on Wednesday - there is no disputing that they did not want to be in the position they are so few days from Nov. 2.
Mr. Kerry's aides have treated the reports about the explosives as an unexpected boon in the waning days of the campaign. Some aides said that they watched with surprise as Mr. Bush waited three days to address the subject and that they were reminded of their own mistakes in taking too long to respond to the onslaught over Mr. Kerry's Vietnam record by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
Another Bush surrogate, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, traded attacks over the explosives with Mr. Kerry's running mate, Senator John Edwards, after Mr. Giuliani had discussed them on "Today" on NBC-TV.
"No matter how you try to blame it on the president, the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there," Mr. Giuliani said. "Did they search carefully enough or didn't they search carefully enough? We don't know."
Mr. Giuliani added that Mr. Bush was "not willing to put blame on the troops when it isn't clear they should be blamed.'' Mr. Edwards, who read Mr. Giuliani's remarks to a crowd in Duluth, Minn., skipped the expressions of uncertainty about the explosives, prompting Mr. Giuliani to say his words had been taken him out of context.
"Let me say this very carefully on behalf of John Kerry and myself," Mr. Edwards said. "Our men and women in uniform did their job. George Bush didn't do his job."
SLAM DUNK
The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > The Campaign: Candidates in Attack Mode as They Cross Swing States
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The New York Times > Washington > Missing Explosives: Video Shows G.I.'s at Weapon Cache
Bush, Cheney and the rightwing spin apparatus has been furiously attacks Kerry on the missing explosives, insisting that they may have been stolen before the US invasion, but VIDEO "SHOWS a huge supply of explosives still there nine days after the fall of Saddam Hussein, apparently including some sealed earlier by the International Atomic Energy Agency."
Bush and Cheney are simply thugs and should pay the price for their crimes
The New York Times > Washington > Missing Explosives: Video Shows G.I.'s at Weapon Cache
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