RON PAUL AND DENNIS KUCINICH SINGLED OUT FOR THE MEDIA'S COLD SHOULDER. DOES THE MEDIA MANIPULATE ELECTIONS?

PETER'S NEW YORK, October 13, 2007---It is becoming apparent that we are having a replay of the George W. Bush elections in which the media highlight the few candidates that have been more or less pre-approved by the "establishment," and refuse to provide publicity to those it wishes to exclude from the electoral process. This is why we do not have free elections in this country. We have much the same system as Iran, except the American equivalent of the Iranian board of Mullahs, or whoever they are, are kept secret from the rest of us. We have this kind of mitigated and modified "democracy," where we only get to choose from a few candidates with ideas that go along with some preset agenda.

I have already written about this. We know that Alan Keyes, after having won post-debate straw polls during the 2000 race, was marginalized, and the networks virtually ordered to stop publicizing Keyes' popularity after strenuous objections from the Bush team. Now the Left would not want Keyes' popularity publicized, because he was a Republican. But what the Left does not realize is that the country ended up getting a worse choice than Keyes because the country ended up with Bush, who was backed by the "Big Boys."

Therefore, it is concomitent upon even the Left to make sure the electoral process functions even for the Republicans, because in the eventuality that a Republican is indeed elected, at least they will have the candidate that best suits them.

 At any rate, the present election campaign season has shown that the media is repeating their own screening of candidates. Ron Paul, who in the last fundraising quarter raised $5 million, has been excluded from publicity, or, where he surfaces, made to look like some kind of "kook." Paul is one of the few Republicans who voted against intervention in Iraq, and is continually campaigning against intervention in Iran. He has been outspoken in his views, which he has not had to change for his election campaign.

The other candidates, with the important exception of Dennis Kucinich on the Democratic side, are consistently war-mongers. Hillary was unapologetic about her stand on the invasion of Iraq. Barak Obama appeared from out of nowhere, with lots of money and  publicity, and is now talking (very predictably, of course) about aggressive military intervention in the Middle East.

On the other side, the main contenders, Rudolph Giuliani and, I guess, John McCain, are very much the same as Obama and Clinton in terms of their stance toward the Middle East. In the meantime, polls consistently show popular and widespread dissatisfaction with America's interventionist policy in Iraq. This dissatisfaction is not allowed to have an outlet among the current crop of so-called "front runners," who are obviously created with the direct assistance of the media. If my reader cannot seee something amiss with the fact that Obama came out of nowhere and became an instant media darling with tons of money behind him, really, they don't need to read further. Obama is a "put up" man, his views having little to do with himself, and much to do with those who are sponsoring him. Likewise, George W. Bush was surely a "put up" man, and if you look back at the goings on during the 2000 elections, you will see that the team that fronted him from the beginning was only interested in a fall guy through whom they could superimpose their views. This is how it works in today's pseudo-democracy.

Now if I've lost you already, my apologies. Let me just continue a little on the theme of the media coverage of Ron Paul, whose platform is definitely gaining support, while the dearth of coverage in the media shows how much the powers that be are attempting to squlch dialog and diversity in the current election campaign.

The New York Times will not come out editorially against Paul or other second or third tier candidates, so what they have done is to get a fall-girl to do their dirty work. But before I go into that, let me just mention how the media pared down the team they sought to cover. They used the fundraising prowress of Obama and Clinton, and fundraising in general, as an excuse to cover the predetermined team they have selected for the current elections. Obama and Clinton were continually trumped before the cameras on the grounds that they had raised a phenomenal amount of cash for their respective campaigns. They were preselected ages ago.

Now, troublesome Paul has managed to come up with an amount of cash for his campaign that many call "respectable." The New York Times recognized at least this fact in a small-type article fit neatly into the corner of a page devoted to electoral politics, but one that rarely mentions Paul. The article recognized that Paul had garnered an amount of funding that deserves respect, what the unnamed author of the article referred to as "surprising."

"The support has allowed the Paul camaign to expand both in reach and in size, and it has planned a second round of television spots...", says the anonymous author.

We then turn to the editorial page.Here we find Gail Collins (10/4/2007) writing a rather confused piece about the elections. She writes: "The second tier hascome to resemble a middle-aged singing group." Is this age discrimination on her part? She herself is "middle aged," and I wonder if I could classify most of the Times columnists in the same category as she has thrown all the so-called second tier candidates into.

She calls Duncan Hunter, who even I have never heard of, "the one who looks like the sheriff in a 1950s B-movie," and then goes on to lump Paul in with him. "Paul," she says, "who looks like a cranky rancher in the same movie, is the libertarian congressman who usually performs the useful function of complaining about the war in Iraq, so everybody else can leap in and defend it." I wonder if that is also the "useful" function of the New York Times editorial page, which has carried one memo after another decrying the terrible state of the war.

She goes on: "We certainly don't want to disrespect the hopeless candidates who have been responsible for so many good times over the long, long presidential campaigns of yore." In other words, of course she wants to "disrespect" them. Collins's point appears to be that diversity of opinion and candidacy is merely functions as an entertainment outlet. I wonder which candidate the Times will finally come to support, seeing that only Kucinich and Paul are as against the war as it appears to be in its editorial stance.

To show just how delusionary Collins can be, she finally writes, "John McCain, the maverick reformer, is now the Superhawk friend of Falwell who thinks Christianity is in the Constitution." Well, I hope one of Collins's friends tells her that Falwell has passed on. I know she may have a hard time remembering that little fact. I hope this little lapse is not a sign of substance abuse, but if it were, I'm sure Collins's condition would not stand out starkly among her media colleagues, who have a reputation for hitting the bottle or snorting the snort a bit more than the general populace.

I met Collins once at a press conference. She used to be a business writer for United Press International. She was competent at the time, and seemed to be a nice, congenial person. She went on to become a New York Times columnist, and then editorial page editor-- one of the hefty positions in today's society. Now she is an "independent" columnist, but one can expect that she is pressing all the buttons that she did when she was editorial page editor.

Recently, she was shoved out of her editorial page editor's slot, I'd say in the last year or two, and her column in last week's Times was the first time I had seen any evidence of her resurfacing.

I interviewed Ron Paul for an article once, maybe 20 years ago. At that time, his main issue, which is resurfacing more vigorously in his statements during the debates of late, is the monetary system upon which this nation is currently functioning, or disfunctioning. Paul is certainly for a return to the gold standard, and one might argue that gold and silver are the only constitutionally mandated legal tender currencies. But he has sought, at least until lately, to soft-peddle the monetary issue, and concentrate on the war in Iraq, and the possible expansion of that conflict into Iran.

Ron recently won the straw poll following the Republican candidate debate in Michigan, I believe on October 9. One pundit from CNN, Glenn Peck, a vidoe of whose show I managed to catch on U-Tube, agreed with most of Paul's stands on various issues, but then went out of his way to belittle Paul as an unlikely torch-bearer for the cause. [Watch it yourself at http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2007/10/cnn-ridicules-ron-paul-and-his.html.] This fellow went out of his way to play looney-sounding music while quoting and picturing Paul on the TV screen. It was one of those ad hominem diatribes, so much like Collins's. Do these people carry the same play-book? What's the deal?

In summary, Paul and Kucinich are the only fellows that catch my attention due to their anti-war stance. They are both wise to have run as candidates in the primaries of their respective parties, since that has garnered them significant publicity, in spite of the media blackout against them. It would be wise for them to join together to form an independent ticket. I'm sure they could make significant inroads into the consituencies of the respective parties they currently represent.  It is up to us to fund them to the extent that makes them a viable option against the evil characters that populate our currently pre-conceived election choices.

Paul just completed an interview with Judy Woodruff of PBS, which may be found at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec07/paul_10-12.html.

BACK TO HOME PAGE