Random person, commenting on a Vanity Fair bit Claire Wolfe linked to:
"I believe the government and the media are owned outright by Corporate America..."
I'm not so sure about the first -- I think they believe they own one another, in a kind of twisted, Rand-villain way -- but as for the second, what did he think all those big, moribund newspapers, TV networks and broadcast-station groups were? Amphictionies? Sodalities? Heck yes, "Corpoarate Ameica" owns the media; built a lot of it from the ground up and wrote a check for the rest. To whom is this a surprise?
Jeepers, RCA and AT&T, Giant Soulless Corporations to the core, invented the radio network; they didn't even need Roswell UFO technology or the Trilateral Commission to do it. Good? Bad? It means they all tend to shovel out a certain level of mediocre dreck; it means they will lie to you out of laziness. But conspiring? I am even less likely to to believe it of 'em than I am of Uncle Sam, mostly 'cos they would sell one another out in a heartbeat.
Agreed, it's not a conspiracy - but I think Bernard Goldberg hit it on the head in Bias: you don't need a conspiracy when everyone thinks the same way.
ReplyDeleteIt might be me reading too much into "Dangermouse's" post. But given his "Why can't everyone else see the truth?" moaning, I think he's being wistful here.
ReplyDeleteThat he's going "If only the government and the media weren't owned by Giant Soulless Corporation Incorporated, then we'd be told the truth. Man"
Which is funny as I don't recall outfits like Pravda being all that truthful.
Yep.
ReplyDeleteIt just struck me as amusing -- take, for example, the biggest example of a government-founded, mostly independent media empire I know, and what's their last name? British Broadcasting Corporation.
Noah D: agreed.
ReplyDeleteNot in a twisted Rand-way, but more of a backwoods, mouth-breathing, mutant-cousin-in-the-closet inbred way.
ReplyDeleteWhat makes it look conspiratorial is simply that every bureaucracy is more like every other bureaucracy than not, and all bureaucrats are natural allies. They may fight over which specific bunch gets the goodies, but expanding the reach and power of the bureaucracy is a common aim for all of them.
ReplyDeleteWhen a corporation gets big enough to be more or less dominated by its bureaucracy, it naturally seeks its brothers in the Government bureaucracy for assistance (*koff* GM, GE *koff koff*). That's how we get "consumer safety regulations" that effectively make it impossible for anyone but a massive bureaucracy to cope, among other things.
So the "Corporation for Public Broadcasting" and "National Public Radio" are NOT Evil Conglomerations between Big Gooberment and Big Business?
ReplyDeleteLeAnn: why not both? --And so limber they are, too. Um, should that really go there? Ew.
ReplyDelete