“My dear brethren, do not ever forget, when you hear the progress of lights praised, that the loveliest trick of the Devil is to persuade you that he does not exist!”
Charles Pierre Baudelaire

"I love God, but his fan club is freekin meshuggeneh!."

Meanwhile, Kevin Drum writes about how a leftist (of an extreme stripe, and not even remotely representative of liberals) was singled out by the Rightwing Propaganda Machine -- and used to epitomize the left. Don't you just love how the Neocons and their allies (who practice the techniques, but not the ideology, of Stalin) deflect from what they are, by projecting their worst characteristics onto an easy target? Will any of these "democracy-loving" pundits read American Conservative's editorial on the air? If they do (and I doubt it) let us know here...

PACK JOURNALISM....After reading yet another article about University of Colorado nutjob Ward Churchill in the LA Times this morning, I began to wonder. How did this story get so much play? I mean, the guy's an obscure academic in Boulder, and the "Roosting Chickens" paper that created all the flurry was written three years ago. What gives?

The short answer is twofold: it's the result of both the agenda-setting power of the right wing outrage machine and the agenda-setting power of the New York Times. According to Nexis, here's how the story developed.

On January 26, a local newspaper, the Syracuse Post-Standard, wrote about Churchill's upcoming visit to nearby Hamilton College. The paper quoted Hamilton art history professor Steven Goldberg saying that it was "morally outrageous" to bring Churchill to campus. On the same day, AP distributed a short dispatch about the controversy.

On January 27, the conservative New York Post picked up the story and Joe Scarborough mentioned it on his cable talk show.

On January 28 it led Bill O'Reilly's program. After telling his audience that free speech has its limits — "I can't subject my audience to irresponsible ravings," he said, apparently without a trace of irony — O'Reilly declared that Churchill didn't deserve to be an American citizen and then suggested that he should be arrested for sedition.

On January 29 the right-wing Washington [Moonie] Times called Churchill a fascist.

On January 30 the Scaife-owned Pittsburgh Tribune Review weighed in.

Then, on January 31, the New York Times devoted a thousand words to the controversy. At that point, a story that had been mostly confined to wire services, local media outlets in Syracuse and Colorado, and right wing provocateurs, went mainstream.

Within the next three days stories appeared in the Seattle Times, Philadelphia Daily News, New York Sun, Miami Herald, Los Angeles Times, Deseret Morning News, New York Daily News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Post, Kansas City Star, Detroit Free Press, CNN, NPR, and the CBS Evening News. Richard Cohen reported that O'Reilly's segment had resulted in over 6,000 letters and emails, including death threats, to the president of Hamilton College.

It's fascinating how a trivial story like this managed to spread so far, isn't it? The right wing machine pushed, the New York Times responded, and then the rest of the press followed. Within days, the previously insignificant Ward Churchill had become a household name and a virtual poster boy for lefty nihilism based on something that no one on either the left or right had cared a whit about in the three years since he wrote it. Truly an object lesson for us all.

UPDATE: In case you're curious (and who wouldn't be?), I did a Nexis search on Ward Churchill all the way back to 9/11/2001. Sure enough, there's only one mention of his "Roosting Chickens" paper in the entire time between then and now: it was in the Burlington Free Press in December 2001, reporting on a small rally of peace activists at which Churchill spoke.

And guess what? It turns out that even Vermont peaceniks didn't sympathize with his views. "It's clearly not our position at all, and it's unfortunate it came out now," said one organizer after learning about Churchill's essay. "What he said is so completely at variance with what we believe," said another. "We do not want to see a growing movement for peace derailed by the views attributed to a speaker," said yet another. As Free Press columnist Sam Hemingway put it, "One thing's sure: UVM and the people responsible for sponsoring his visit to Burlington don't support what he wrote about the victims." Churchill's a real lefty icon, isn't he?

Again, we need to emphasize that these are the stalinist righties (aka NeoCons) -- as compared to those at the American Conservative Magazine, who are intellectually honest (relative to their counterparts in the rightwing propaganda machine).

This really isn't surprising, since so many of the NeoCons are former far leftists, who have switched to the far right in ideology, but still follow and employ the tactics of Lenin and Stalin. See David Brocks' "Leninists of the Right" chapter in "Blinded by the Right."

The amount of comparrison I've seen between Hitler's regime and Bush's regime recently, from national and world news sources to my friend's and family here at home and all over the net, makes me realize how true it is. And the horrible reality is those "following the leader" will never recognize this truth until it is too late (and maybe not even then). I never thought I'd see the day when facism would overtake America. It was bad enough in the 40's and 50's when the American government was acussing actors and artists of being communists. Today the government has gone a step further by trying to convince us that anyone who disagrees with them (ie: the government, those in power, our "elected" officials) and thinks what they are doing is wrong is automatically a "traitor" and a "communist" and deserves to live in jail or be put to death.

I remember learning in school (you know, that place kids used to learn things) about a little event that took place a couple hundred years ago where the government at that time tried to accuse people living here of the same thing. I think it was called "the American Revolution" or something like that. As a refresher (lol), the people basically sent the government officials back to England and wrote up some papers called something like "the Declaration of Independence" and "the Bill of Rights." I could be wrong about this but I think something like that did happen. And it was all over the government (We are the Queen) of the time saying anyone who didn't agree with those in power were "traitors" deserving death and, of course, taxation without representation.

Does any of this sound like a recurring theme? It sounds alot like what we are seeing today. I think my tagline says it best:

"So, you say you want a revolution, well, you know..."