Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

It should also be noted that Bush secured the inside track to "victory" due to the efforts of Fox News, which got out front in declaring him the winner early Wednesday morning while ballots continued to be counted and the deciding Florida electoral votes were anything but an apparent Republican certainty.  

What is Fox but a purveyor of "doublespeak" in the most discernible sense?  It masquerades in the form of a news station and trumpets the neoconservative line, regularly receiving Republican National Committee talking points and acting upon them according to former employees.  Who made the projection for Bush?

The Fox operative heading the projection desk and making the call was John Ellis, cousin of the candidate.  There was scarcely a word written about this telling fact in the mainstream outlets.  

By being the perceived winner as the other networks followed Fox's lead and also projected Bush as triumphant, Republicans were able to showcase their candidate as the "winner" and paint Democrats calling for a recount as "sore losers" who should "get over it" and accept a Republican "victory."

Had George Orwell been on the scene to report the election and its long and laborious aftermath he would have sharply focused on all of the aforementioned.  The mainstream media's timidity to report the actual story as it unfolded is a classic example of Orwell's dire pronouncements of news reporting being eviscerated by propaganda.

This documentary covers what occurred in 2000, including the hiring of two of Chief Justice Scalia's son and daughter to work for the Bush Administration after the election.  Associate Justice Clarence Thomas' wife, during the same period when the Bush vs. Gore case was being deliberated, was gathering resumes for potential Bush appointees for the right wing political think tank, the Heritage Foundation.  

In addition, Scalia's lawyer son, who would shortly thereafter receive a Bush appointment, worked for the same firm as the lawyer arguing the case for George W. Bush in Bush vs. Gore, Theodore Olson, who would later be selected by Bush to serve as Solicitor General, the government's chief trial lawyer.

Did Scalia and Thomas have a duty to recuse themselves from the case due to a potential conflict of interest?  In traditional legal canons of ethics the answer is yes, but these are no ordinary times.  

Both Scalia and Thomas were members of the right wing Federalist Society, which Dick Cheney would later choose as his forum to announce that he was intent on going "full speed ahead" against Iraq.  But then, Theodore Olson was also a member of the Federalist Society!

Could we have an actual conspiracy here?  If George Orwell were alive today he would be citing this Federalist Society link.  He would also be writing about Skull and Bones, which featured so prominently in the 2004 election.  

Orwell would also point out how the mainstream media has poisoned needed investigation into such areas as secret and quasi-secret organizations and their influence on national and international government policies.  

He would focus on the ridiculing by the mainstream media of those who dare to ask such questions by frequently labeling them as kooks advancing absurd "conspiracy theories."

A high point of Pappas' film is Greg Palast explaining that after he uncovered the Republican scam of Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris to "scrub" eligible voters, primarily of African American descent, from Florida's voters' rolls under the guise of eliminating felons from voting, that no American news outlet would broadcast or print his story.  

To receive any kind of eventual hearing or reading Palast was compelled to tap a foreign source with Britain's BBC.

Media expert Robert McChesney discusses the move toward entertainment replacing information within the mainstream media and makes an essential point in commenting on how Republican propagandists, led by framing expert Frank Luntz, use a modification of Orwell's "doublespeak" to mislabel political efforts.  

An effort to terminate protection through environment enforcement is labeled as a plan to "save the environment."

Then Congressman and currently Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont provides an anecdote in the same vein.  He explains that what Republicans, with Luntz framing, describe as the "death tax" is actually an estate tax that encompasses only the wealthiest top 1 percent of Americans.

Sanders cites a personal example illustrating how the Luntz Republican framing strategy has confused elements of the citizenry.  As he was walking down a Vermont street Sanders was confronted by an angry constituent.  

The man told Congressman Sanders that he was angry at him for not allowing this constituent to leave a relatively small amount of money to his son upon his death without the government stopping him.  Sanders then explained that the law had no effect on this citizen or any than the top 1 percent.  

Michael Powell is showcased as a Federal Communications Commissioner siding with corporate monopoly in the media.  Powell was asked about the future of digital rights, meaning the status of the Internet and efforts to prevent it from being taken over by a corporate conglomerate such as Clear Channel, which currently controls the lion's share of the nation's radio stations.

"I'd like a Mercedes but I can't afford one," Powell replied, skirting the issue.  Did the answer result from feigned or real ignorance?  After all, Powell left enough clues that the corporate media giants are in charge of the FCC.

The issue of so many commentators and reporters acting as rubber stamps of major corporations was examined through the perspective of iron clad control of lobbyists over the current political process.  

One of the most fascinating as well as revealing scenes of Pappas' film relates to a huge line outside a Washington office.  It is explained that lobbyists pay line holders in lengthy queues.  

The acute interest of lobbyists and their wealthy employers in the government process is far from academic and decidedly commercial.  

Orwell would be fastening microscopic attention on the lobbying process and its astounding results were he alive today.  As this film emphasizes, how dearly we miss him.  

Another point that the ever-astute Orwell would make concerns the democracy that has been abandoned and the plutocracy that has emerged.  As Gore Vidal has so aptly put it, the corporate lobbying influence has been so pervasive and successful that we are left with one political party "that governs for the benefit of the top 1 percent."  

Michael Moore makes a point in that regard.  He reveals the results of a study he made of the elections of the former Soviet Union Politburo.  Moore explains that the Politburo turnover was greater than that of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Charles Lewis explains why he left network television, where he functioned as a "60 Minutes" producer, and founded the grassroots think tank, Center for Public Integrity.  Lewis had the same complaint that CBS anchor Dan Rather had before he was terminated for covering the "taboo" story of Bush allegedly going AWOL from the Texas National Guard.

Lewis and Rather decried the abdication of news journalism operating on the linchpin of intensive investigation and reporting of major stories affecting America and the World and instead focusing on a three-tiered strategy of "Entertainment, Entertainment and More Entertainment."  

Rome collapsed when the focus became bread and circuses.  America is following the same tragic path.