David Brooks says that liberal blogs maintain a “Stalinist line of discipline.” Think Progress has the transcript from today’s Chris Matthews Show — think Dumb and Dumber:
DAVID BROOKS: Whoever the Democratic candidate, that is the weakness of the Democratic party, they’ve got the blogs and the netroots who are semi-nuts and they insist on a Stalinist line of discipline.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: I love your objectivity.
DAVID BROOKS: It’s objectively true. I did a psychoanalytic test.
I read that, and it occurred to me that it’s been awhile since I’ve posted Brooks’s picture. So there ’tis.
The truth is, it’s the Right that marches in Stalinist discipline. Hell, the Right is more like the Borg Collective than a political movement. See (via Avedon) “The Democrats’ Tiny Megaphone” by Robert Parry:
Wealthy progressives and liberal foundations can match up almost dollar for dollar with conservative funders. But the American Left has adopted largely a laissez-faire attitude toward media infrastructure, while the Right has applied almost socialistic values to sustain even unprofitable media ventures.
Indeed, the Right’s subsidizing of media may be the most under-reported money-in-politics story in modern American history. Many good-government organizations track the millions of dollars contributed to candidates, but much less attention is paid to the billions of unregulated dollars poured into media.
This imbalanced attention continues even though the conservative media is arguably the most important weapon in the Republican arsenal.
And all the while they do this they scream that the “media” is infested with “liberal bias.” Strangely, the only news program this liberal can stand to sit through any more is Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown” on MSNBC. The rest of them on all channels are mostly far-Right propaganda. I swear, if MSNBC ever messes with Olbermann I will call up the Mighty Maha Army (all six of us) and march on Rockefeller Plaza.
Back to Parry:
Political “propaganda themes†– often coordinated with GOP leaders – are distributed instantaneously across the country, reaching into both rural and urban America with a repetition that gives these messages a corroborative ring of truth.
The messages echo from talk radio to cable news to conservative columnists who appear in the mostly pro-Republican local newspapers. The themes then are reinforced in magazine articles and in books that dominate the shelves of many American bookstores.
Over the past two decades, Republicans have exploited this media capability with great deftness in consolidating power across large swaths of the country, especially where there is little media diversity (i.e. the Red States).
And the Right Blogosphere is an integral part of the Republican Noise Machine.
In essence, the right-wing media – a vertically integrated machine reaching from books, magazines and newspapers to radio, television and the Internet – has the power to make almost any ludicrous notion seem real and threatening to millions of Americans.
If Karl Rove wants people to believe John Kerry faked his war injuries, in spite of documentation and eyewitness accounts to the contrary, all he has to do is whistle. The Machine will be sure that’s the story the public hears, nonsense or not. If Karl wants to tweak the paranoia of the Christian Right, he yanks the chains and, suddenly, the Machine is spewing out nonsense about a war on Christmas. Smooth as butter. In comparison, the Left can barely coordinate its socks.
Along these same lines: If you haven’t already, be sure to read Peter Daou’s “THE TRIANGLE: Matthews, Moore, Murtha, and the Media,” “THE (Broken) TRIANGLE: Progressive Bloggers in the Wilderness” and “Scandal Fatigue, Catnip, and the ‘Angry’ Left.”
You did a great job of explaining this difference between right and left blogs on C-SPAN. What planet is that dolt Brooks living on?
It’s objectively true. I did a psychoanalytic test.
These sound like the words of someone who is on drugs.
America has no Left or Right, only Wrong
In regard to the February 12, 2006 “The Vegetable Speaks”
David Brooks says that liberal blogs maintain a “Stalinist line of discipline.â€
But he himself, states on the Chris Matthews Show, “The truth is, it’s the Right that marches in Stalinist discipline Hell”
The Right subsidizes media which is inherently under-reported in today’s America.
The Rights Political “propaganda themesâ€are distributed instantaneously across the country, reaching into both rural and urban America with a repetition that gives these messages a corroborative ring of truth (Like a 15 minute call to Geico can save you 15% or more on car insurance).
Fear monmgering is the Right’s strategem.
Frank in Miami
Of topic but great http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/cheney_hunting_accident
The first rule in gun safety is never fire if you don’t have a clear target.. unless you’re in combat.
We’ve seen an example of how the Right controls the message this weekend. Vice President Cheney accidently shot a 78-old man in Texas yesterday and we are only hearing about it. And there is no dramatic “Breaking News” bulletins from CNN. Just a passing reference.
I’m guessing they sat on this story to make sure they were not dealing with a homicide situation. My point: the Right is as good as the old Soviet bosses in controlling the message.
Frank in Miami,
You mean if I have a 15 minute chat with a magical talking Geko I won’t get a discount on my car insurance?
What IS this world comming to?
That crazy Geko will make its creators more money then you or I ….so be the stupid world we live in…..remember the talking fish on a plaque a few years ago????
This standard right wing projection. Accuse the opposition of doing exactly what you’re doing.
Bit late but, … On C-Span, you spoke to the right wing wurlitzer and did so very well. To some extent Brooks is a part of this apparatus, but to a much greater extent he, Kristol, and Krauthammer are part of the neocon/likud thought control machine. They attack democrats only because they believe it to be in their interest just as they support the right only because they believe it to be in their best interest. If there’s any patriotism/alegience involved it’s to Israel. These three all use the tactic of telling their listener what to think, couching it in the terms implying that to do otherwise would be ignorant. Brooks and Kristol often denigrate that they fear most so any attack on Dean, e.g., should be taken as a compliment and given great credence by democrats. Kristol and Brooks are slick enough that they may actually convince a few to follow their line. Krauthammer is , in my opinion, so repulsive that only the likudites and kool-aiders pay him any mind. Kristol and Brooks are bad but slick. Seeing the right blogosphere quote the likes of Pipes, Klinghofer et al simply blows my mind. Beyond my ken.
If Brooks is thinking about a Stalinist mentality on the left blogs, he must be thinking of Democratic Underground, which IS a heavily-censored board.
Of course, it is technically a message board, not a blog, but it gets a lot of play for its tendency towards silliness.
Just on your Olbermann comment — it’s true, as a liberal it’s hard for me to watch almost any news program on TV these days, they’re so far to the right. But as a somewhat educated person, what’s even harder for me to tolerate has been the total disappearance of OBJECTIVE investigative reporting from US airwaves and cable. Where’s the news without spin anymore? We’re all so busy watching the guys we “agree” with telling us what to think about what happened here or there, that we’ve lost touch completely with primary sources. How often do you see someone not famous or in politics interviewed on a cable news show for longer than a sound bite?
And by the way, I’ve yet to see an interview with the “eyewitness” to the Cheney/shooting affair. It’s just another example of how, by a combination of spin and echo chamber, we have no clue about what’s really going on. All we’ve heard is the shooter’s side of the story. How do we know — I’m just asking, how do we KNOW — that Dick Cheney wasn’t trying to kill the man? Other than what his employees tell us? Olbermann can sit and joke about it all night, but he doesn’t have the balls or the wherewithall to find out the answer to that question. He’ll wait ’til someone answers it for him, and he’ll quip about it. That’s why MSNBC lets him stay on the air.
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