That durst dislike his reign...
His utmost power with adverse power opposed
In dubious battle...
What though the field be lost?
All is not lost---John Milton, Paradise Lost
As Pat Benatar once passionately exclaimed about love----mainly: that it's a battlefield----so too is History. Now, nevermind the administration's public relations-parallel-universe-account of its own contribution to the subject (We've seen a lot of that recently). Just look at these conservatives---at it again, as previously noted, blaming do-gooder government programs for the housing crisis. Incorrigible minds like Charles "The Hammer" Krauthammer and Fred "The Shred" Barnes are pointing at The Community Reinvestment Act, which sought to expand home-ownership to minorities, as part of the reason for the foreclosure crisis. As Media Matters explains using actual, expert opinion:
approximately 80 percent of subprime loans were offered by financial institutions that are not subject to the CRA, which applies only to depository institutions like banks and savings and loans, and also pointed out that lenders subject to the CRA face stricter regulations than do other lenders.
Umm, this is a clear-cut example of what Edwin Glikes, currently-deceased former reactionary publisher at Free Press, told his ex-right-wing hatchetman protégé, David Brock, about "the price of media credibility, of being taken seriously as a journalist": That is, in a nutshell, "to call black 'white,'" and "to deny that [one has] a political agenda." This is the sturdy maxim the administration dutifully appropriated to craft its very very very own ethos of governance. Maybe those at Fox "News" should coordinate, and find common cause with the Bush regime? It's not too late.
Stephen Crane said it best, commenting on newspapers in the much-ignored, "other" section of the poem,"War is Kind":
A newspaper is a collection of half-injustices
Which, bawled by boys from mile to mile
Spreads its curious opinion
To a million merciful and sneering men...
A newspaper is a court
Where every one is kindly and unfairly tried
By a squalor of honest men.
A newspaper is a market
Where wisdom sells its freedom
And melons are crowned by the crowd.
A newspaper is a game
Where his error scores the player victory
While another's skill wins death.
A newspaper is a symbol;
It is feckless life's chronicle,
A collection of loud tales
Concentrating eternal stupidities,
That in remote ages lived unhaltered,
Roaming through a fenceless world.
'Sblood! Would that Barnes' and Krauthammer's voices were like the effervescent "stupidities" of "remote ages," dissipating "through a fenceless world," 'stead of the "concentrating" commodity of vulgar disinformation they so irremediably are today----for all the hapless chaps who know no better!
It's Legacy Time
True to form and right on schedule, the President is taking to the media on his final "Victory Lap." But alas, unlike war, history ain't gonna be so kind. This particular discipline is not the same as a public relations campaign for the Department of Education, where you can just pay columnists to promote your policies to the tune of $240,000. Nor is it a campaign to start, and then maintain, an illegal war, where you can simply "embed" pro-war, conflict-of-interest-ridden "analysts" into the Media Estate. If only The Decider could send a memo directly to all future historians too dispassionate to comprehend his greatness; the regular folk just don't seem to be listening (69.8% disapproval rating). What? They don't appreciate his interview with Charlie Gibson?
Now this is clever
Tim DeChristopher deserves some serious activist props here. Not only did he use the gross forum of an auction for lands that should be/really are public against itself, he artificially inflated the price oil companies paid for lands they plan to spoil in the future (Ironic, no? Artificially inflating the prices they pay for something they normally buy cheap---- because it's owned by the public----and then turn around and spoil it in order to sell back a crude product to the public at a ridiculously inflated price). Better yet, by "purchasing" some of the best lands available, he polluted the integrity of the auction to such an extent that it is now forced into postponement until after Obama takes office. Take that, Bush Administration and your last-minute wish list! Nonetheless, Obama does have his work cut out for him.
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