this is by someone named Bruce Lindner. I have no idea who he is. but I thought this summary of the history of the lying media was interesting.
--Kim
I stumbled into a Facebook thread last night between several conservatives, one of whom I know, the others not, about the Superbowl half-time show. No, not that half-time show. The other one.
Not wanting to offend my friend, who I truly do respect, I'm keeping her identity anonymous. But for a brief overview, she lives in a red state and was born in 1976. They were discussing the nuanced "message" Kid Rock conveyed in his shtick. Whatever.
Me: "Hi ****! I know no one's asked me, but I think it's tragic that we're now so divided as a nation that we've devolved to the point where we have to have two separate half-time shows. Think about the absurdity of that. How do we ever get back to being *United* States? Or do we?"
Her response was cordial. I've trimmed it down a bit, but here's the gist of it:
"But you're absolutely right…the divisions are so deep. How do we heal? […] We shouldn't have to agree on everything to respect each other's humanity! And, not to be too conspiratorial, we may want to ask who is behind all the division and why? Stop allowing ourselves to be so manipulated."
Her reply got me to thinking about our respective "bubbles;" the informational environments we all dwell in. My friend is a highly intelligent woman. And I don't disagree with a single word of her above comment.
If we were to go back in time to the year 1974, two years before my friend was born, there was a major scandal in the American body politic. It was called Watergate. Members of Congress from both parties probed into it until… well, you all know: two Senators from Nixon's own party, Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott marched over to the White House and told the President that it was time to pack his BVDs and get out. From his own party! Unimaginable today.
My aforementioned friend wasn't yet born at that time. So the impact of Watergate and its aftermath isn't the same to her generation as it is to those of us who lived through it. It's just something that happened "back then." Ancient history.
Then in 1987, the FCC, under the aegis of the Reagan administration, abolished the Fairness Doctrine; a policy that had been on the books since the Truman administration. The regulators at the FCC deemed the doctrine an "unfair burden" on broadcasters who used the public airwaves. So the FCC commissioners, in their wisdom, announced that the media was responsible enough to regulate itself. And just like that, it was done.
What could go wrong?
One of the first to disprove that was a man named Rush Limbaugh. A talented, albeit hateful, highly partisan conservative propagandist. Mr. Limbaugh launched his campaign of division a year after the demise of the Fairness Doctrine. One followed the other.
My above friend was in the 7th grade at the time.
Ironically, it was Watergate that led to the next chapter in the cleaving of our nation. A man named Roger Ailes, Richard Nixon's media consultant, was so personally humiliated by Nixon's resignation, that he, along with the financial backing of a tabloid publisher from Australia named Rupert Murdoch, launched Fox News in the fall of 1996.
The year my friend turned 20 years old.
But the dynamic duo of Ailes & Murdoch weren't alone in dividing us. A Congressman named Newt Gingrich from the great state of Georgia, felt that the comity and all the "my good friend from" happy talk between the parties had gone too far. So he threw a wrench into the works, injecting a new level of toxicity into our system of governance, which has been there ever since.
Again, my friend was a young adult at that time. The era of trusted, unified, factual news media… Walter Cronkite, John Chancellor, et al, began to whither and die around that time. The new, glitzy, glamorous Fox News, with its colorful graphics and "tell it like it is" highly opinionated personalities, pulled no punches. They were, and still are, a coordinated army of Rush Limbaughs, pumping lies and misinformation into America's homes and businesses.
My point being, if you were born after 1970 or so, you've only known the current at-each-other's-throats kind of politics we're drowning in today. The cooperation and camaraderie of the LBJ, Eisenhower, Kennedy eras are likely foreign to you; too abstract to even consider functional today. Not that everything was rosy even then, but it wasn't toxic.
And things got DONE. We didn't need two different televised entertainment events; one for Republicans, one for Democrats. When a Cabinet Secretary was called before Congress for oversight, they didn't show up spewing vitriol and lies, armed with a binder full of opposition research to hurl at each Democratic questioner on the panel.
So to my friend who proffered; "We may want to ask who is behind all the division and why," I say this:
We aging boomers know who, and we know why. I only wish you could have been around to see it pre-Limbaugh, pre-Gingrich, pre-Ailes, pre-Murdoch, pre-Newsmax, pre-OAN, and pre-Trump. It was a time when TRUTH mattered. And liars were shunned.
I'll wrap this up with the same final thought that I left my friend with last night: "Think about the absurdity of that. How do we ever get back to being *United* States? Or do we?"