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Oh
gbaikie — (archived)

I'm not a super geek on The Daily Show- I've missed quite a few them. I had wondered since you said you watch them everyday, that maybe you were lifting some of this from the show:
"The result of all this is easy to discern. The Right's ability to coordinate the rhetoric of an army of spokescreatures is chillingly evident. Speaking of "The Daily Show" (which I watch just about every day myself), you've seen them shine a spotlight on the phenomenon, when they splice together clips of many different RightWing pundits and "journalists" speaking the very same words, over and over. Somebody at the RNC or a thinktank creates those words, pushes a button to send them out, and within hours you'll see people on TV speaking their assigned lines, and shortly thereafter you'll notice those words being parroted by the obliging media and the Party faithful, and spread at the speed of light through the RightWing blogosphere--so that, within a few more hours we'll get to read Tom repeating those lines."

But, now I have accept the remote possibility that if a million monkeys if given enough time they could type Shakespeare.

Sigh.

So, anyhow onward. Replying to this post:

"Another part of the technique they're using is to spread "inoculation memes", like the one that teaches Conservatives to disbelieve anything they hear from the "Mainstream Media"."

Well that's quite a meme, because the public has *always* been skeptical of anything in the Media. And there currently quite low opinion of the media by the public. But I don't know how that compares historically, but I would guess it is still higher than in the more distant past.
I think the idea that since a newspaper was established long time ago, that it's somehow more reliable, or because it's part large corporation and monoplistic that it's somehow more reliable are more interesting memes.

"It's not that these techniques are brand new, but rather that RightWing propagandists have scientifically studied them and codified them into a sort of technology that can be taught to other people and reliably applied. Historically we can see that the technique's always been used in religion, when believers are taught to ignore any differing beliefs as the deliberate work of some "demon" or other enemy of the religion. In Christianity this role is filled by the AntiChrist, described as a very persuasive "silver-tongued Devil" who would speak pretty words that only looked like true Christian belief."

As I said, I don't think the population has ever had much trust in the media, though I think that maybe a large amount people might have imagined that other people were being misled. For instance, I believe that in the past, the main factor in newspaper sales was the price of the paper- if you were a nickel cheaper than your competition, you would sell more papers. Not much brand loyality here. And yellow journalism and muckraking aren't a new terms.
In recent times, probably the most surprising outcome was that the news announcer was even vaguely considered important. Want a meme? How about "news anchor" and that these guys have a vague clue about anything. It's just about as logical as movie stars having a clue- both are same thing. I was thinking about this today, and I think it has to do with the idea that "common man" viewpoint is considered valuable in America [An American meme]. Add common man and star, and you get this perverted thing of Anchors and movie stars being political forces in our society.

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