“Restoring” our democracy
Bookworm on Feb 15 2008 at 9:57 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
I was in the car this morning, listening to NPR (I do check in occasionally). Our local PBS affiliate, KQED, offered a little op-ed piece from a San Francisco woman, who was a polling place coordinator this year. Unfortunately, despite searching through KQED and NPR, I can’t find a link to the op-ed, so this will be a reconstruction.
The whole thing started off as a nice little piece about the hard, but rewarding work, of making sure people could vote. It had a little vignette about young musicians working through the challenges of practice and learning, and comparing them to voters who take the time and make the effort to vote, even when the candidates and issues aren’t precisely what they wanted. My antenna went up, however, when the gal suddenly said something about how great it was that people were getting out there, despite difficulties, to vote for “change,” which I took as a not-so-subtle hint that the gal was an Obama supporter.
I expected the piece to end with some strong political statement about the Democratic party. It didn’t. It had something much more subtle. The gal wrapped up by saying how glad she is that people are taking the vote seriously, so that we can “restore” our democracy. That came as a surprise to me because I didn’t think we’d stopped being a democracy — but I guess to anyone who thinks the vote was stolen in 2000, democracy as they knew it came to a screeching halt, and that despite the fact that Bush won without issue in 2004.
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3 Responses to ““Restoring” our democracy”
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NPR is good at subtle. Back during Monicagate and impeachment, the stories never overtly supported Clinton. However, they began using his voice whenever they could get a sound bite. I wouldn’t doubt they spliced his words together so they could play his comments on things he never even thought about, it was that ubiquitous.
NPR know its audience: it is the liberals’ radio of choice. All those subtle signals are not lost on the cognoscenti. They get it. Without using decoder rings too. All these references are like scripture cites on Christian radio; the believers know exactly what is being said. There is a book of common prayer to which all liberals have access to and one of its articles of faith is the Stolen Election of 2000 and one of its promises is that America will be liberated from The Chimp, aka President Drunky McStagger, aka the Bush Crime Syndicate in approximately 399 days.
I agree with Z, but not to the extent that this is on purpose. When you communicate with an “in crowd” you are part of, you automatically use inside jokes and what not because that is just how you behave with your folks. In another group, you would behave differently.
What this means is that even if NPR might seem unbiased to another person, that doesn’t mean everybody is getting the same message. With communication in human affairs, you know that is true. You know that two people can hear the same thing and understand two completely different things. And for conservatives and liberals, that is even more obvious.
Conservatives may listen to a NPr or fake liberal program and feel that it has been fair.. Fake liberals hear the same program and believe that it is justification for burning Bush and the US flag in effigy. You see how this stuff works. Propaganda is tailored to individuals and individual populations. You may say “I’m not affected by it” or “This seems fair to me” but that is because you aren’t the one being targeted.