This election is a creation of the media...

[kentuck]

The different networks compete to see who can get the most dollars from the so-called "candidates". They build up McCain because his wife has money and is willing to spend it. They know Hillary and Obama have over a $100 million dollars each. They know Romney is very wealthy and is willing to donate beaucoup bucks to their networks.

All the voting and caucuses seem to be only a side show to the primary goal of making more money for the networks. Even as they are sucking money from the present folks running for office, they compete to see who can persuade the billionaire, Bloomberg, to get into the race. There is no reason whatsoever for him to enter the race, other than to just donate more money to the media leeches.

Those that are a threat to their little game, the Edwards, the Kucinichs, the Huckabees, etc, are written off as either space cadets or somehow out of the mainstream of America. The truth is that they don't have enough money to give to the media conglomerates.

I realize that it is very cynical to think such a thought - that this election is more about making money for the networks than it is about the issues or about the needs of the people of this country. We are all watching the puppet show but we don't see the strings.

[wintersoulja]

1. bingo

why war chests must now swell a magnitude larger than they did 20 years ago.
Or "youre just not serious"

[judy]

2. kentuck, as often, I agree with you.

And you are not the cynical type unfortunately.
I say unfortunately, because if someone like you thinks this, it is probably true, and not a cynical imaginative musing...
Argh...
:puke:

[K Gardner]

3. I think most people savvy to this game DO see the strings. Some, it would appear, just choose

to ignore the strings.. especially when the strings work to the advantage of their candidate. I am disgusted with all of this pretense to the point of turning it off and tuning it out. The handwriting is on the wall, at least for me. The final act has already been written.. and we are merely an audience to the theatre extravaganza.

[The River]

4. The Entire American Experience

is a self referential media hologram.


"Americans, rich or poor, now live in a culture entirely perceived through, simulacra-media images and illusions. We live inside a self-referential media hologram of a nation that has not existed for quite some time now, especially in America's heartland. Our national reality is held together by a pale, carbon imprint of the original. The well-off with their upscale consumer aesthetic, live inside gated Disneyesque communities with gleaming uninhabited front porches representing some bucolic notion of the Great American home and family. The working class, true to its sports culture aesthetic, is a spectator to politics ... politics which are so entirely imagistic as to be holograms of a process, not a process. Social realism is a television commercial for America, a simulacran republic of eagles, church spires, brave young soldiers and heroic firefighters and "freedom of choice" within the hologram. America's citizens have been reduced to Balkanized consumer units by the corporate state's culture producing machinery."

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2005/12/the_simulacran_.html

[balantz]

5. Clearly it goes much further than the many millions made by the media.

The media is owned by the corporations that want their agenda supported and pushed. There we are talking not mere hundreds of millions, but hundreds of billions.

[kentuck]

7. Of course...

It's all a cover for their larger agenda - keep the status quo with lower taxes and keep the war machine grinding and keep their stockholders happy. All the rest is just double-talk.

[paparush]

8. Ding! Ding! GE - Top 20 Defense Contractor

Mega Bucks to be made by maintaining our assumed role of Global Thugs (tm)

[ProgressIn2008]

6. To name the problem isn't cynicism, it's necessary to ever solving the problem

Good post. I agree with you. It is, as another poster said, like watching a piece of extravagant, carefully staged theater.

[Yael]

9. And they are playing to a Superbowl/American Idol audience

who could care less about policy -- they just want to be told which lemming line they are supposed to get in for the cliff jumping competition.

[2hip]

10. I see the strings

And I'm coming to realize that our concept of Democracy is just an illusion and "We the People" are nothing more than fodder for the Corporate Machine. Fighting for Edwards will be my Last Hurrah if he isn't elected.



              Edwards '08 tees!

[nancyr]

11. You are so right.

Politics as spectator sport. Everything reminds me of a big football game with the usual inane commentary. I am slowly tuning it all out, unfortunately. It is a very sick puppet show indeed. I'm getting really bad vibes about the whole thing.

[PatSeg]

12. You nailed it!

Try and find any real news on TV - it is all politics, all the time and only the political stories they want us to see.

[stravu9]

13. Agreed.

.

[2rth2pwr]

14. "...willing to donate beaucoup bucks to their networks."

R U serious? That's what you think they are doing, giving the networks money under the table for positive press coverage?

Really?

[no name no slogan]

15. Campaign ads ain't free

There's big $$$ to be made selling ad time to campaigns.

[2rth2pwr]

16. Those aren't donations. nt

[no name no slogan]

17. The networks give $$$ to candidates on all levels

Which is a big reason why the Telecom Act in the 1990s got passed. The networks and big media promote the candidates who will do their bidding in DC. They are not interested in democracy any more than any other big business is.

[2rth2pwr]

24. Which is it? Do the media companies promote the candidates that are so rich that they will donate

money to the networks, or Is it that the media conglomerations have an agenda that gets them all together and they give money
to the candidates?

(heehee! this is fun!)

[Uncle Joe]

18. I believe you totally nailed it, kentuck. to them money is speech and that's all that

matters, they simply don't want the people to have a real voice or be heard. It's all theater, they will be happy to give more time, energy and effort to American Idol contestants than the candidates for the most powerful job in the land.

After decades of studying human psychology and marketing all in the pursuit of turning American citizens in to consumers, and pawns, they've perfected it, they know our hot buttons and their not going to give up that kind power and wealth with out a fight. Their afraid of ideas and real change, so the only candidates they will promote are those; who they believe will leave the system of U.S.A. Incorporated, in tact. It's a cash cow for the corporate media and their corporate clients, the people be damned and that's precisely why we have corrupt incompetents such as Bush in power today.

[sandnsea]

19. Because Kucinich, Edwards, Huckabee...

wouldn't spend money on advertising if they had it. Is that your logic?

[kentuck]

20. No...

Because they don't have the money to spend on advertising. At least, not enough of it. They like to create close races so the folks with the money can fight it out....over our airwaves.

[Unsane]

21. McCain's wife? huh?

[kentuck]

22. McCain and his wife have lots of money...

And he has promised to keep the war machine going for a thousand years. Nice, huh?

[farmboxer]

23. Republican Right Wing Mainstream Media Is Pushing Obama. Why?

The Republican Right Wing Mainstream Media has been pushing Obama since the beginning. They HATE Hillary Clinton to the extreme. Chris Matthews makes me sick. Right Wing Hate media is up to something. Plus, I am so tired of all the infighting with Dems. I will vote Dem against any Republican.