R.I.P “Liberal” Media (or Why the Media Won’t Call Scott Walker a Fascist But Will Call Obama a Socialist)

It’s time to call a time of death on something that may never have existed in the first place: the liberal media. I’m not sure the exact date to put on the tombstone for either birth (of course at one time the media was as doctored and corporatized by big business as it is now) or death. I just know the memorial service happened this weekend when the big news outlets all but refused to cover the massive protests sweeping the country in support of union rights.

For those that are unaware—and given the lack of coverage you’d be excused for not knowing—Wisconsin’s pasty, buttoned down suburban fascist of a Governor is trying to pass a bill through the Wisconsin state house that has been known as the “union killing bill.” It strips unions of almost all their powers, completely does away with collective bargaining rights, and “reallocates” (a polished turd version of the word steal) teacher benefits/retirement to plug a state deficit that does NOT currently exist. See, Walker Wisconsin Ranger is trying to “fix” a budget deficit for years down the road, where he most likely will not still be the governor. That basically means he can “reallocate” it to whatever he chooses later on if all the cuts lead to a big enough surplus.

However, all of the anti-union stuff is just part of what the bill covers. It also gives him power to cut Medicare to the limit allowed by the federal government (he would like to get rid of it, but can’t under federal law). And it authorizes him to make a fire sale of the state’s power plants, most likely in a no bid contract to his corporate puppet masters the Koch Brothers, the billionaire brothers many suspect of pulling the strings of this anti-union push. So basically, if you thought you paid too much for electricity in snowy Wisconsin before, get ready for even more expensive, privatized power.

He is an autocrat judging by the powers this bill will give him and his complete lack of caring about these protests. He is a fascist in that he’s essentially trying to rub out the political competition under the guise of budget reduction. Seven of the top ten largest Wisconsin campaign donors were corporations donating to Republicans, but the only three large organizations that donated to Wisconsin’s struggling Democrats? ALL three are unions. He is a dirty fighter in that last week he admitted—through a prank call that tricked him into telling the truth—that he was considering planting people in the protests to cause trouble and make the union movement look violent and unruly (if Walker is so in the right, why does he need to make the protesters look bad at all?).

And how much of this is the media calling him out on? Almost none of it. This last weekend when Moveon.org, the AFL-CIO, and various organizations across the country staged massive solidarity rallies, how much of it did the “Lamestream” media cover? MSNBC—the so called liberal network—probably spent ten minutes out of each of their hours talking about it. [In contrast, you would think world news practically shuts down while watching Faux News spend 55 minutes out of the hour covering a Tear Party rally] The Nightly News on all three corporate funded broadcast networks mentioned it for about two minutes after covering Libya—a country they haven’t given two shits about in 30 years—for a solid 15 minute block. And when they did cover it, they bent over backwards not to take a side and held stubborn in the point Walker is doing this to slash spending instead of wipe out the Democrat’s last big fundraisers.

And what of CNN, another network Sarah Palin reminds us is quasi-communist in their unwavering pinko leanings? When I first tuned in on Saturday they were covering how it was the two year anniversary of the Tea Party. The Tea Party! They weren’t even having a rally, a march, a protest, or a sneeze that day and CNN covered their anniversary over the 100,000 strong freezing themselves in Wisconsin outdoors all day long to protect their rights. Ironically, the one “news” channel that did cover the protests was Faux News, and they covered it negatively.

Sarah Palin is right about the “Lamestream” media but not for the reason she thinks. She thinks it is lame because it’s too liberal, but of course nothing could be further from the truth. It’s lame because it’s corporate funded, and omits practically anything that could be interpreted as anti-corporation. They might show people raising hell about Obama’s new healthcare law and calling him a socialist. Then go to a commercial for some new drug nobody needs or a healthcare giant like Afflack that uses a talking duck to make us forget they’re screwing cancer patients out of coverage.

See there is no liberal media anymore, because there is no longer media that isn’t expected to turn a profit. The more beholden to advertisers you are, the more reliant on corporations you are, and if you have 16 minutes out of the hour devoted to commercials you probably aren’t covering stories that would make those corporations look bad. Which pretty much rules out anything the “left wing” media would be interested in. Even if the news only commits the sin of omission—omitting that this bill makes Walker an autocrat, omitting that this is an attempt to break up Democrat money, omitting that teachers pay for their own pensions out of deferred payment instead of the “handouts” Walker is making pensions out to be, omitting the other things the bill covers, omitting the audio of that prank call that came from, of course, the internet, omitting Walker hardly takes a dump without the approval of his corporate puppet master the Koch brothers—that is still enough sin to let the other side, the unliberal and unscrupulous side over at Faux, completely turn the debate.

The state and federal government’s bankruptcy is an issue of underfunding because rich individuals and corporations refuse to pay the proper amount of taxes, but it has been spun into an issue of “greedy” unions asking for too much. It’s a revenue issue that has been mislabeled as an over spending issue.

Even traditionally liberal organs like The New York Times (struggling big time in the last decade and more wary of taking on corporations than ever) can’t be counted on to cover the straight news as Edward R. Murrow once did when news didn’t have to turn a profit. [They spent most of the weekend crawling up the ass of irrelevance covering the Oscars]. Then all eyes point to great cable TV voices like Keith Olberman—cancelled and now talking about baseball on his twitter account more than anything it seems—and Real Time with Bill Maher, which took a week off last Friday!

If there’s one place we can go to escape the far reach of corporatized media it’s PBS or NPR, oh wait, the House Republicans voted to cut off their funding last week despite neither of them costing more annually than what Halliburton gets in no-bid contracts in a week. It was another brazenly political move from a party that is viciously going after the competition, trying to take away its voice by defunding NPR/PBS and strip away its last muscle by breaking up the unions. It’s a big story, if only ANYONE would cover it.