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loquitor: i don't see the leap you make between recognition of systemic problems and the positing of some "priesthood"--i would say that anyone who takes a systematic view of the ways in which opinion is managed in the current media-space will come to similar conclusions. the problem is that folk do not seem to take such a view typically--personally, i think that follows from shortcomings in education--which is geared around structuring the politics of kids toward consent rather than predisposing them to take a critical distance. at stake here really is the question of whether americans have or are a democratic polity--and i am not at all sure they have one or are one. i emphasize the democratic polity because it seems to me that critical distance cannot and should not be a prerogative of some elite--and if it is, then the consequence is that we, collectively, have internalized the worldview particular to this form of soft authoritarian rule.
which i think most have. but that last bit is conjecture. i remain--somehow--vaguely optimistic and hope that i'm wrong. but i don't see it around me--i just hope i'm wrong.
host---the conservative revisions of the history of vietnam, the conservative explanation for the explosion of opposition to the war in vietnam, has little if anything to do with the political conditions that explain it historically. for the right, the problems seem to have been at least 3-fold: the draft, the left, and inadequate control of information. you see the consequences of this today.
cronkite was a talking head who operated as a talking head in a context wherein the power of footage and the illusion of immediacy it provides had not yet been taken into account in the process of building consensus for political actions like a war, and particularly not for building consent for another illegitimate war. getting around this last point can be seen as an explanation for why it is that sad old george bush wanders about these days continuing to try to equate iraq and world war 2--in an adequately uninformed historical view, ww2 is the last war that enjoyed widepsread consensus as to its legitimacy. so the references have (self-evidently) fuck all to do with the iraq debacle and everything to do with conservative mythologies concerning war and how to sell it.
within all this, cronkite is just a functionary who operated in a particular context.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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