Daily Archives: June 7, 2008


Bill Moyers Has A Few Words For You

Bill Moyers addresses the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis, June 7, 2008.

Worth listening to regardless of your views. He does speak a lot of truth to power.
Unfortunately he does conflate the current corporate state with free markets and, as a result, falsely denigrates free markets. Sure, many who support ongoing media consolidation argue in their best Orwellian fashion that it is just the free market at work. It is nothing of the kind. It is state corporatism at work. They only use those words to put blinders on their base. That the media and, yes, folks like Moyers have accepted this language shows just how pervasive and extensive the corporate statists have permeated the culture.
On the other hand his analysis of the massive intertwining of corporate and political power and the pablumizing of journalism is pretty right on.
Moyers on the pre-Iraq pundits who have not lost their jobs:

It just goes to show, when the bar is low enough you can never be too wrong.

Moyers after quoting Arlo Guthrie’s Patriot Dream:

And you know what we need to know.
Go Tell it on the mountain and in the cities
From your web sites and laptops, tell it.
From the street corners and the coffee house, tell it.
From delis and diners, tell it.
From workshops and bookstores, tell it.
On campus, at the mall, the synagogue,
sanctuaries and mosques, tell it.
Tell it where you can, when you can and while you can.
Tell America what we need to know and we may just
rekindle the patriot’s dream.

(ed: any errors in transcription are all mine)

NB: Given the extensive co-option of the media it is all the more important to disembowel both the corporate state and mob rule. The less power government has the fewer people will be hurt by it.