JUST AS UNCLE SAM HAS TRADITIONALLY PERSONIFIED THE UNITED STATES ... JOHN BULL, ENGLAND ... Marianne, France ... and The Boy from Manly, Australia, Germany has traditionally been personified in cartoons and satires by a character named "Michael."
Who is traditionally seen wearing an old-fashioned-looking nightsuit (cap included) and a skeptical, hangdog look on his face (as if trying to come to terms with Germany's defeat and loss of honour in both World Wars, the excesses of the Nazi regime under Schicklgruber and its warped delusions of reclaiming German honour and pride, and the 41 years of enforced division between free West and Communist East, ending with Reunification on 3 October 1990 and the subsequent relocation of the German capital from Bonn to its traditional such of Berlin).
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YOUR CORRESPONDENT'S MIND WAS SET TO THINKING WITHOUT ANY REASON WHATSOEVER the other day about a rather unlikely possibility:
Videlicet, that cartoonist R. F. Outcault's creation "The Yellow Kid," becoming the first popular cartoon character in American history (in its turn inspiring the term "yellow journalism," referring to a highly-sensationalised brand of The Fourth Estate as panders to the lowest common denominator, and then some, with reckless and utter disregard for journalistic conventions and ethos in favour of ad hominem, code and "weasel" words, oversimplification, etc., etc.), may actually be an indirect cousin of Germany Personified, what with "Michael" and "The Yellow Kid" commonly seen in nightshirt (and, in the latter case, having his dialogue, almost always in street dialect of the times, displayed on same).
But then again, "The Yellow Kid" had a shaved head; perhaps in deference to lice-control programmes in the poorer neighbourhoods when he first debuted.
Of course, when "The Yellow Kid" debuted in the pages of the New York World in 1894, quite a few German immigrants arrived by way of Ellis Island and some made their acquaintenance with America by way of the Lower East Side (especially such of Jewish belief) or by way of the Williamsburg district of Brooklyn. And many German immigrants were no doubt familiar with the "Michael" character back in Germany, particularly so by way of satiric journals from "the old country" like Simplicissmus.
It's probably just me, but you have to imagine just such a possibility....
(BTW, is "Michael" still seen much as Germany personified, even with Reunification?)
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IT'S NO WONDER THE CONWEB IS A BIG FAN OF THE CONCEPT KNOWN IN ORWELLIAN NEWSPEAK AS "PROLEFEED"--false, inaccurate or misleading news and information by deliberate design, targeting in particular the poor, undereducated and easily-influenced Not Expected (in the conservative line of thinking) to Handle the Truth.
Which they will blame on the likes of public education, State welfare, "secular humanism" and suchlike other patsies without any credible substantiation.
A couple of interesting recent examples from the ConWebBlog of ConWebWatch perhaps demonstrate the point well:
Looks like WorldNetDaily will try to do the same thing to Barack Obama as it did to the Clintons--hurl unverified, sleazy charges.
A Feb. 17 WND article unquestioningly repeats accusations made by one Larry Sinclair that he "he took cocaine in 1999 with the then-Illinois legislator and participated in homosexual acts with him." The article merely repeats Sinclair's claims and links to a YouTube video he made--even reprinting a lawsuit Sinclair filed against Obama containing the allegations--without examining Sinclair's background or even making much of an effort to get a response from the Obama campaign (it adds at the end at "Calls placed to the Obama campaign were not returned").
Interesting that the bluenoses at WND--remember, it banned links from its site to Salon.com in 2001 because it ran "erotic art" and moved to a subscription based model, thus it was "sell[ing] porn"--adds an "editor's note" at the top saying, "The accompanying YouTube video contains sexual language that some will consider offensive. The article itself contains material that is inappropriate for children." Apparently, porn isn't offensive to anyone at WND when it can be used in the service of attacking a political enemy. WND even cynically acknowledges what it's doing by putting "sleaze charge" right in the headline.
It's also interesting that WND reprints Sinclair's lawsuit when it couldn't be bothered to reprint any of the legal papers filed in Clark Jones' libel lawsuit against it (as we had challenged WND to do). WND just settled that lawsuit by admitted it made false claims about Jones (and, presumably, handing over a little cash for damages), thus suggesting an answer to why it wouldn't post any lawsuit documents (though we did). With this article, though, WND continues to demonstrate that it learned nothing from that lawsuit by being a disseminator of charges it suggests are true that it has made no effort to verify.
But then again, WND was--and still is--all too willing to repeat claims against the Clintons by people whose veracity, shall we say, leaves something to be desired, from Kathleen Willey to Peter Paul. This is all in the service of a conservative agenda that WND refuses to acknowledge.
Meet the new sleaze, same as the old sleaze...
UPDATE: One blogger notes a couple things WND could have investigated but didn't: Sinclair claims to be a resident of Duluth, Minnesota, but apparently is actually from Texas, and while WND claims Sinclair "says he is a registered Democrat but has never voted for any candidate," he is apparently a Ron Paul supporter.
UPDATE 2: WND has added another article repeating Sinclair's allegations and making no effort to verify anything he has said.
Such smear jobs on Democrats are nothing new for WND: In 2004, it did several articles repeating never-proven tabloid-based claims that John Kerry had an affair.
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Two Feb. 15 WorldNetDaily articles have a missing component. Can you spot it?
- The first describes a "new book" (in fact, it came out in 2006) by Lyle Rossiter, in which he claims that the "the ideology motivating [liberals] is actually a mental disorder." It describes Rossiter as an "acclaimed, veteran psychiatrist" and a "board-certified forensic psychiatrist" who "received his medical and psychiatric training at the University of Chicago."
- The second describes the "Dear Abby" advice column as a "shock jock for promiscuity," citing a report by the Culture and Media Institute that claims that the column takes "a distinctly non-traditional approach toward moral questions." The article described CMI as "designed to 'advance, preserve, and help restore America's culture, character, traditional values, and morals against the assault of the liberal media elite.'"
Nowhere in either of these two articles will you find any ideological descriptor for Rossiter, CMI, or its parent organization, the Media Research Center (which the article also names)--even though they are obviously conservative-leaning--the MRC, of course, is part of the ConWeb.
While Rossiter assiduously avoids publicly identifying himself as a conservative, his columns appear at conservative opinion sites like Townhall.com and Family Security Matters, and are promoted by conservative sites such as Discover the Networks and conservative writers such as Joan Swirsky.
Why is WND so afraid of accurately describing these people and organizations?
(Purely Personal Piffle: Does the Culture and Media Institute's agenda [q.v.] perhaps echo that of apartheid South Africa?)
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Ronald Kessler's idea of censorship: that his claims didn't get played with his spin.
From Kessler's Feb. 13 Newsmax column:
When FBI agent George Piro recently described debriefing Saddam Hussein for seven months after his capture, he disclosed that the Iraqi dictator admitted his intention to re-start his weapons of mass destruction program within a year.
That plan included developing nuclear weapons capability, according to Saddam.
The revelation should have hit Page One of every newspaper.
Why? Kessler answers: "It would have further justified President Bush's decision to invade Iraq, a key issue in the coming presidential election. But many in the mainstream media could not bear to hear that Bush may have done something right."
Plus, since this little revelation first appeared in Kessler's recently published book, he would have benefitted from the sales bump.
What's missing here is any mention of whether Saddam had the capability to do what he intended. Intent is amorphous; everyone intends to do things. But did Saddam have the capability to do anything about his intentions? Kessler doesn't say.
Instead, Kessler whines that his little scoop didn't get blanket coverage in all media. He finally concludes:
Today, we have press censorship similar to what existed in the old Soviet Union, except the censors are journalists themselves, and it's in reverse: News favorable to the government is suppressed.
Ironically, a day later, a Newsmax article trumpeted how "Newsmax.com has soared in Web traffic."
How, exactly, is Kessler being "suppressed" and censored? Indeed, Kessler has engaged in a bit of self-censorship of his own by reporting only flattering news about the Bush administration. (He probably should have engaged in a little self-censorship, though, when he was creepily fawning over Mitt Romney's wife).
And we can lay pretty good odds that if a Democrat wins the presidency later this year, Kessler will be whining shortly thereafter that "news unfavorable to the government is suppressed."
