IT WAS GEORGE ORWELL'S NOVEL NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR AS INTRODUCED THE NEWSPEAK WORD "PROLEFEED" INTO THE LANGUAGE, referring to such news and information as was, by design, false, inaccurate or otherwise misleading for deliberate dissemiation to the Lower Classes.

In other words, serving no value than pacifying the poor, undereducated and easily-influenced as a cheap opiate to distract attention from The Bigger Issues affecting their socioeconomic situation.

Think Progress has an interesting item about just how far gone into prolefeed Fox News Channel is:

[On Monday, 17th inst.], the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) put out its annual report on the "State of the News Media." While the 2008 presidential campaign and the debate over Iraq were overwhelmingly the top subjects of cable news, the networks still devoted a substantial amount of coverage to celebrity affairs. For example, the death of Anna Nicole Smith received more coverage than the Valerie Plame scandal, the U.S. attorney purge, and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Fox News led the cable networks in the most amount of celebrity coverage and the least amount of Iraq war coverage. PEJ notes:

MSNBC, at least in terms of time spent, was indeed the place for politics in 2007 — by nearly double over its rivals in the percentage of time studied (28% vs. 12% on CNN and 15% on Fox News). Fox, in turn, spent less time on the war in Iraq than the others (10% vs. 18% on MSNBC and 16% on CNN). And it was more oriented to crime, celebrity and the media than its rivals (28% vs. 19% on MSNBC and 16% on CNN).

A look at the Iraq coverage of CNN, Fox, and MSNBC:

As ThinkProgress reported in March 2007, three weeks after Anna Nicole's death, Fox News and MSNBC still devoted more time to the late celebrity than to the Walter Reed scandal. Fox gave Anna Nicole roughly 12 times more coverage.

Fox may not be ashamed of PEJ's latest findings. Last year, Fox News's John Gibson defended his celebrity coverage by accusing reporters—such as CNN's Anderson Cooper—of "news-guy snobbery." Gibson claimed that people were "a little weary" of war coverage" and wanted "a little something else."

(In other words, what the Lower Classes really want in their news coverage is sugar-coated distractionary having little, if any, realistic news or informational value, as if implying where the audiences in Podunk Centre and Doo Wah Diddy "can't handle the truth." Which, come to think of it, could be further used to justify the dumping of infomercials by certain FreeVee outlets without access to sports programmes or "good"--er, trashy--movies.)

Reinforcing this lack of disregard for "real" news on Fox Prolefeed's part, as above summarised, is this item from the ConWebWatch blog:

A March 17 MRC "Media Reality Check" by Rich Noyes declares:

Analysts at the Media Research Center have studied TV news coverage of the Iraq war from the beginning, even before the first bombs fell on Baghdad in March 2003. The record shows the networks have trumpeted bad news—setbacks for the U.S. coalition and allegations of misdeeds by American troops—while minimizing good news such as the success of the 2007 troop surge and acts of heroism by U.S. soldiers.

But nearly all of the 11 studies Noyes cites are focused only on the broadcast networks or a specific network--two focus only on ABC (one of those solely on ABC anchor Peter Jennings), two focus only on NBC (one solely on then-NBC reporter Peter Arnett). One study focused only on cable news coverage. None offer a comprehensive look at all "TV news coverage of the Iraq war."

Why so little focus on cable news? Perhaps because it doesn't want to be put in the position of having to criticize conservative-friendly (not to mention MRC-friendly) Fox News. MRC, after all, has a history of running to Fox News' defense.

The lone cable news-focused MRC study of Iraq war coverage, in December 2006, made Fox News look good: It claimed that, unlike MSNBC and CNN, Fox News "was better able to balance the bad news with more optimistic news of U.S. achievements in Iraq," unashamedly rehashing Fox News' "fair and balanced" slogan. The study does not state whether news events in Iraq from the period of time studied warranted the "balance" that Fox News provided and the MRC lauded.

One MRC study, issued Feb. 28, claimed that "[w]hen U.S. casualties began to steadily decline, TV coverage of Iraq dramatically decreased" on the TV networks. That study, like nearly all of the others, excluded cable news coverage, and it uncritically repeats Bush administration talking points claiming that "the President's surge strategy is well on its way to succeeding."

The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism's State of the News Media 2008 report, however, showed this trend of declining coverage was not limited to the purportedly liberal news networks: It found that Fox News "spent less time on the war in Iraq" than CNN and MSNBC, and it was "more oriented to crime, celebrity and the media than its rivals." (h/t Think Progress.)

The MRC does not mention this, nor does it note Fox News' previous hostility toward airing negative Iraq war coverage:

• John Gibson claimed that those who criticized news channels for obsessive coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's death while minimizing Iraq war coverage (like Fox News) were suffering from "news-guy snobbery."
• Bill O'Reilly, responding to a previous PEJ study with similar findings for Fox News, defended the lack of coverage of negative Iraq war news by asserting that it does not "highlight every terrorist attack because we learn nothing from that. And that's exactly what the terrorists want us to do." O'Reilly also asserted, without evidence, that "CNN and MSNBC are actually helping the terrorists by reporting useless explosions. ... I'm not gonna cover every bomb that goes off in Tikrit, because it's meaningless."

These studies are not unlike a lot of other MRC studies--they are driven too much by the MRC's conservative bias to be trusted without question.

Which just goes to show that Fox Prolefeed's theme music should more correctly be "It's Good News Week!" by Hedgehoppers Anonymous, vintage 1965, what with its inherent lyrical irony:

It's Good News Week!
Someone's dropped a bomb somewhere,
Contaminating atmosphere
And blackening the sky....

It's Good News Week!
Someone's found a way to give
The Rotting Dead a will to live,
Go on and never die....

Have you heard the news?
What did it say?
Who won that race?
What's the weather like today?

It's Good News Week!
Families shake their need for gold
By stimulating birth control,
We're wanting less to eat....*

It's Good News Week!
Doctors finding many ways
Of wrapping brains in metal trays
To keep us from the heat....

=============

*An alternate version of this verse hath it:

It's Good News Week!
Lots of blood in Asia now;
They've butchered off the sacred cow,
They've got a lot to eat....

EVEN WITH HIS FRAUDULENCY'S RATHER PATHETIC AND LAME-O REMARKS JUSTIFYING THE SOCIAL COST OF THE UR-RAHOWA AGAINST TERRORISM in the five years of same, he may have unwittingly planted the seeds of America's destruction thanks to a subtle "guns-before-butter" mindset excusing ur-RAHOWA @ the expense of Society.

And sought to justify such as necessary to prevent further infamous acts of terrorism in the 9/11 stylee, even insisting that taxes needed to be kept all the lower for the sake of creating jobs and social order. This unaware that same may have planted the seeds for the current socioeconomic meltdown, or clear and present danger thereof.

Which should be a warning sign that we "morally superior" Americans could be in clear and present danger of socioeconomic and soverign collapse thanks to the Great Within's delusion which insists that the American Colonial Occupation of Iraq should be considered as being in perpetuity.

The whole expected to be supported by takes kept ridiculously low, in turn justifying wholesale corporatisations not seen since Great Britain under Margaret Thatcher, never mind its risk of crossing the line into an unwitting brand of Fascism.

=============

SO, YE WHO FEAR THE ONSET OF THE "EVIL EMPIRE" YOU CALL THE "NEW WORLD ORDER" IN DEFENCE OF AMERICAN SOVERIGNTY "ANTIENT AND PECUILAR," you may want to ponder the possibility that a post-Reaganist America may be heading down the same path as the Ottoman Empire did.

Which, come to think of it, encompassed some rather substantial territory across portions of Europe, northern Africa and the Near and Middle East @ its heighth in 1683, as this map from Wikipedia shows:

The which, in any case, would no doubt be done in by the general incompetence of the sultans ruling the Ottoman Empire in its later years of decline; increasing nationalistic sentiment in many parts of the same (especially so in the Balkans, Palestine and along the Black Sea) affecting Ottoman hegenomy; demands for democratic reforms which the sultans were unwilling to accept (and led to several uprisings); general socioeconomic lethargy precluding the serious expansion of modern technology and infrastructure throughout--and the last nail in the coffin, so to speak, being World War I, when the Ottoman Empire sided with the losing Central Powers.

Its death certificates, so to speak, were the Armistice of Mudros (30 October 1918, barely two weeks before the Armistice ending World War I came about) and the later Treaty of Sèvres, which saw the Ottoman Empire's Middle Eastern territories (including present-day Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Saudi Arabia) becoming British or French Mandates, portions of Anatolia coming under Italian control, Greece controlling Thrace and Smyrna (the latter becoming a Greek Protectorate), the Sea and Straits of Marmara under control of the Allies, and Armenia recognised as a soverign state in her own right.

Concurrently, Istanbul and Izmir were placed under Allied Occupation, giving rise to the Kemal Ataturk-led Turkish War of Independence as would see occupying Greek, Italian and British forces as "interlopers," reclaiming such areas lost in the Treaty of Sèvres to Armenia and Allied control, and, in due course, would force Sultan Mehmed VI to abdicate his throne; the Republic of Turkey established under the Treaty of Lausanne; and the abolition of the Caliphate.

As Wikipedia's entry on the Ottoman Empire summarises its collapse:

The fall of the Ottoman Empire can be attributed to the failure of its economic structure; the size of the empire created difficulties in economically integrating its diverse regions. Also, the empire's communication technology was not developed enough to reach all territories. In many ways, the circumstances surrounding the Ottoman Empire's fall closely paralleled those surrounding the fall of the Roman Empire, particularly in terms of the ongoing tensions between the empire's different ethnic groups, and the various governments' inability to deal with these tensions. In the case of the Ottomans, the introduction of a parliamentary system during the Tanzimat proved too late to reverse the trends that had been set in motion.

(By one estimate, all or parts of some 40 soverign nations were carved out of the former Ottoman Empire's remnants.)

=============

NO DOUBT SOMETHING WORTH THINKING ABOUT, especially as Indecision 2008 draws all the closer and the race turning all the more into a nasty and filthy Katzenjammer likely to be exploited by elements weird, unwholesome and potentially dangerous.

Not the least of which are John McCain (a/k/a The Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang) and the Pseudoreligiopolitical Right, rather than the so-called "forces of homosexuality" they get so ballistically paranoid about.

In other words, the Religiopolitical Right and its forces should start to realise the imminence of--and, for once, accept--the likelihood of a Secular-Progressive State not unlike post-Ottoman Turkey. And like it. 

PEROUSING YOUTUBE RECENTLY FOR CHOICEST SPECIMENS OF TV SIGN-OFF SEQUENCES, as I am fond of thus seeing every now and again, Your Correspondent came across this clip of the cult TV animation hit Pinky and The Brain which parodied a commercial recording session involving Orson Welles--with Welles' angst-laden comments to the producers replacing the original episode soundtrack (Welles doing The Brain and the original producer doing Pinky).

Watch for yourself and see if this isn't a gem right there:

YOUR CORRESPONDENT DOESN'T EXACTLY PROFESS TO HAVING PSYCHIC POWERS, OR THOSE OF PROPHECY, when it comes to things brought up in this weblog; then again--

Enter the ICHC online Poker Cats Contest!

Dear Senator McCain:

I should like to use this opportunity to take you to task for your associating with a rather weird and unwholesome specimen of religious by name of Rev. Rod Parsley, whom you have appointed as "spiritual advisor."

If I may, I would like to call your timely attention to this article from Mother Jones explaining just how weird and unwholesome Rev. Parsley is--which, in brief, includes a long-running litany of homophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, Islamophobia, xenophobia and general intolerance. Not to mention being of that ilk pseudoreligious claiming that America was Divinely Ordained to be The One True Centre of the World, the Universe and the 28 Known Galaxies, and that said status is somehow @ "clear and present risk" because of such things as "acceptance of, and tolerance for," homosexuality, multiculturalism and diversity.

As Steven Reynolds @ the All Spin Zone blog explains:

This guy is anything but a man who believes in freedom of religion. Oh yeah, and John McCain should denounce him. But he won't. He's too afraid of offending the rabid radical right-wing religious right, even though those folks are going to bring him down in November. To me that means that John McCain hasn't the judgement to be President. He can't understand who the people are who are so divisive that they are the ones encouraging terrorists....

With that in mind, I would like you to Please Explain:

• why you would allow Rev. Parsley as "spiritual advisor" to your campaign, consciously aware all along of his bigoted and intolerant agenda and articles of faith;
• whether these same bigoted beliefs of Rev. Parsley would influence your Presidential campaign and its articles of faith; and
• what prevents you @ this time from disassociating yourself and your campaign from Rev. Parsley and his ministry vis-a-vis your Presidential campaign.

Not to mention the likelihood of your campaign appealing all the more to a vulnerable and easily-influenced element of society as is especially likely to accept, let alone embrace, such messages of intolerance, and to regard such as one with "Christian Patriot Love" if and when pushed to explain--unaware, all the while, that such could really be lemmings leading you to your own political destruction. Remember William Jennings Bryant's pandering to marginalised and vulnerable elements of society in his 1896 and 1900 Presidential bids (especially so that "Cross of Gold" speech in the former instance), only to lose to William McKinley in the end?

Hence, I ask you to Please Explain such associations you have weird and unwholesome for electoral purposes, and what prevents your recognising such dangerous associations all the while. Especially before what your ilk would call "those meddling bloggers" start picking up on this, and exploits such with consequences you don't want to hear about. (Or do you?) 

see more crazy cat pics

=============

MEMO TO READERS: For the sake of Knowledge and Truth, not to mention the Greater Good of the Nation, please forward this on to all you know--and who value Truth. But do so responsibly, if you could--especially if you use the "e-mail this" facility. 

RANDALL TERRY'S NOTORIOUS ANTI-ABORTION GROUP OPERATION RESCUE HAS THIS CERTAIN NOTORIETY for sheer and banal crudity of the highest order in protesting the activities of abortionists and scaring women seeking abortions into reconsidering pro Deo et patria.

In particular, its urging supporters to use their children @ anti-abortion protests Operation Rescue conducts, and hoping for the police to arrest the kids; the better so the parents can get off on lesser charges than would ordinarily be expected of mere adults protesting abortion.

Next thing you know, expect Operation Rescue to be in league with the weird and unwholesome elements of racism and white supremacy (in particular pseudoreligious elements invoking a "scientific" approach to bigotry, or otherwise associated with the false doctrine of Christian Identity) in seeking to "rescue***a once-proud and simple White Christian community from danger of persecution"--the Afrikaner peoples of South Africa, largely Calvinist/Dutch Reformed in religious leanings and whose "fear of persecution" comes from a "Communist-influenced regime" dominated by "sub-human elements***having reckless and utter disregard for White honour and privilege."

As in evacuation of the Afrikaner populace from South Africa as "refugees" and their timely resettlement in the United States, preferably as "humble and simple pastoralists."

Unfortunately, however, there are still doubts as need to be raised whether their "refugee" claims are sincere and legitimate, let alone supported by credible substantiation; there's always the danger that the claims of "fear of persecution" may be deliberately scripted to deceive or mislead immigration officials.

That, and whether the funds being raised to assist with such "rescue" efforts will serve their intended purposes--especially after questions start being raised in certain circles.

No doubt something to expect from Operation Rescue--or can you? 

NOT EXACTLY THE TALES OF BRAVE ULYSSES, READER, especially when you consider that, for starters, a three-mile stretch of I-95 in Philadelphia is closed for emergency maintenance after a substantial crack was found in a concrete support beam thereof between Girard Avenue and the Betsy Ross Bridge, the stretch in question.

Said crack is 4' long by 2" wide, and parts of the metal rebar have reportedly shown up in the crack.

Not to mention brick-sized chunks of concrete having been discerned from street level.

In any case, such should serve (along with the I-35W bridge collapse) as clear-cut examples of how far His Fraudulency's Great Within has allowed American infrastructure to deteriorate for the sake of his misadventures otherwise known as ur-RAHOWA Against Terrorism--and I feel qualified to call same "misadventures" because such was provoked based on flimsy and misleading intelligence serving to cover the "real" reasons thereof: Viz., the maintenance of continued dependency on oil imports in the face of stateside oil fields (especially so those in Texas, Oklahoma and California) close to reaching the end of their productive lives and "undue and unnecessary regulatory burden" seen as "preventing" further stateside exploration and development which could tend to the wasteful and counterproductive.

=============

MEANWHILE, IN NIGERIA, GOVERNMENT INVESTIGATORS HAVE UNCOVERED EVIDENCE OF WHERE 34 SHAM COMPANIES controlled or owned by former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo or his droogs were awarded some US$2.25 billion in contracts related to modernisation of the Nigerian power grid and related infrastructure as failed to be carried out.

As the BBC explains:

The BBC's Ahmed Idris in the capital, Abuja, says this week's parliamentary hearings, which are being aired on television, are causing a stir with their revelations.

He says many parts of the country go for days without electricity and businesses and many homes rely on their generators.

When President Umaru Yar'Adua came to power last year he announced he would declare a "state of emergency" on the country's energy crisis.

Nigeria currently has 10 power stations - they are all between 20 and 30 years old.

Last month, Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan said power cuts were an "embarrassment" to Nigeria - after black-outs affected a meeting he was attending.

Testimonies

The House of Representatives committee is investigating why six power stations - already paid for by the government - are yet to be completed years after they were begun.

It has called all the contractors to give testimony about their progress.

Two witnesses told the hearings, which began on Tuesday, that bushes from the the site where a South African company, Pivot, had been contracted to build a station in the oil-rich Niger Delta have yet to be cleared.