We make it a point to print guest columns by people who disagree with us. That's a standard newspaper practice, but sometimes I think we go too far, especially after we run one of Ball State University professor emeritus B.J. Pascal's columns. Last night, he was wondering if voters would be "snookered again" to vote "against their self-interest" in 2012. Like they were when they bought into Barack Obama's empty rhetoric in 2008? Oh, noooo, that's not what he has in mind at all:
Why do we Americans “believe” against our own self-interest by not blaming Wall Street for causing our financial mess? The polls show that we blame ourselves (Time/Aspen poll). Only 6 percent blame Wall Street. Why? I think this answer lies at the feet of the Rupert Murdoch media empire, especially Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. Only 23 percent blame George W. Bush, while 20 percent blame Obama. Why? The Republican-owned corporate media has to be the only acceptable answer.
This effort started with Richard Nixon, more specifically with Roger Ailes in 1970, when he wrote detailed notes on a memo found in John Haldeman's files about how to get more Republicans on TV. In 1996, Ailes established Fox News, and he did not “allow” Fox News' identity to “become intertwined with that of the GOP,” as Newsweek's Howard Kurtz claims.
This had always been the plan and goal, as Nixon's White House papers clearly show. Apparently, Kurtz did not learn his colleague Ann Curry's valuable lesson: Never Google drunk.
It's that vast right-wing conspiracy again! No -- not denying it; happy to be a part of it, and one day we're gonna get you all! Every single one of you that I can convince to blindly and foolishly vote for smaller government and lower taxes earns me a point. If I get enough, they give me a gold star to put on my lunch box and a decoder ring that lets me in on the secret messages Fox News sents out to the inner circle.
