Additional Titles

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other
Rae
Articles:

Rousing Young Visionaries for Radical Social Change

Societal Restructuring via Education Transformation

Deception of Global Democratization

 

More
Rae
Articles:

 

 

 

 

MAINSTREAM MEDIA'S "SNAFFLES" & "CURBS"
PART 2

 

 

 

By Debra Rae

December 26, 2007

NewsWithViews.com

One Dizzy Horse!

To maintain authenticity and objectivity, an open-minded media member exercises the skill of a master horseman. That is to say, he uses the horse�s bit, as it were, to align with reality. The idea, of course, is to keep the horse on a straight course. If that rider were to apply direct pressure or deliberate leverage in only one direction, be it right or left, eventually that horse would go in circles!

In December 2004, the AP News Service referenced the likeable and highly regarded PBS journalist, Bill Moyer, with respect to his indictment of �an ideological press that�s interested in the election of Republicans, and a mainstream press that�s interested in the bottom line.� Were this assessment entirely true, I�d have my example of one dizzy horse circling to the right!

Fact is, Moyer�s basic thesis stands at odds with a veritable mountain of data and scholarly studies. Even Peter Jennings admitted that, historically, the media has been �more of a liberal persuasion for many years.�

Reporters, writers and others in the media vote overwhelmingly for liberal Democrats; and a substantial majority are �pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-separation of church and state, pro-feminism, pro-affirmative action, and supportive of gay rights� (Eric Alterman, What Liberal Media: The Truth about Bias and the News, 21).

Keep in mind also that in the 1992 election�even under threat of �a vast, right-wing conspiracy��a higher percentage of the Washington press corps voted for Bill Clinton than did the entire demographic of registered Democrats!

Wannabe News

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Hollywood coughs up big bucks for federal campaigns, and (with or without the Terminator) Tinsel Town is hardly known as a conservative stronghold! What Americans look to as �based-on-a-true story journalism� has morphed into a sort of wannabe news more appropriately called �reality fiction.�

On a recent segment of the Bill Moyer�s Journal, Moyer admitted to ending each day with Comedy Central�s The Daily Show. Whereas comedian-host Jon Stewart boasts of �faking the news,� Moyer credits him for delivering real news with extraordinary impact. Increasingly, young people look to Stewart for hard news; and older fans lap up Stewart�s infectious satire. Admittedly, he�s tickled my funny bone more than once.

The Colbert Report is a spin-off and counterpart of The Daily Show. Both critique and satirize personality-driven politics. The fictional Stephen Colbert, however, is portrayed as a fact-averse, self-aggrandizing anchorman. In my view, many segments of The Colbert Report are downright hilarious; nevertheless, Colbert�s character is a theologically bereft, hyper-patriotic, liberal-hating, right-wing egomaniac. In �real life,� by the way, Colbert is a registered Democrat.

Believe it or not, �the Report� is often embraced as non-satirical journalism. Even the reputable dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster named as its 2006 �Word of the Year� a term Colbert coined (�truthiness�).

Laughter may well be medicine to the soul, but it is no substitute for hard news. This begs the question �Where are journalists who stay in touch with the very pulse of our nation�those who �buy the truth, and sell it not� and those less interested in celebrity than they are in reality?�

I share Jack L. Warner�s sentiments directed at the entertainment industry: �If you want to send a message, use Western Union.�

Similarly, if you want to report news, relegate stories about Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears to the tabloids; share your heart-warming animal stories over the dinner table; and avoid prompting and cuing the media horse in a single direction for the sake of partisanship�be it right or left!

Reign �em in, Cowboy!

Politician-industrialist Cecil John Rhodes once reasoned that �the press owns the minds of the people.� He was not alone in that belief. Journalist, playwright and essayist Arthur S. Miller referenced �a pervasive system of thought control� in the United States�this, by �employment of the mass media� coupled with �the system of public education.� Both, he added, tell people �what to think about.�

For over six decades, this Pulitzer Prize winner was a prominent figure in American culture. Once wedded to Hollywood by marriage to Marilyn Monroe, Miller understood how the mainstream media�inclusive of publishing, entertainment, reporting�own people�s minds and direct their thinking.

For decades, a media conspiracy has been unveiled before our very eyes. In 1990, when the World Federalist Association faulted the American press for being �slow-witted� in grasping most global developments, the WFA failed to reveal that, more likely than not, key omissions were by design. Just ask David Rockefeller. At a Bilderberg Society meeting in Baden, Germany, he thanked attendees from the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other distinguished publications. For nearly forty years, he gushed, these friends of global governance had �respected their promises of discretion.�

Now that the world was adequately primed to embrace a New World Order, the �cat was out of the bag�; and at long last proponents were free to �go public.� This, too, was by design. In June of 1991, the Council on Foreign Relations co-sponsored an assembly to rethink America�s vision beyond the Cold War and into a New World Order. That assembly was attended by sixty-five prestigious insiders from nine countries. These represented the professions, government, labor, academia, military and mainstream media.

Thereafter, for a 1992 Time article, �The Birth of the Global Nation,� Strobe Talbott received the Norman Cousins Global Governance Award. Having served as Foreign Policy Adviser to former President Clinton, Talbott insisted that �within the next one hundred years, nationhood will be obsolete; and all states will recognize a single, global authority.�

A growing body of agreements labeled �soft law� at the global level forfeit significant control over the domestic economy to an international body. On cue, the liberal media has labeled advocates of strict Constitutionalism �cranky right-wingers� with �irrational fears about one-worldism.�

They Report; They Decide

Our burgeoning Brave New World favors a transnational socialist agenda that characterizes private property as unsustainable, free enterprise as exploitation, technology as injurious to nature and Western culture/faith as loathsome. To realize the one-world paradigm, direct and constant pressure is applied, often in the name of �art.� Truth be told, Hollywood productions that advance the global agenda by rewriting history are common as fleas on dogs.

For example, renowned actor Liam Neeson convincingly portrayed entomologist Alfred Kinsey as a reputable pioneer scientist. Disregarding Dr. Kinsey�s flawed, sometimes criminal research practices, the big screen legitimized Kinseyan �morality.� Predictably so, Neeson�s expos� of the doctor�s bisexuality commanded tolerance in the name of diversity alternatively known as multiculturalism.

Unfortunately, tolerance eluded The Passion of Christ. People of faith worldwide streamed to the Passion, which grossed $610,000,000. But think about this: American Beauty chronicled a middle-aged, married man�s lurid lust for his daughter�s promiscuous underage friend and, then, was lauded as 1999 Picture of the Year; yet critics called Mel Gibson�s work �pornographic.� C�mon, folks! Since when was �the greatest story ever told� pornography?

Crime thriller The Departed bloodied the screen with brutal violence peppered with pervasive language, some strong sexual content and drug material ostensibly fashioned after real-life American gangsters. Whereas The Departed was awarded the distinction of 2006 Picture of the Year, critics disparaged The Passion of Christ for being �sadomasochistic.� As if sexual gratification derived from the exchange of pain had anything whatsoever to do with Christ�s redemptive work on Calvary!

Never mind that Jesus was a Jew, critics pummeled the Passion for its �anti-Semitism� even when Jewish film critics disagreed with them. On the other hand, in 2005, an overtly racist theme earned Crash an Academy Award.

It would seem that too many partisans representing the mainstream media summarily supplant the historical account with figments of their own imaginations. When it comes to Hollywood, �they report; they decide.�

The �Devil�s Party�

Washington journalist Christopher Hitchens hails award-winning children�s novelist Philip Pullman as �a literary genius and a salutary influence on the young.� A film adaptation of Pullman�s first novel within His Dark Materials trilogy features actress Nicole Kidman alongside newcomer Dakota Blue Richards. Slated for release in America on 7 December 2007, Pullman�s fantasy epic and sure-to-be runaway hit, The Golden Compass (published in Britain as The Northern Lights), is expected to be New Line�s biggest ever budget project. That being the case, it�s in the running to trump Potter-mania.

Pullman�s trilogy is provocative, albeit Bible-bashing; it contrasts innocence-with-experience and good-with-evil. Without apology, Pullman disdains C. S. Lewis for purportedly �trapping� children in a false world of innocence. He apparently categorizes �innocent child� as an oxymoron; even more, Pullman contends that children�s literature is all about �growing up��and fast.

To this end, Pullman introduces below-the-surface issues that, when isolated from the narrative, epitomize left-leaning political stances. For example, his eco-references address �poisoning the planet,� presumably by what extremists call �humanpox.�

Just prior to the Attack on America, Ed Vulliamy credited Pullman�s novels for subverting the influence of �the Religious Right at the moment of its greatest political triumph� (The Observer, 26 August 2001). Furthermore, in an interview with The Observer, Pullman accused the Right of establishing hegemony of �orthodox, authoritarian doctrine.�

Pullman extends his political leftism to the seductive realm of spirit. In so doing, he redefines First Lady Eve as a redeemer of men�and Mary, the mother of Jesus, as a �fallen woman.� In Pullman�s world, God is demoted to an ordinary angel eventually banished to oblivion. For apparent reason, The Catholic Herald disparaged Pullman and his works for corrupting youth, and the Catholic League called for a boycott of the film.

Even the novelist�s brother, Peter, denounced Philip Pullman as the �most dangerous man in England� for his proclamation of death to God and Christianity throughout The Golden Compass in exchange for dark, even terrifying cosmological mysteries. Surprisingly, Archbishop Rowan Williams advocated teaching students the �profound ethical questions� posed by Pullman.

Never mind that in navigating its web site, young people receive guidance to �meet their demon.� Once answering a series of personal questions, seekers are assigned their own daemon avatars to accompany them on spiritual sojourns to other-worldly altered states of consciousness. New Age occultists call this process �transformation,� a stylish descriptor for becoming demonized.

No joke. Pullman unashamedly admits to incorporating the occult. He even boasts: �I am of the Devil�s party, and I know it.� His spiritual grid rejects living as if the Kingdom of Heaven matters more than temporal life. Dark plot lines are replete with fairytale inventions, witches, armored bears and, yes, parallel worlds.

To Pullman, the enemies of our children�s imaginations are not TV, drugs, sensuality, cults, the occult or crime; rather, the real enemy is a �rigid, over-tested, over-structured sterility of literacy curriculum,� better known as traditional education. The latter, he alleges, is �short-changing a whole generation of our children.�

I agree that America�s youth have been short-changed, but traditionalism isn�t the problem anymore than secular progressivism provides the solution. That the media persists at encircling its targeted audience with an impenetrable wall of ideological captivity ensures shortchanging an entire generation�and beyond.

Subscribe to the NewsWithViews Daily News Alerts!


Enter Your E-Mail Address:

Over time, unless curtailed, the once teeming market place of historically proven, well-reasoned ideas that invite God�s blessing upon nations will succumb instead to an ideology likened to a nutrition-lite, meatless, left-centric, demon-friendly happy meal-in-the-box. For part one click below.

Click here for part -----> 1,

[Click here for: Emergency Supplies and Survival Kits For Disaster Preparadness]

� 2007 Debra Rae - All Rights Reserved

Sign Up For Free E-Mail Alerts

E-Mails are used strictly for NWVs alerts, not for sale


Daughter of an Army Colonel, Debra graduated with distinction from the University of Iowa. She then completed a Master of Education degree from the University of Washington. These were followed by Bachelor of Theology and Master of Ministries degrees-both from Pacific School of Theology.

While a teacher in Kuwait, Debra undertook a three-month journey from the Persian Gulf to London by means of VW "bug"! One summer, she tutored the daughter of Kuwait's Head of Parliament while serving as superintendent of Kuwait's first Vacation Bible School.

Having authored the ABCs of Globalism and ABCs of Cultural -Isms, Debra speaks to Christian and secular groups alike. Her radio spots air globally. Presently, Debra co-hosts WOMANTalk radio with Sharon Hughes and Friends, and she contributes monthly commentaries to Changing Worldviews and NewsWithViews.com. Debra calls the Pacific Northwest home.

Web Site: www.debraraebooks.com

E-Mail: ABCs@debraraebooks.com

 


 

Home

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Through the decades, the unwitting public has been �reigned in� by a media conglomerate that restrains a vast marketplace of competing ideas. In the end, those targeted are restricted to a conditioned diet that media moguls control.