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Robert R. Owens, PhD
Opaque Transparency or Smoke & Mirrors
October 27, 2009
Remember
the promise of transparency that helped win the
Presidency? All bills passing Congress would be
posted for
5 days before signed.
Seems the rules have changed. Apparently the
pledge
only applied to NON-emergency bills and
everything is an emergency in the New Republic. The
first bill signed into law
the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was apparently
an emergency. We had to
pass the pork-laden stimulus bill before any of
the Best-Congress-Money-Can-Buy could read it
otherwise unemployment might reach
the unacceptable 8% range though most of the
provisions wouldn’t kick in for months or years. The
Bums-Rush is also being applied to the
nationalization of medicine though the provisions of
this monstrosity conveniently won’t overwhelm us
until
after the next presidential election.
In a direct assault against even the possibility of transparency the
Chicago trained attack machine in the West Wing (Chicago’s
51st Ward) decided they have the power to decide what constitutes
news. For months they’ve refused to allow anyone on FOX. This started
when Chris Wallace had the bad taste to
fact-check several statements made by White House officials and then
the inexcusably bad taste to mention the official statements didn’t line
up with the facts. This was bad enough but FOX commentator Glenn Beck
dared to expose Obama adviser
Van Jones as a self-proclaimed communist and then air the
Acorn prostitution sting the totally transparent Obama White House
decided it was time to muzzle the only major news network not in the
tank. The Obama Whitehouse
declared war on FOX News.
Led by Chicago’s Dynamic Duo
Rahm Emmanuel and
David Axelrod Communications Director
Anita Dunn was sent out to label FOX News a "wing of the Republican
Party." What does that rodeo-clown Beck go and do? Instead of taking his
caning and beginning to act like the trained seals on the other networks
he has the bad taste to point out that
Anita Dunn says Mao Zedong is one of her favorite political
philosophers. What self-respecting
Fearless Leader in training could abide such disrespect?
Mao wouldn’t.
Castro wouldn’t. Even that little tin-pot Stalin-wannabe
Chavez doesn’t put up with this kind of insolence.
The President doesn’t seem to have time between
campaign stops and
basketball
games to tend to the real war in Afghanistan but his
war against the American economy and FOX News is going well. The
economic system is being
overwhelmed in debt and
strangled by regulations. Initially the Corporations Once Known as
the Mainstream Media were silent concerning the assault on FOX. Then the
administration stepped in the leadership. They reached too far in
attempting to
exclude FOX News from the pool of reporters allowed to interview the
Pay Czar about his intention to dictate executive pay.
This not only said, “FOX is unacceptable” something the trained seals
would clap for as they balanced their stenographer pads on their nose
but it also implicitly pointed out they were government shills in all
but name, pay and benefits. The true nature of this
Orwellian administration was finally becoming a little too
transparent
even for the network spokespersons. So one after another they found
what may once have been a spine and they
let the White House know that if FOX was excluded no one would be
there to parrot the words of the administration.
So to save face the corporate flacks have made a move to stave off the
loss of free speech. The administration may have stepped back but one
step back and two steps forward will not preserve our constitutionally
protected right of free speech for long.
Mark Lloyd Diversity Czar at the FCC seeks to gain greater control
of broadcasting with the aim of
curtailing the daily drip-drip of conservative commentary by the
likes of
Rush Limbaugh and
Sean Hannity. In cyber space
Net Neutrality is nothing but the patently unfair
Fairness Doctrine for the Internet.
Political correctness has taken its toll of the spoken word. We no
longer
know what to call who when what is acceptable changes with the winds
of doctrine. The fairness police continue trying to choke freedom out of
speech using
hate crime laws and peer pressure. Trying to malign and marginalize
the only network that isn’t acting as a fax service for administration
press releases isn’t exactly what I envisioned when I heard that
pledge to be the most transparent administration in history. It’s
more like the smoke and mirrors that passes for representative
government in a one party state like Chicago.
Those who believe the
Constitution is a
Living Document they can self-amend at will continue to chip away at
the traditional definitions of what it means to be free. If those of us
who want to remain free don’t use our remaining freedom to protect our
freedom soon it may not be politically correct to even remind people
that once we were free.
About Robert R. Owens, PhD
Robert R. Owens,
PhD is an Associate Professor of History at
Southside Virginia Community College where he also
teaches Political Science, Religion and
Leadership. He write a weekly column of opinion and
observations which appears in numerous locations
both print and electronic. He is the author of three
history books currently on the market;
America Won the Vietnam War, The
Azusa Street Revival
and
Never Forget!
He maintains an archive of his articles
here. |
