Sirotablog
David Sirota is a political journalist and nationally syndicated newspaper columnist at Creators Syndicate. David writes about political corruption, globalization and working-class economic issues often ignored by both of America's political parties.
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April 25, 2008 12:24 PM
Chris Matthews vs. Jimmy McNulty
The "controversy" over Barack Obama's "bitter" comments was a media creation from start to finish - a brouhaha manufactured by very wealthy reporters and pundits who do anything they can to ignore, reject or otherwise downplay the very real issue of inequality and economic class in America. Using MSNBC's Chris Matthews and "The Wire's" Jimmy McNulty, I show in my new newspaper column this week that the very media ideology that spins up these "controversies" has gone from subtle to brazen in the last few weeks - and that intensification is breeding, yes, bitterness.
Matthews is the personification of this ideology inside the Washington press corps and chattering class. He is a guy so out of touch with reality that he looks at his $5 million annual salary, three Mercedes and luxurious Chevy Chase lifestyle and tells the New York Times he's not part of America's winner's circle. In that New York Times profile, he likens himself to a working-class champion, and yet when you watch Hardball, all working-class issues are stripped of their substance and turned into a screaming match over tactics, and nothing more.
This is par for the course in the media. Obama notes that when working-class Americans get economically shafted, they get "bitter" - and millionaire Tim Russert reacts by asking a group of millionaire political consultants to appear on Meet the Press to explain working-class politics to America. ABC's Charlie Gibson takes what could have been a substantive discussion of tax inequality, and turns it into a fact-free diatribe about the capital gains tax supposedly hurting regular Americans - even though most of it is paid by the wealthiest 1 percent. These people all couch their arguments and presentation in blue-collar iconography, but what's really coming through is a powerful form of elitism.
At a time when people are dying because of lack of access to health care and because of a misguided war, only the superrich elite have the luxury of treating politics like an entertaining sport and deliberately obscuring issues so as to justify economic royalism. The problem is that when the superrich in the media do this, it not only makes solving real problems harder, but it can breed - yes - bitterness among us commoners, because the underlying message is that our daily challenges are unimportant.
In my column, I use the example of Matthews and Jimmy McNulty - the latter being the everyman cop in HBO's "The Wire." In season 3 of the show, McNulty starts dating a Washington political consultant, and when he tries to get up to speed on her business by watching Matthews-style cable shows, he laments how divorced from reality the coverage is. Later on, he's downright bitter.
Though McNulty is a fictional character, he's a lot more real than cartoons like Matthews, Russert, Gibson and the rest of the media elite. The feelings he expresses, which I recount in my column, are widespread out here in America - and the media has a heckuva lot to do with that. It may be shocking for political junkies to realize it, but most of America does not wake up everyday thinking about Obama or Hillary Clinton's latest gaffe. Most of America has no idea who David Axelrod or Mark Penn is. Most of America doesn't care what the latest polls in Indiana say. Most of America is worrying about paying the bills, making it through the next day and providing for our families.
But you wouldn't know that if you turn on the television. No, when you flip on the tube, you are led to believe the only thing that matters are politicians screaming at each other, and millionaire pundits analyzing the sport of it. And then, incredibly, these same millionaires wonder why so many Americans think our entire political process is broken, and that the political discourse in this country doesn't care about the majority of the country it is supposed to represent.
You can read the whole column at the San Francisco Chronicle, Denver Post, Ft. Collins Coloradoan, Vail Daily, TruthDig, Credo Action, In These Times, Alternet or Creators. You can listen to a podcast of the column here. The column relies on grassroots support, so if you'd like to see my column regularly in your local paper, use this directory to find the contact info for your local editorial page editors. Get get in touch with them and point them to my Creators Syndicate site. Thanks, as always, for your ongoing readership and help contacting local editors. This column couldn't be what it is without your help.
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About David Sirota
David Sirota is a political journalist and nationally syndicated newspaper columnist at Creators Syndicate. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Hostile Takeover. He lives in Denver, Colorado. His daily blog can be found at CREDO Action. He contributes regularly to the Denver Post's Web site, is a senior editor at In These Times magazine and is working on his second book. He has been profiled in Newsweek and the Rocky Mountain News and is widely known for his reporting on political corruption, globalization and working-class economic issues often ignored by both of America's political parties. Sirota serves as co-chair of the Progressive States Network, a 501(c)3 organization that supports state legislators and that is a partner of CREDO.
You can subscribe to Sirota's e-mail newsletter by going to davidsirota.com and signing up in the lefthand corner. To find out more about Sirota, download his official biography or see his recent media appearances. You can e-mail him at sirota@credoaction.com.
The views expressed on this blog are his own, and do not necessarily represent the views of Working Assets (publisher of CREDO Action) or the institutions Sirota works for.
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More David Sirota
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This Modern World
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October 2, 2008
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Discussion
Hey David!
Where's your story on the DNC and Obama 'teaming up' to scoop up all the cabbage? You know, Obama's 'Final Solution' to the Democratic Party.
You need to get out more. You are at least four news cycles behind.
Must be the newspaper thingy.
The truth is a class war has been waged on in this country since around 1974. The war began with an ideology known as neoliberal economics, but had antecedents in Ann Rynd's objectivism, which essentially states greed is not only good but is necessary for the creation of a greater society. To borrow a line from Al Gore, theirs an inconvenient truth being ignored by most people on this site and in other, so called liberal/progressive media. This inconvenient truth is that both democrats and republicans believe in neoliberal economics, and so now matter who wins this next election we are going to get more of the same economic and foreign policies, which allow the wealthy and well, connected to rig the system against average Americans and multinational corporations to rape and pillage third world countries with the Marines, CIA, World Bank and IMF acting as their protectors and enforcers.
Read Pam Martens article on z communications [1] about Obama's ties to hedges and then you will understand why with Obama you are just going to get another neoliberal DLCer like Bill Clinton before. Lent me finish this by saying, we need to quite attacking each other over these worthless sold-out candidates, for the truth is we are all in this together and no amount of sycophancy for either one of this democratic candidates is going to help regain control of country, and we have to regain control quickly, Wall Street has created a Ponzi scheme in the market with these third party derivate markets and credit default swaps and the hedge funds, who fund Obama and Clinton, have been making a killing off of this knowledge. So wake up, they are conning us, forget hope, forget change, get mad as hell and lent both of these democratic candidates know you are mad as hell and empty rhetoric about hope and change just isn't going to get it done this time. Fool us once shame on Bill Clinton, fool us twice (Obama, Clinton2) shame on us.
[1] http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16601
scottknight,
Did you know that major defense contractors are giving the most money to Obama, followed by Hillary, and surprisingly followed by Mccain ? Maybe they already know which candidate is going to be their favorite puppet. They can count on idiots such as Sirota, Huffpost, Alternet, Rockridge Nation (now dying), Medea Benjamin who supported Kerry over Nader, etc ... to fall for the wrong candidate despite their claims that they're not going to take this kind of betraying any longer.
Ralph Nader points out the sad truth about the rank-and-file progressives and liberals falling
for the wrong candidate election after election.
http://www.votenader.org/blog/2008/04/07/shameful/
Amazingly, those Democrat ass-kissers attack Nader unfairly defending their bad decision making. Thankfully, Nadar shot back !
http://www.votenader.org/blog/2008/04/25/which-side-are-you-on/
The only way this country is going to have anything even remotely close to hope is to BULLDOZE Washington and throw out both parties and replace them with Progressive Independents !
Grant,
I completely agree, I and my family will be voting for Nader this year as I did in 2000 and 2004, I have also sent Nader some money and voluteered to help get him on ballot here in my home state. I am refresh to see other people are waking up to corrupt sold nature of the Democratic Party, for only if we face the truth and stop fooling ourselves are ever going to get our country back, people need to quit selling out their values for political power, for what good is power if you have no principles to guide you, you become like bill clinton selling out the very people who elected you in the first place. I would also like to hear David's take on the corrupt Democratic party.
scottknight,
David Sirota has given what he thinks of the Democratic Party and its corruption on a lot of his posts. It's just too bad he still supports the party. Other than Bernard Sanders, I have yet to hear him give a word on other active progressives and liberals who just don't happen to be Democrat. I don't want to make some people a little too "mad" since they have a knack of censoring posts these days.
It's hard not to agree with this article; however, what is the solution? Just dont throw out a problem without at least offering some sort of remedy.
If I - an average middle-class guy - was asked to go on MSNBC to comment on middle-class issues, they would pay me there standard fee. If I present myself well and represent the middle-class just as well, they would presumably ask me to come back (and thus pay me again). I do this enough, eventually I too would become Upper-class. Then would I be unable to continue going on MSNBC because I am no longer middle-class?
Class isnt about the money that you earn. It is about what you do with it. Being poor isnt about the money you dont have. It's about how you do without it.
I think this would have made for a better article.
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