Beware of Tabloid Journalism!

BEWARE OF TABLOID JOURNALISM!

By Marc Batko


Resist the beginnings!” is a watchword of German resistance and of the global justice movement facing the neoliberal conservative counter-revolution. Resisting the gutter journalism or yellow journalism, the tabloid hocus-pocus that can take over CBS News, 60 Minutes, Leslie Stahl and Andy Rooney, is part of resisting the beginnings.

John Kerry and John Edwards were interviewed on 60 Minutes, Sunday July 11. Leslie Stahl asked Edwards whether he made a deal with Kerry. Then she asked Kerry whether Edwards is a better campaigner who could upstage him. Gutter journalism defends itself by gutter logic. Andy Rooney used the last 5 or 10 minutes to ask whether the campaigners’ names should be changed to John and Jack and whether Teresa Kerry should have allowed Edward’s little son to suck his thumb.

Bush has violated all the commandments (cf. Against the False Prophet GW Bush by Juergen Fliegen on http://www.mbtranslations.com). Bush has trashed the US economy with 2 trillion dollar tax cuts for the super-rich and watched the destruction of nearly 3 million jobs. Invoking the Hitlerian “permanent war”, preventive defense and might is right unilateralism, Bush has mocked international law and promoted the fear and mistrust of the US all over the world. The UN and its charter sought to outlaw war, strictly limiting exceptions to self-defense and Security Council approval. Allies should be treated as partners, not vassals.

Bush instrumentalized the 9/11 terrorist attacks to wage an immoral unprovoked war on Iraq and thus promoted the threat of future terror.

“Cure thy children’s warring madness. Bend our pride to thy control”, the Protestant hymn implores.

God’s promises of forgiveness and a new beginning are unconditional. All people including Leslie Stahl and Andy Rooney need new hearts and pocket calculators so we can mend our own pockets, live the ethic of resistance and solidarity and help build an interdependent multi-polar and non-nuclear world.

The suffering of one is the suffering of all. We must face our darkness, the hemorrhages of military obsolescence and corporate enrichment, before expelling darkness from the entire world. We must learn to clean the inside and the outside of the cup, see the log in our own eye before removing the speck from our brother’s eye, extol the child as our teacher and the poor as our mentors. Count the count before you build the next tower or take out the next defenseless country, the itinerant preacher from Galilee said. Anticipate and defend the future in the present. Thinking of seven generations and not only profit worship will mark a new consciousness and a future worth living.

Whether full time or part time, work to send the arrogant war-mongerer to send the cowboy back to the ranch. The truth will set us free but the truth is a process full of humility and self-criticism, not a cudgel or a Halliburton war of distraction.