Media Matters casts itself as a media watchdog-of-sorts but they appear to have gone more than overboard in their latest overtly political post. Given the current moment, it’s impossible to view this as anything other than overt politcal advocacy for Obama’s far Leftist agenda.
We Need a New System
If those in the media casting aspersions on the protestors had spent a decade covering the underlying problems with our economy, instead of cheerleading the housing bubble; worked to expose the lies that led our country to war, instead of taking an administration at its word; and not allow themselves to be manipulated by political and media figures whose goal was simply to distort our political processes, there might not be a need to Occupy Wall Street. Instead the dreadlocked girl is still right — we need a new system.
The entire rationale for the item doesn’t hang together at all, not that that’s ever stopped MM from publishing anything in the past. Their call for “a new system” is derived from this.
In the Spring of 2000, my friend and former colleague Zack Exley arrived in Washington, DC, to observe the protests that had engulfed the city during the World Bank’s annual meeting. Driving into Washington from the airport, out the window of his taxi he saw “a teenage white girl with long dreadlocks who wore a homemade t-shirt proclaiming: WE NEED A NEW SYSTEM.”
Later that evening he attended a party at the home of then-Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers along with “ambassadors, politicians, esteemed professors and what seemed like the entire combined senior economist staff of the IMF, World Bank and Treasury.”
It turned out Larry Summers had seen the girl too and was eagerly telling his guests about an interaction he had with her:
And so I asked the girl: ‘What is this new system that you want? Tell me about it!’ And the girl had nothing. Nothing! She had no fucking clue what this magical new system was supposed to be. No one is saying that there aren’t problems with the world economy the way it is today. But these kids out there — they don’t know what they want!”
Mr. Secretary,” said Zack. “You’ve got 50 economics PhDs in this room who pretty much run the world economy. And you’re asking that girl for a better system? Aren’t the solutions your job? You admit billions are living in hell, but it’s up to that girl to fix it?”
Their simple-minded–and self-serving–interpretation of the above interaction is foolish. No one, least of all Summers, was asking for the girl to provide answers to solving every challenge, or puzzle, that may emerge or reside within a free economy. What Summers was pointing out was the utter futility of the Leftist utopian agenda wherein everyone gets everything and no one has to pay for it. It is as un-American as French Apple Pie.
Unfortunately, that’s how socialist, or otherwise totalitarian regimes work. They dishonestly convince enough people that everyone can have everything and the entire world, economic and otherwise, will be and provide everything they could ever want, or need. Put asides the stone old facts that the real world simply doesn’t not work that way.
Additionally, no government has ever, nor will ever work that way. To one extent, or another, and history is rife with examples of this, there will always be those who have, or have not on some relative scale. The only thing for governmental policy to determine is who ends up with what and how can, or do they achieve it.
As the Democrat Party and the Obama administration is currently comprised, they aka big government should get to decide. In America’s current free market capitalist system, who gets what is ultimately left up to the individual, based upon their own abilities, aptitudes, desires and ambitions. That is, in the end, what America, the American Dream and American Exceptionalism has always been all about. It’s about freedom, or liberty, if you prefer.
But dropping their non-profit mask and so openly advocating for a new system, one about which there is nothing new (look to Europe, if you will) Media Matters has made it clear that it is fully onboard and in-step with the Obama administration. Their use of their platform in such a manner should disqualify them from tax exemption. Newspapers across the coutry regularly print similar editorial content and are forced to pay taxes to operate the business that gives them that right. There’s no logical reason to conclude Media Matters should be treated otherwise, as it is clearly so intent on driving America’s political discussion, as well as the success of Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.
Ultimately the real question is, who on earth would pay for such a thing. More on that to come, or – as they say, developing ….
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