Category: Under the Perfect Sun

This is not a definition that implies a conspiracy; it is a structural analysis of how our media system works in the real world with all the economic, political, and legal pressures that shape the process of delivering the infotainment we call news.

In last week’s column, I discussed Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman’s propaganda model and noted how it was even more relevant today than it was when they first published Manufacturing Consent in 1988 as the concentration of media ownership they decried in the eighties has only continued to increase dramatically. I ended that column by referring to Project Censored, an organization that has been monitoring the news media and putting out a list of the top 25 “censored” stories of the year since 1976.

In the weeks following the election, David Frum made waves by explaining the shock in conservative circles over Romney’s loss with a bit of interesting media criticism: “Republicans have been fleeced and exploited and lied to by a conservative entertainment complex.”

Here we go again: the day after Black Friday was filled with the now all-too-familiar news of shopping mayhem.

There was the man who threatened to stab his fellow shoppers for pushing his kids outside a Sacramento K-mart, the melee of frenzied Georgia shoppers mauling each other to get at a stack of cell phones in a Walmart, the trampling that followed after a man brandished a gun in a line outside a Sears in Texas, the gang fight in a Michigan mall, arrests of hysterical consumers in Florida, the vicious brawling over lingerie, etc. etc.

It’s Thanksgiving week and lots of progressives are still feeling giddy about the near clean sweep in the recent election. But, I’m going to take a break from politics this time and focus on what we have to be grateful for here in San Diego other than our new political landscape. Despite the historically problematic origins of the Thanksgiving holiday, it never hurts to take stock. So here’s a random list of some cherished things ranging from the profligate to the profound:

This just in: we’re not the Wisconsin of the West. There were some big winners and losers in last week’s election and the principal players themselves have gotten the bulk of the attention. Here are a few of the most noteworthy victors and flops besides the candidates themselves. Let’s start with the triumphs:

1) Labor-Community Alliances:San Diego elected the first genuinely progressive mayor in its history even though the Filner forces were outspent.

If you can get past the multi-million dollar glut of garbage that Carl DeMaio and his sleazy allies are throwing at Bob Filner in the closing days of the election, the choice San Diegans face is a simple one: do you want the same old moneyed interests running San Diego or do you want to take a step toward a more democratic city government that listens to the voices of ordinary citizens more than to the pleas of the plutocrats?

“We have a conservative movement that has learned, over the decades, to mimic many of the characteristics of its enemies.” ~ Thomas Frank

During the run-up to the June primary Carl DeMaio used a quote from one of my OB Rag columns in a mailer attacking Nathan Fletcher that implied the Rag’s support for his candidacy. My response was a column, “Carl DeMaio is a Dangerous, Mean-Spirited Liar and Other Tales of Fear and Loathing in San Diego” where I observed:
>As Frank Gormlie noted in an OB Rag piece last Saturday, Carl DeMaio used a pull quote from one of my OB Rag columns describing Nathan Fletcher as a “Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing” . . . What is not at all surprising here is that DeMaio uses my piece and the OB Rag logo out of context, without permission, implying our endorsement of him. That kind of sleazy, unethical behavior is his raison d’etre.

The Munger Muddle, Democrats for Education Reform, Obama, and the Koch Brothers et al Weave a Tangled Web that Might Just Kill Our Children’s Future (if we let it)

In a recent column, I outlined the connections between the advocates and funders of Proposition 32 and opponents of Proposition 30, noting the central role of Proposition 38 backer Molly Munger’s brother, Charles Munger, who has donated over $20 million of his own money to a campaign fund to gut unions and defund education. Charles’s main allies in this effort, as I pointed out in that column, are also big supporters of the privatization of education and other forms of profiteering at the expense of public schools.

In the aftermath of the spectacular shellacking that Mitt Romney gave the President in the first debate, there was much handwringing in liberal circles. Critics on the left side of the spectrum couldn’t believe how Mr. Obama let Romney prevaricate so boldly and wildly as he hammered away at the President’s record while simultaneously and stunningly repackaging himself as a centrist unrecognizable to those of us who were paying attention to Mitt’s rightward tilt during the primary season and the obvious implications of his plutocratic agenda.

Last week in the New York Times Adam Nagourney noted in his article on Proposition 32, “California Is Latest Stage in the Battle Over Unions,” that:

By design or not — and some union officials said they believed it was by design — the fight has forced unions to divert money from what had been their top priority: winning approval of an initiative by Gov. Jerry Brown to pass temporary tax increases to head off nearly $6 billion in new cuts in state spending.

“Labor has to stop everything it is doing to defend against this,” said Peter Dreier, the director of the Urban and Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College. “It’s pretty effective in forcing the unions to spend a lot of their resources to stop this from passing.”

And labor certainly has gone all in to defeat Proposition 32, making that their top political priority this fall, not the passage of Proposition 30.

Despite the financial difficulties that came with trying to fund a big cultural event featuring books during hard economic times, the San Diego City College International Book Fair continues to deliver excellent literary talent for San Diego. Director Virginia Escalante has put together a lineup that features a little bit of everything with emerging writers, like Reyna Grande, alongside established talents such as Susan Straight and Gustavo Arellano.

This year’s Book Fair’s theme, “We Read Banned Books,” is a nod to the egregious censorship taking place in Arizona. Saturday will feature a showing of the documentary Precious Knowledge, which details the heartbreaking elimination of the Tucson School District’s ethnic studies programs, which served at-risk Mexican American students with great success. Following the film, there will be a reading from some of the books banned from use in Arizona’s schools.

The Center on Policy Initiatives (CPI) released a new report on poverty, earnings, and income inSan DiegoCountythat revealed the sad fact that “more than a third of San Diego County’s population” lives “in economic hardship.” Nearly one out of five children in our city live in poverty with 16% of women, 21% of Latinos and 23% of African Americans joining them—and we are losing ground “as the quality of jobs created by major industries in the region failed to keep pace with the cost of living.”