Andrew Rice and Wired’s Sleazy Yellow Journalism

“Truth is generally the best vindication against slander”


-Abraham Lincoln



As I have done a good bit of writing on the Danny Casolaro ‘suicide’, the Octopus Murders and the PROMIS software story I was encouraged when earlier this week I was sent a link to a major piece that Wired did on the topic. Being that Wired was the source of the excellent article from back in 1993 entitled The INSLAW Octopus I was expecting a breakthrough in a renewed interest in this ugly story that reached into the highest levels of the Reagan government. Jesus Christ, was I disappointed. The article which is entitled The Octopus Conspiracy: One Woman’s Search for Her Father’s Killer by an ambitions sleazeball hack named Andrew Rice (his first piece for Wired) was not as much a serious piece of journalism but a diabolical and shameful character assassination on Rachel Begley whose father, Ralph Borger was one of the three people murdered on the Cabazon Indian Reservation in 1981. It is an old story that has in the past years been resurrected thanks to the excellent work of investigative journalist Nathan Baca whose Emmy Award winning series for California TV station KESQ “The Octopus Murders” led to a reexamination of a nearly three decades old triple execution. The cold case murdere of Fred Alvarez, Ralph Borger and Patty Castro were at the center of a shady conclave of black ops specialists, organized crime figures, intelligence community assets and the clandestine operations taking place on sovereign Indian land in order to avoid government oversight. Baca, who has now moved onto a gig with a larger audience in Las Vegas and his series was instrumental in the arrest of Jimmy Hughes, an admitted former hitman now running a ministry in Honduras. At the time of the senselessly brutal triple slayings, Hughes was running security at the reservation casino at the time and in a 1985 television interview admitted that the murders were“an authorized, government backed covert action”. Hughes also admitted as much when secretly filmed by Begley during a 2008 confrontation at a Fresno, California convention where Hughes was speaking.

Despite a somewhat benign opening it is obvious that the true intent of the Wired piece is to undermine the credibility of Rachel Begley and therefore make her radioactive to any serious mainstream writers as well as to discredit her case against Jimmy Hughes to discourage any future legal action. Really, it always works this way when one of the little people doesn’t just do the obedient thing and shut the hell up about matters of great criminality and systemic corruption. Wired’s intent is blatant, given the already ugly blight on the mag’s reputation for Wired’s role in the setup of Private Bradley Manning over the Wikileaks story and his subsequent imprisonment and torture by the U.S. government. When a so-called reputable media outlet like Wired crossed the line from reportage into propadandizing and acting as a de facto arm of the National Security State in participating in manipulation and entrapment as in the Manning case it ceases to be any more of a reputable source than many of the websites and blogs that Rice will go on to condemn in his attack piece. After the beginning we get to the meat, and therefore true intent of the article. It begins with Andy Rice’s insensitive and callous treatment of Begley is disgraceful, describing her dead father as “a bearded mechanic who liked to drink, smoke pot and ride motorcycles”, plays into the most trite and tired of stereotypes to somehow discredit the man, and his abysmal lack of knowledge about the subject is fully befitting of a corporate media toady. That Rice exploits Begley’s crusade to investigate and bring the killer of her father to justice right off the bat by insulting the dead man is an indication of the descent into the sewer that follows.


Andrew Rice, at least from the picture on his bio page appears to be a run of the mill smarmy little yuppie prick. He proudly lists at the end of his article, in addition to his email address (andrewrice75@yahoo.com) that he is the author of a book entitled The Teeth May Smile but the Heart Does Not Forget. Jesus, now THAT is one goddamned stupid title; I’ll bet that motherfucker’s just flying off the shelves and rocketing up the best seller lists with an interest grabber like that. It more fittingly sounds like some sort of cheesy discount dentistry ad that comes in the weekly ValPak pouch in the junk mail along with all the other shit. The Rice book, from the reviews that I read seems to be some sort of examination of the psyches of the victims of Ugandan atrocities, there seems to be a bit of a disconnect that one who is capable of writing compassionately about the human costs of a such tragedy could then be so cruel and dishonest to also produce the rank and vile Wired hit piece. Perhaps Andrew Rice is just another cynical corpse-fucker, peddling bleeding heart drivel to weepy liberal types while calculatingly using such work as nothing more than a springboard. After reading the Wired piece I tend to believe the latter so Andy, why don’t you just go back to Uganda and use your own smiling teeth to chew on the naugahyde tough skin on the ass of Idi Amin’s corpse?


Now Before I get into any sort of serious commentary I would like to present some of Rice’s more ugly lies and smears of this relentlessly remorseless character assassination of Rachel Begley. I am pretty certain that Andrew Rice falsely presented himself as a man of integrity and honor in order to get cooperation to write his article which is a complete bunch of crap, with that in mind the ugliness of this stuff only further embellishes Rice as nothing more than a malicious scoundrel and another corporate media mockingbird.

After the murders, Begley went through a rebellious phase and fell in with a bad crowd. By the time she was 15, she was pregnant and had dropped out of high school. Eventually she got her GED and moved to Iowa. She says she would periodically wonder about the case and check in with the police, who never seemed to have any new information. Beyond that, she didn’t have time or tools to delve too deeply.

Setting the table for the onslaught Rice begins his mugging by painting Rachel Begley as an under-aged, pregnant high school dropout who ran with the wrong crowd and horror of horrors got her GED rather than a pass into a drone mill like Georgetown. According to his bio the author graduated from the prestigious Georgetown University. I strongly suspect that like so with many with a privileged and pampered background quite obviously sees people who are struggling economically and have had a rough time in a life where the deck is stacked against critical thinkers and those without the clout brought by schmoozing with the right people in the phony ritual formerly known as “networking” as nothing more than lower life forms and human rubbish.

Her work, she says, has placed her own life in danger and made her a target of the same forces that killed her father. And yet she cannot stop. She keeps following the siren song of the conspiracy theory, the same beguiling cognitive path that lures others to the JFK assassination and Area 51. What was once a family tragedy has blossomed into something else entirely, a vast puzzle whose solution promises to illuminate not only her father’s death but the dark forces behind the world’s apparent chaos

Here we go with the old “siren song of conspiracy theory” canard, this is the bread and butter of the winged monkeys and their establishment benefactors in that only the OFFICIAL conspiracy theories are allowed. Official conspiracy theories like the Warren Commission whitewash of the Kennedy Assassination and the Kean Commission coverup report on the ‘terrorist’ attacks of September 11, 2001 that was such a mockery largely through ommission that it didn’t even see fit to mention the collapse of the 47 story WTC7, the U.S. Special Operations Command program Able Danger or the now heavily censored testimony of Turkish FBI translator Sibel Edmonds. There was no recording of the questioning of George W. Bush or Dick Cheney under oath and severe restrictions were placed on the review of documents. That the Kean Commission was originally to have been chaired by Henry Kissinger and that the Warren Commission included not only hated Kennedy nemesis Alan Dulles but also coverup artists Gerald Ford and Arlen Specter (the magic bullet) is supposed to be above questioning. Rice also begins his linkage with UFOs with the inclusion of Area 51, he will continue down this path as he paints his libelous picture. The UFO association is a slam bang proven technique to induce mockery and discredit those dangerous to the establishment. Note that Democrat Dennis Kucinich was neutralized during the 2008 presidential debates when he was baited into answering a UFO question.

Begley lives and works in a rickety house at the end of a gravel road, next to a small pond and a rotting wood barn in a rural town outside Louisville, Kentucky, that she doesn’t want named for security reasons. Out front, her “guard dog,” an aging flat-coated retriever named Lucky, lazes beneath her porch. Begley is 43 and heavyset, with piercing blue eyes. On this day, her air conditioner is broken, and her round face glistens with sweat. She has four children, and for the moment she is collecting unemployment and selling a line of weight-loss shakes to make money on the side.



and –


At the time, Begley was working in customer service for an Internet service provider, which was moving its back-office operations to another state, and she was spending her days sitting idly at her computer, waiting to get laid off. Begley had once worked for a collections agency, and she knew how to track people down. “I went into it with a mindset, I guess, almost like a police officer would,” she says.

Now this is the money paragraph for Andy Rice. Now not only does he arrogantly describe the condition of the rural Kentucky home of Rachel Begley in the mocking tone of Big Apple holier than thou snobbery but he goes on to describe her appearance in very nasty and immature terms, more befitting to a middle-school playground than in a ‘reputable’ publication. He refers to her as “heavyset” with “her round face glistening with sweat” or translated into layman’s terms – her story is bullshit because she is FAT. The picture of Begley in the piece is certainly not flattering as it only emphasizes that she is a large figured woman. Now, let’s be honest here because Christ certainly knows that being FAT is one very serious taboo in our glorious culture of media fantasy, glitzy models and the wonderful lives that the beautiful people on our televisions live. Such is the American mindset that such superficial horseshit carries the clout that it does, it is more indicative of a diseased and debauched society gone to seed and systematically dumbed down than anything but he taps directly into this like a veteran propagndist. Rice also sneeringly refers to Begley’s former job working in customer service for an Internet service provider with the sort of deeply ingrained loathing that social climbing little pricks like him have for ordinary working Americans. Not to mischaracterize you Andy, and this may be a bit presumptous on my part, but in looking at the picture on your profile page you just come across as a smug and conniving little asshole to me, a real four-flushing douchebag with a tongue like a whip and a backbone made of jelly but at least you aren’t FAT.

Finally he viciously runs her down as an unemployed mother of four on the government dole, you see, being down on your luck and jobless in the economically eviscerted Homeland it is only the rich that can be propped up by the government. Somehow I doubt that Mr. Rice has any sort of angry words for the wealthy tax chiselers, corporate cheats and other sucklers on the upper class end of the handout line. Also note the dirty little bastard’s reference to selling weight-loss products on the side to further run Begley down. I don’t know if Rice has ever heard of the DeVos family but they made billions of dollars selling similar products and not only own professional sports teams, huge real estate portfolios and the sort of serious political clout reserved for the ultra-rich here in our rotting empire but they also have their very own mercenary army courtesy of DeVos family member Erik Prince and Blackwater (now Xe thanks to too much bad PR due to murdering civilians in Iraq). But they aren’t FAT now are they? Rice also mocks the little inspirational prayer that Begley has near her computer about being protected from “evil spirits who prowl about the world”. Not to break the author’s little bubble or throw water on the bonfire of Wired’s burning at the stake of Rachel Begley but doesn’t the entire fucking religion of Christianity sort of operate along that rationale?

As Begley plunged into the world of the conspiracy theorists, she found more than facts and assertions—she found a community with its own rules, ethics, and currency. And it was a difficult one to penetrate; the cluster of people devoted to studying the Octopus tended not to throw their arms open to newcomers. Over the years, they had built a kind of gnostic society, a belief system that was both all-encompassing—a grand unified theory of everything sinister—and exclusionary, open only to the select few who could accept the devastating truth. They were suspicious of outsiders and divided into factions that warred over arcane points, often accusing one another of being double agents.

Again, there is the reference to the dreaded pejorative “conspiracy theorists” (also see “tin foil hatters”, only a deliberate idiot, or an intellectually lazy mental masturbator or a payrolled protector of the criminal elite benefits from throwing this one around. A better term would be “conspiracy researcher” or “geopolitical analyst” or “investigative reporter”, the very definition of “conspiracy” at least according to the Meriam-Webster dictionary is:


Definition of CONSPIRACY


1: the act of conspiring together


2a : an agreement among conspirators


b : a group of conspirators


Not that THIS would ever happen in daily life. I mean who on our great star-spangled lemming farm that is America would ever be silly enough to believe that people would engage in any sort of scheming and conniving while conducting ordinary daily commerce, engaging in infidelity and conspiring to keep it secret or anything other than being completely honest in the true apple pie loving way. As for political assassination “conspiracy theories” you would think that someone with a culturally valuable Georgetown education might have at some point in school heard about the assassination of Julius Caesar. Maybe Andy Rice spent more time smoking dope than attending history classes.

There were many competing interpretations of the Octopus—Seymour was particularly interested in the alleged role of entertainment company MCA—and they were infinitely adaptable, able to accommodate the Patriot Act or the financial crisis. Devotees found and fought one another on sites like Above Top Secret, conspiracy clearinghouses that host every conceivable thread of discussion. Begley forged an alliance with a retired FBI agent who was exploring a link between the Octopus and Satanic cults. She did battle with a prominent UFO enthusiast who thought the Octopus was hiding the government’s collaboration with a colonizing alien force. (In January, online sleuths discovered that alleged Arizona assassin Jared Lee Loughner was a regular poster on Above Top Secret, but his bizarre ramblings about currency and space travel, widely disdained by other contributors, never touched on the Octopus threads.) Begley also developed a venomous rivalry with Virginia McCullough, a California writer who accused her of being an enemy impostor, not really Ralph Boger’s daughter. When Begley posted a copy of her birth certificate online, McCullough called it “a cut-and-paste job.”


“I do not believe that Desertfae is a ‘victim,’ and she has not posted any information that she is who she claims to be,” McCullough wrote on one message board. “She is a low-stage puppet reporting to the puppet master and two or three of his minions.”

Now, this paragraph is my absolutely favorite one in the entire sordid piece. Andy Rice emphatically mentions the website Above Top Secret which any conspiracy researcher with any credibility avoids like the bubonic plague as it is so full of disinformation, real nutcases, government sanctioned operatives, hopheads, seriously deranged paranoids and completely unfiltered craziness that is so unreadable that it is laughable. Personally, I view it as a vacuum cleaner operation set up to sow disinformation, I would reference Obama administration figure Cass Sunstein’s theory on how to cognitively infiltrate and break up serious research groups through use of plants and agent provocateurs, I doubt that Rice knows very much at all about COINTELPRO (God knows if they don’t teach the assassination of Julius Caesar at fucking Georgtown why would they bother with that?) or any of the other historically documented government efforts to discredit or otherwise silence those who ask the inconvenient questions of power.


The truth is that Andy Rice invokes this website largely for the reason of making a bizarre, ludicrous and libelous linkage between  Rachel Begley and that murderous little fiend Jared Loughner whose recent Arizona killing spree shocked the nation. Hey Andy, why don’t you explain just what the fuck that Jared (Lee) Loughner has to do with the price of rice in China regarding anything that you are supposedly writing about in this piece? Regarding the “bizarre ramblings” about currency if you would bother to pull your head out of your pampered asshole and take a look around – a REAL look around you will find that we are currently in the midst of a global economic crisis largely generated by the manipulation of currency, rampant commodities speculation and a Federal Reserve system that exists only to serve the needs of degenerate Wall Street gamblers. If you are going to indict that little fruitbag Loughner for his views on the grand scale financial scam that is “free market” capitalism then you indict millions more who are catching on to this long-running systemic fraud. I don’t know if you are aware of it but one of the most consistently vocal critics of the Federal Reserve, Texas Representative and former presidential candidate Ron Paul is now Chairman of the Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology Subcommittee and holding legitimate hearings on monetary policy abuse in his official capacity right now. Of course any mention of THAT inconvenient fact would kind of undermine your entire bullshit guilt by association between Begley and Loughner now wouldn’t it?  Hey Andy, a guy named Hosni Mubarak was just brought down due to the reverberations of currency speculation and spiraling food costs, you might want to note that when the shit was really starting to hit the fan in Cairo a few weeks back that the person sent to talk to our former Egyptian puppet dictator wasn’t from the State Department but was a guy named Frank G. Wisner, the voice of the real power in this country and the son of infamous Wall Steet power broker and OSS/CIA uberspook Frank Wisner. Now Andy, I hate to come across as being it a know it all but it is increasingly apparent that you don’t know jack shit about fucking anything! Oh and Andy… Frank Wisner Sr. had a little pet project over at CIA, it was called Operation Mockingbird, I damn sure know that you aren’t familiar with this because to quote the late great muckraker Upton Sinclair who once famously stated: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”


But I digress…


Andy Rice continues with Loughner’s obsession with “space travel” without bothering to mention that millions of other Americans who don’t go on a kill crazy rampage are also obsessed with space travel (see Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica and thousands of other sci-fi franchises), why not call out the Trekkies as dangerous cultists as well? There is also the reference to a “retired FBI agent who was exploring a link between the Octopus and Satanic cults”. This would be a certain Ted Gunderson, a man whose work is as prolific as it is often totally batshit but Rice lacks the guts to even mention Gunderson by name lest anyone actually go and look at his work. Though far too much of it is questionable and to be charitable, pretty far out there into the REAL tin-foil hatter stuff there are a few small tidbits of worthwhile information there. Things like the Franklin Credit Uinion scandal where a once prominent black and up and coming Republican named Lawrence King, who sang the national anthem at the 1988 GOP Convention before allegations emerged (and a cover-up operation flew into action) that King was running an underage prostitution ring for the D.C elite and that some of the poor abused kids were given White House tours. This alas is a seriously ugly story far worse than anything that Rachel Begley was investigating so I will leave it for another time. And as far as the satanism goes, there have long been dark stories of satanism and mind control within army and intelligence spheres of influence, this too will have to wait for another time as it is nauseating enough to deal with Andy Rice’s torrent of bile. Rice also has an odd double standard in calling out serious researchers like Begley as basically loony tunes while then lavishing his implied approval on longtime conspiracy maven and batshit crazy gatekeeper Virginia McCullough. He treats her as though she is the Alien queen whose eggs by nature of her preferential place in the establishment food chain all are pre-approved for entry into the lucky sperm club.


Rice then goes on to take on the Jimmy Hughes travesty of justice, of course he is sympathetic to the poor minister victimized by the FAT crazy lady. Not to go into much of this other than the bullshit double standards pimped by Rice but he implies that Hughes is a retired and reformed man, just wanting to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ, our lord and savior. This despite the fact that Hughes openly admits his past criminality as a part of his Elmer Gantry schtick, and that the group that sponsors him ministry, The Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship International or FGBMFI is a  haven for hard core right-wing fascists and has long served as a front for U.S. imperialist oppression in Latin America. Jimmy Hughes himself was allegedly involved in helping to plot the 2009 Honduran coup d’etat against president Manuel Zelaya who had to be deposed for being an ally of Venezuala’s Hugo Chavez. So much for that retired and reformed horseshit. Then just to get in yet another nasty dig at Rachel Begley, Rice mocks her for justifiable celebrating the Hughes arrest:


Begley posted a celebratory video, scored to Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida.” It flashed up an image of Hughes’ mug shot, across which she had scrawled: “Gotcha.”

Now here, I can’t completely disagree that it was a bit of a silly thing for her to do. Me, were the man involved in the long unsolved murder of my father finally arrested, I would have rapidly Photoshopped a picture of Hughes’ fucking fat, ugly, burr-cut head sawed off, dripping blood and mounted on a pike while playing The Battle Hymn of the Republic in the background. In addition to being a completely servile ass-kisser, Rice seems to have a particular fondness for “The Minister” that would belie the reality that Hughes is a stone-cold, old school killer.Lastly, Rice lovingly describes Michael Murphy, the prosecutor who may or may not have commited an act of obstruction of justice in dropping the charges against Hughes as “dapper”, for some reason that just conjures up visions of Rice with Murphy’s cock deeply embedded in his mouth. Jesus fucking Christ, even reading this nonstop eruption of shitty sleaze is just making me feel dirty about everything, I think that I am just going to feed the whole rotten article into the shredder after I wrap this up.

I suppose that the Wired hit piece is just the requisite thirty pieces of silver that it takes to get a big time gig these days. In these ugly economic times one can hardly blame a careerist like Rice for coveting a cushy and well paid regular gig at Condé Nast. After all, Matt Taibbi who writes for Rolling Stone and has done by far some of the best writing on the ruinous greed of Wall Street criminals (especially Goldman Sachs) once wrote an article entitled “God Can Suck My Dick” and earned the condemnation of Hillary Clinton and others for his mocking piece on the death of the Pope, either of which would normally make one radioactive to the mainstream media. Tiabbi, a witty writer and personable guy disemboweled the 9/11 Truth Movement in a series of masterful pieces that hit all the right pejorative notes “conspiracy theorists” etc while completely ignoring any of the serious researchers of our American Reichstag Fire. Now Taibbi writes books, articles and when I was watching it, he even had a regular gig on another left gatekeeper, Bill Maher’s HBO show. Maher was booted off of television entirely in the ugliness post 9/11 when he dared to say that the alleged hijackers weren’t cowards for their kamizee runs into buildings but rather that the real cowards were the ones launching cruise missiles from thousands of miles away. Maher of course redeemed himself for his mockery of any who questioned the official government conspiracy theory on 9/11 and at one point wading into the audience to point out members of the activist group We Are Change to the police after they engaged in a bit of guerilla theatre. Now Maher is making millions and bragging about smoking dope and banging porn stars, Andy Rice could only dream over a gig like that but Maher had more name recogniton than a suckling bottom feeder like Rice. Not that Andrew Rice gives a rat’s ass about the truth but the story of the Octopus is one that would provide a decent and honorable writer enough material to build a career as a very serious investigative journalist. Instead, he resorts to the dismissive idiocy that those with either a vested interest in the existing system or the need to enshroud themselves in a deflective cocoon of denial that there really ARE very bad people running the system.



Hey, I love Taibbi’s work, but rest assured, Andrew Rice is NO Matt Taibbi but real journalism isn’t about placating power, cutting deals and engaging in character assassinations that serve the needs of the oligarchy. I recall when there was a national outpouring of grief over the premature death of celebrity host Tim Russert, a reputed journalist of great honor. Bob Woodward of Watergate fame churns out books on a regular basis thanks to his favorable status within the D.C. elite inner circles that provide him access. A real investigative journalist, a serious muckraker, draws nothing but contempt from the establishment, is scorned and mocked as a nuisance and a “conspiracy theorist” by elitist snobs in the pocket media and in some cases, if his work is really good he ends up dead in a bathtub in a lonely hotel room with his wrists slashed to the bone like “fringe freelance journalist” Danny Casolaro.


Real investigative journalism doesn’t pay, better to become a dreck peddler, secure a nice regular paycheck from Condé Nast and take a place as just another low level water carrier to ensure that the firewall between the real ugly shit that is the truth from ever being discovered by the smelly masses. In his savage destruction of poor Rachel Begley. It was when Rice mocked her as a former “customer service” worker with condescension and elitism just dripping from his poison pen it was just more evidence that there are two Americas, one for the connected and the other for the poor and fucked over schmucks. It is this complete contempt by those who control the American system and have systematically eradicated the middle class, destroyed the public education system and poisoned the minds of the young with televised sexual perversion, dumbness and thousands of simulated murders passed off as entertainment that has brought this country low. The old war criminal Henry Kissinger and Rockefeller Family operative once famously referred to the little people as nothing more than “useless eaters”. Pity that guys like Andy Rice and his ilk, despite their willingness to lie and engage in ugly character assassinations just don’t get it that the same elite holds them in just as much contempt, it’s only that they are pliant and useful idiots.


Maybe the Rachel Begley takedown will vault Andy Rice onto the varsity team where he can participate with other politically motivated Wired hacks in jacking off Adrian Lamo and engaging in a vendetta against blogger Glenn Greenwald who called them out for their bullshit. I doubt it though, Rice is a punk and bereft of any courage when it comes to engaging anyone with an established reputation. After his filthy piece of crap attack on Begley he has zero credibility as well.


Rachel Begley should just sue this lying little cocksucker.I sure as hell would.
 
Just my two cents
 
EE

That Most Precious Thing

“In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society. Of course, you can’t spot this trend to fascism by casually looking around. You can’t look for such familiar signs as the swastika, because they won’t be there. We won’t build Dachaus and Auschwitzes; the clever manipulation of the mass media is creating a concentration camp of the mind that promises to be far more effective in keeping the populace in line.”

-Earling Carothers ‘Jim’ Garrison

JonBenet Ramsey suspect cleared after DNA test!

So the whole thing was a big fucking hoax. Yet another hoax on us all or more appropriately a tragic comedy for sardonic cynics. Once again Karl Rove plays the media like a Stradivarius and the media plays everybody else for chumps. The swarm and rush to be the first to ‘break’ the story is yet another embarrassment for this pathetic excuse of a news media. Remember the feeding frenzy over the Sago Mine disaster back in January when cable networks in their rush to beat each other to the punch for the prized recognition of breaking the story prematurely jumped on inaccurate snippets of overheard conversations to report that in the true feel good tradition of our Pollyanna nation that all of the coal miners had indeed been spared from a lonely death in a dank and cold place for a company with an equally dank and cold heart, a company that piled up safety violations as quickly as greedballs in the Republican Congress piled up illicit money from Jack Abramoff and other corporate graft. Once the overwhelming cheer went up for the triumph of the great American spirit and the accompanying faith in the almighty that had saved so many from death the inconvenient truth emerged as it so often does that the celebration was premature and that all of the miners had died with the exception of one survivor. As a wise man named Winston Wolf once put it “let’s not start sucking each other’s dicks just yet” and although painful, Sago was not a lesson well learned by the shills.

Cable and network executives were as happy as pigs rolling in shit when the Karr fraud erupted, they must have been clicking their heels over the good fortune in finding a story that would finally provide the much needed juice that could dominate news cycles for days. Hell, if was lurid enough there would be a long trial and enough newly minted ‘legal analysts’ to milk the sleaze for months and maybe even into the new year or longer. Nothing like a child-murdering pederast to keep that bummer of a war in Iraq and the egregious criminal behavior of the Bush administration relegated to its rightful place as an afterthought while they pimped sleazy tabloid scandal. Then there was always the new fall season would begin and the newest version of that insidious reality television spectacle ‘Survivor’ starts – this time there will be an additional allure as the contestants will be broken down into teams according to their race. The new format is thoroughly appropriate to the divisive times in which we now live and it will likely be bigger than the Dukes of Hazard and an event equal to Southeastern Conference football down south of the Mason Dixon Line.

There is one thing that Americans have come to hold most dear and precious of all. It is sweeter than mothers milk, more important than breathing, more desirable than such abstract concepts as freedom and liberty, more precious than life itself and more thirsted for than salvation. It is the all-encompassing allure of tabloid trash, glorifications of wealth and superficiality (Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and The Apprentice), the culture of celebrity and the soothing narcotic of living vicariously through entertainment that provides both an escape from the ugly and inconvenient intrusions of reality. There is nothing like a nice big hit off of the electronic crack-pipe to ensure that all is right for most in Der Heimat and the fear can remain at bay while the consumer crawls into a cocoon of denial and the exploits and exploitation of others.

The outrageous saturation coverage of the alleged killer that rejuvenated the dormant JonBenet Ramsey media circus is the perfect example of how beloved that scandal and tabloid sleaze have come to be prized in our tawdry,gauche and narcissistic post-industrial culture. John Mark Karr instantly became a household name as the nutty Ramsey case obsessive allegedly ‘confessed’ to the heinous child murder of the one time beauty pageant princess when he was nabbed by authorities in Thailand set the stage for a mass media bonanza that would have provided cover for the Republican mafia in the run up to the mid term elections. In an amazing testimonial to the power of scandal the Karr apprehension even knocked the fear mongering over London ‘Airplane Plot’ out of the headlines. Now that was truly an accomplishment in a land where fear and dread are so predominant that even terror is trumped by trash and the stimulation of subconscious prurient interests.

Never mind that Karr’s ‘confession’ and caveat that it was an “accident” were vague and unsubstantiated the jackals in the paparazzi swarmed much like they did during the Sago Mine fiasco once again stirred up a tempestuous freak show with misleading and inaccurate information in a race to be first to break the latest lurid developments. If it bleeds, it leads as the saying goes and call me a conspiracy theorist but it was yet another fortuitous coincidence that the coverage and resulting media swarm came just in time to downplay Federal Judge Anna Diggs Taylor’s ruling that George W. Bush had violated the law by using the NSA to illegally conduct sweeping surveillance on American citizens for reasons that have never been honestly explained. And there was the strange detail that was largely passed over and unexplained of the involvement in the Karr matter by the Department of Homeland Security.

To further interject celebrity into the national discourse Paramount Pictures also cut ties with the much maligned although once adored Tom Cruise although it still didn’t knock John Mark Karr out of the news although it did further relegate war coverage to the back burner again. Maybe people are pissed off over Tom and Katie’s selfish desire to their privacy over the mysterious baby Suri. Maybe it’s because Cruise practices the much maligned and mocked religion of Scientology which arguably is no more of a cult than Tim LaHaye style Rapture Christianity is, or was it when he dared to defile the temple of Oprah last year or to suggest that feeding Ritalin to children therefore creating lifetime pharmaceutical industry consumers as well as nurturing a generation of doped up little zombies wasn’t exactly the best idea. Who the fuck knows and really quite honestly, who the fuck really cares? It’s only more tabloid trash that distracts from the real problems of the country and the world and provides another hit of e-crack.

The blowback resulting from the failure of the mainstream media to present an accurate and relevant storyline on issues that truly affect issues of true importance is only now becoming evident. The emergence of an unbelievably dumbed-down populace – or at least the majority of it that chooses to live vicariously through television, sports and celebrity – are primarily the ones who are responsible for the crimes of the despotic Bush regime, the growing losses in the relentless but undeclared class warfare that the wealthy have been waging for the last quarter century and the ruinous war in Iraq and god forbid, the glorious appearing of the upcoming one in Iran that the neocons and the Rapture ready lumpen Republicans so heartily advocate and live for.

When the media corporations began to focus on profit at the expense of news and more frequently cave in to right-wing activist pressure to present public relations spin under the guise of providing balance and the reduction of information to product they failed and failed spectacularly in providing the free press that is instrumental to a functional democracy. Video News Releases (VNRs) and public relations are present in nearly every newscast, the sound byte has replaced reporting and stories are condensed into smaller chunks for our chronically attention deficit affected citizens. CNN headline news in my personal opinion was one of the worst of all possible things to have emerged from the cable-satellite boom of the 80s as it boiled down complex stories into bits easily processed by the brains of Americans who could then feel informed and free up time for more important pursuits like working, being good consumers and being entertained. Hey it was the American way, leave the heavy lifting to our benevolent and well-intentioned corporations and public servants.

Providing product selling ‘infotainment’, manufacturing news and providing diversions are now the primary function of the mainstream media, a modern day form of bread and circuses that will serve to distract, divide and conquer the masses and enable the looters and hegemons to go about conducting business as usual. If there was any one event that would provide the metaphoric final nail in the coffin or the jumping of the shark it is arguably the elevation of ‘America’s Sweetheart’ Katie Couric to fill the seat once occupied by truly dedicated and legendary newsmen the likes of Edward Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather. The ascendance of the fluffy and unthreatening Couric and the imminent race to the bottom once the other three major networks inevitably look to follow the ‘visionary’ actions of CBS in overhauling their evening newscasts to more resemble their morning infotainment shows does not bode well for any who hope for a resurgence in real journalism that informs the public and holds power accountable. Those days are rapidly receding into the rearview mirror as America progresses along the highway to hell that is to be our destiny unless a mass awakening occurs and occurs soon.

The dumbing-down of the population with sound bytes and McNews makes us a joke throughout the western world. Has anybody ever taken the time to watch or listen to the BBC? My God the depth of actual news coverage outside fortress USA is mind blowing in comparison to the crap that passes for news here. Other than miniscule snippets of spin delivered by bobble heads as well as the constant flow of lurid sex offender tales, child abductions, weird ‘news’, fantastic pet feats, animal attacks and celebrity gossip that isn’t real news at all our media is a disgrace. Our networks routinely broadcast in the guise of ‘news’ nothing but tabloid fare so foul and cheesy that to say that it more fittingly belongs in grocery store checkout stand racks is a disservice to the National Enquirer, National Star and World Weekly News. Even these publications have some small degree of redeeming social value or merit mainly as parody and satire to those who are on to their jokes or are avidly into following astrology and let’s face it, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in awhile as the Enquirer did in striking gold with their Rush Limbaugh drug peddling scoop.

When the rapacious pursuit of profits trumps the duty as serving as guardians of the public trust the institution itself has lost any legitimacy that it once had. The fear of offending the wrong people and subjecting sponsors to economic terrorism in the form of boycotts (the zealots of the ‘Christian’ right are masters at this tactic) drives coverage away from important and provocative issues like war, rumors of war, the uninsured, the collapsing housing market, global warming, the destruction of the domestic manufacturing sector and the cancer of corruption that eats away at our political system and selling ad spots keeps profits healthy and the stockholders satisfied while maintaining the stupor of the electorate.

Advertising functions on the maxim of being able to reach the largest possible amount of potential purchasers for any given product or service that is being hawked either through print ads in the nation’s newspapers or in commercials on the electronic crackpipe. In order for this to happen the programming in the given medium must be specifically targeted towards the individuals who would be most likely to be tuned in at the time that a commercial, VNR or product placement insertion is aired. Given that the majority of the public in current post 9/11, cable television saturated America are to be kind, not exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer then it is only logical that programming content must be of a nature that they are able to understand or would otherwise attract them.

Therefore you have at least some reason for the general dumbness of television content, it is the classic bell shaped curve and much to the misfortune of all non-idiots, the vast majority of Americans fall into that extremely large pregnant portion of the graph that represents the dumbed down mentality that is so prevalent throughout the land. Therefore programming must be directed at ignorant, easily amused doofuses with the attention spans of gnats and the cognitive abilities of a retarded turnips because that is where the money is at! And that is what it is all about when it comes to advertising and keeping those stock values high. Combine this pursuit of advertising dollars with a secretive and repressive government with an agenda and there you have it: 2006=1984+22.

The problem of media consolidation made possible by deregulation as well as an increased rightward drift into an incredibly narrow minded and short sighted focus on laissez faire neo-liberal economic policies of the mythical ‘free market’ which is in actuality only free to the extent that the bigger fish are able to freely feast on the little fish who are in increasing danger of becoming. The ultimate result of deregulated and unaccountable markets are monopolies of the sort that would not be possible with the presence of an informed and active public. Therefore it is essential for those conditions to cease to exist. It’s not necessary to completely eliminate an educated populace only to make it increasingly difficult to stay informed.

This has led to not only the ascendancy of the infotainment industry but also to the near complete elimination of any sort of real investigative journalism that would offend advertisers and politicians who write favorable legislation to perpetuate the ongoing media power grab as news organizations are forced to cut back on actual journalists in favor of the charlatans needed to transform legitimate operations into brothels of the bogus. The great 1976 movie Network was absolutely stunning in it’s visionary ability to predict the future of news and television and I would strongly recommend that everybody see this, it is truly a masterpiece! Don’t bother to look for it on television though, it is far too uncomfortably close to the truth to merit taking a risk that viewers might be able to break through their immersion in the electronic fantasyland in order to bother to take their brains out of the dusty old box in the cranial attic in order to jump start the critical thought processes that have been abandoned.

Rabid attack shows such as CNN’s Crossfire that was more about allowing demagogues like Pat Buchanan to launch into anti-liberal diatribes against his overmatched counterparts and eventually the shows of shock jocks like Morton Downey were pioneering offerings that fed simmering public rage and slowly began to transform news into freak shows and caustic, think tank distilled opinion into supposed ‘news’. In examining today’s media culture an integral part was played by the right-wingers in ensuring that their daily talking points would be disseminated over and over again, it was classic Eddie Bernays who incidentally was a huge influence on Joseph Goebbels. The witches brew of toxic invective, right wing spin and tabloid television is what the majority of Americans now have come to believe is real news.

The roaring nineties were the decade when infotainment and sensationalism finally ascended to a place above serious and honest reporting minus the accompanying spin, the post cable/satellite explosion and the MTV generation gave way to celebrity and scandal, outright yellow journalism and an array of competing tabloid television magazine shows the likes of Hard Copy, A Current Affair and let us not forget the great contribution to modern ‘journalism’ Inside Edition which served as a primary national vehicle for one of today’s loudest and most bellicose propagandists Bill O’Reilly who has the dubious distinction of quite possibly being the only man in America more full of bullshit and self righteous pomposity than even George W. Bush himself and dare I say an even bigger horse’s ass if that is possible.

The culture of celebrity reigned and there is no better example than the unbelievable orgy of live coverage that was broadcast of the police pursuit of the infamous white Ford Bronco containing alleged murderer O.J. Simpson as it wound through Los Angeles and cheering mobs lined the route. A culture of celebrity powerful enough to cut into the coverage of game five of the NBA finals provoking announcer Bob Costas to remark in disgust that the Simpson orgy of adulation was “not just tragic but now surreal.”, a very fitting statement that could also serve as a testament to the state of America itself as things began to slip away nearly six and one half years prior to the even more tragic and surreal Republican one party government that exists today.

Of course the O.J. Simpson saga and mass media feeding frenzy was not a matter of serendipity for the tabloid television culture, it had been years in the making before the former pro football hero and marketing crossover became an accused double murderer. Before the O.J. phenomenon there was Amy Fisher, the ‘Long Island Lolita’ who shot the wife of her sleazy white trash lover Joey Buttafuoco in 1992. Don’t forget Loreena Bobbitt who cut off a piece of her abusive husband John’s penis in 1993. Then there was the attack orchestrated on ice skater Nancy Kerrigan by the scheming of envious competitor Tonya Harding who orchestrated an attack on Kerrigan with the intent of disabling her during the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships. And of course thereafter between the glove that didn’t fit and the cigar that did there was the poor little brutally murdered child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey which brings us back full circle.

The agenda driven attacks on every aspect of the life of Bill Clinton until he finally was buried under an avalanche of sex scandals gave us the thoroughly repugnant Kenneth Starr and his relentlessly driven inquisition that was dripping with salacious details and graphic sex talk. Monica media masturbation was the rage, surpassing even the O.J. Simpson spectacle of schlock and became the magnum opus of nineties tabloid cheese media. The Starr Report was a best seller and that mysterious stain on the blue dress became the greatest matter of national import of that most decadent of decades.

A legitimate argument could even be made that ‘Monicagate’ paralyzed Clinton’s ability to function as president and as a result made the country more vulnerable. After all, when Clinton ordered a missile strike on the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant, a Sudanese factory in an attempt to take out Osama Bin Laden the now war mongering House of Representatives was apoplectic, chanting “No War For Monica” and damning the foreign attack with the vigor of a bunch of dope smoking Berkeley pinkos and the media swarmed like coffin flies. Had Clinton not had to worry about the incredibly trumped up impeachment spectacle then he may have been able to actually bag Bin Laden and therefore potentially prevent 9-11 and the rise of the imperial regime of Bush-Cheney. But we’ll never know will we?

The talking heads who deliver the ‘news’ on cable channels soon were transformed into eye candy as well, attractive young women with big hair, nice tits, vacant expressions and most importantly the ability to read from a teleprompter. Yet another damning example of our shameful national dumbness is that according to reports the percentage of Americans who actually bother to read newspapers is down at about 11 percent (and I would be willing that at least half of them only read the funnies or the box scores) and the freefall in circulation continues in the land of cheap entertainment forcing whatever newspapers haven’t been swallowed by conglomerates to cut staffing and to rely more on wire stories and corporate public relations puff pieces.

Who is to blame? Look in the mirror. With the bits and pieces of the crumbling and rotten to core system that are beginning to slowly float to the surface regarding the abundance of government scandals involving bribery, spying, abuse of power, market manipulation, petro-politics and war our naïve whimsical and unrealistic view of America as blessed by God and exceptional over all others could be shaken to its roots were any serious investigative journalism in the corporate media to exist.

We are being amused and distracted to death!