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It's been decided. All thought in this country is ripe for spin (PR, propaganda, etceteras).
Sure, I'm way overfilled with the spin of both parties (as I'm sure many others are), but when I saw the link below presented in a large middle of the page ad I had to see where it might lead despite the fact that I almost never follow ads.
According to these folks: What did the 9-11 Commission say about Saudi Arabia?, there was nothing worth thinking about. In summary:
There is no evidence of Saudi government funding of Al-Qaeda.
Saudi flights were investigated and handled professionally.
The Saudi government was pursuing bin Laden prior to the attacks on the U.S.
A wonderful spin job! All true and yet masking other important truths (IMO):
True.
And yet, there is growing unrest within many classes regarding the United States (the use of the term America is reserved for foreign born governors and those who have no clue about geography — simply put, we're not America until we annex a whole bunch of problems we don't really want. Does Cuba ring a bell? Do we really want to own all the problems of South America? Of course not).
A fundamentalist religion movement has taken hold (hey, that sounds familiar!), and the only thing they desire more than the downfall of the US is the overthrow of royal family rule.
True.
Despite the involvement of Saudi trained pilots, no working Saudi pilot was part of the plot.
Probably true.
I'm sure that the upper levels of the royal family were alerted to let everyone know if Osama stumbled into whichever international hotspot they were partying in. You can't possibly expect a poor, underdeveloped country like Saudi Arabia to send native agents capable of infiltration, can you?
What I wonder (given the degree of truth bending here) is how far can you go? Does it depend on who you are? What agency ultimately sells the ad? How deep your pockets are?
It's become obvious that advertising, in all of its forms (for all that I hate it) has become a significant part of the political process. I'm incredulous that a commercial is somehow supposed to influence my opinion, but hell, I never understood the flyers or phone calls either (stop by, tell me why, that I get, otherwise, I'm going to read about it ). And yet, there will be at least a billion dollars spent this year on advertisements aimed to sway our vote on the presidency.
I'd bet that at least $2 billion will be spent publicizing issues and people that I'm voting on this year. Since a big chunk of that money is aimed at me, the prototypical swing voter (and my other friends in the 10 to 20% category), I probably ought to feel good, but I don't. It's such a waste. Get quoted often, have many debates on radio and TV, all of which require public access rights. That's how it used to work.
It's a sad state of affairs when we piss away probably $30 billion nationwide (it's a WAG, but I don't believe its far off) mostly to tell one another how incompetent the other candidate is. That money could be used in so many more useful ways (you want better educated kids, make headstart eligibility automatic, that seems like a good use of a couple billion per year).
Why is this happening? Media (sadly, all or at least most of it) is for sale. It goes to the highest bidder and if you want coverage, you are going to have to pay for it. In this day and age it should be possible to find thousands of papers with different voices on every topic. Even if it's important, good luck finding six. The public interest is only looked out for by the tiny outfits looking for a way to break in (and once they have sponsorship, they usually have a spin).
There are rules in place, but no one pays them any attention.
Posted by Dave at September 6, 2004 03:42 PM