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e-mail your senator or e-mail your representative

Ahh Slashdot, where ignoring someone's answer and forcefully restating your own opinion becomes "insightful".

Read what he says, there is a greater diversity of media now than ever before - and he provides concrete examples. What does your "90+% of media controlled by 6 companies" mean? (there is no data on the linked page). Is it 90+% of people's attention, or advertising dollars? You really don't provide any evidence to counter Shirky's point.

Even the International Federation of Journalists' studies note that "in almost every country around the world we are seeing an overall growth in the number of people practicing journalism. However, the overwhelming proportion of that growth is not occurring in traditional ways nor in traditional media outlets." The net is part of that, obviously, but there are also a whole host of independent radio and tv outlets which never existed prevoiusly.

There is simply no evidence for claiming an increased concentration of media, unless you restrict your analysis to something called "the mainstream media" - a concept which only journalists still think is important. Journalists are still laughably (and patronisingly) wringing their hands over "balance" and "bias" in their "mainstream media", when a whole generation of very cynical youth are already hip to the idea that journalists do not - and can not - represent their interests. To a young person today, the fact that content is sponsored by Disney is no more or less likely to make it "true" or useful to them than if it's written by an "independent" journalist who will be pushing their own propaganda / view of the world (much as you are doing in this post). Today's media consumer doesn't swallow anything whole, so you can climb down off that high horse.

The days of (overwhelmingly white, male and middle-class) journalists deciding what is "fit to print" are over, and the media landscape is more diverse and better off for it. Indymedia is a great example of that process. And there are a whole lot of other excellent media sources which make my media life better now than ever before.

The bottom line for me is that a story such as Bush's involvement in an abortion would never have reached me or any of my friends in the 1980s. So I don't see any reason to claim that the sky is falling.

Danny

Start here, or try a google serach, or a deja search.

Then why is Larry Flynt being shut up. Even good ol' rumor mongerer Matt Drudge won't publish the story.

Someone on the internet should be reporting on this! People are attacking Flynt's character, but hey, he was right about Livingston, Barr and Gingrich! I wonder who sponsors "Crossfire", I bet they had something to do with gagging Flynt.

Friday, the 20th.

Start here, or search deja for it.

Some anonymous coward dun said:

Thanks for posting. Mixing Christian fundamentalism and politics is like mixing fertilizer and a Ryder truck. One can only imagine the Oklahoma City that these psychopaths have in mind for us if they ever get their way.

Trust me when I say you do not want to find out what they may have in mind. Almost everything points to it being very, very, very bad for the humans of this planet and for other living things...

Specifically, an awful lot of people in the Religious Right seem to think that a fair amount of stuff in Revelation (the Book of Apocalypse for you Catholic/Orthodox folks) points to a worldwide nuclear war. For years, the fundies have claimed Russia would be the one to start it--when this finally became completely untenable, they claimed it was Iraq. In any case, they're firmly convinced that SOMEONE is going to start some kind of nuclear conflict which will erupt worldwide.

There are actually a surprising number of books out in the fundamentalist circles regarding this...some of them even trying to reach out to popular culture (like Hal Linden's books).

The really scary thing about this is a) they are firmly convinced this is a Good Thing because b) they are also firmly convinced that before this happens they are going to be Raptured up and will get the enjoyment of seeing the sinners (and the entire planet) burn in nuclear hellfire from front-row seats in Heaven. (Yeah, there's a rather shocking amount of hate and resentment even in their stories of Eternal Reward. Sick, huh?).

I think I can truthfully say that little would scare me more than a leader of the Religious Right with his finger on The Button. And I can base that on how (before I walked away) I used to see the preacher and darn near the entire congregation nearly jizz themselves when the Cold War threatened to heat up...and later (after I'd walked away but was still forced to occasionally attend) when the Gulf War hit because they were utterly, completely convinced that this was going to be the Big One...and after THAT, Y2K (and in all three cases it was going to be Russia's Fault--these guys STILL aren't out of the Cold War mindset!)...I don't want these guys anywhere NEAR anything remotely resembling a nuclear weapon, thank you. :P

It is interesting you mention Oklahoma City, though. The perpetrators are suspected of being in with Christian Identity groups; Christian Identity is a really warped version of fundamentalism that claims that white folks are the "true Children of Israel" and that the Jews are actually the literal children of Satan--all the "brown" and "yellow" folks are apparently "mud people" in their eyes. In fact, the bombing is thought to have been done to parallel the plot of a book popular in Christian Identity and other racist circles called "The Turner Diaries" which basically depicts these groups committing various terrorist acts and eventually overthrowing the US Government.

Now, I'm sure most of you are wondering just why the hell I'm mentioning Christian Identity when we're talking about (presumably) relatively non-racist fundies. Well, it turns out the two do have some links, especially on the more radical sides of the Religious Right that they never want to show on TV...

First off, the US Taxpayer's Party (the second-largest fundamentalist party in the US [the first is that part of the Republican Party that the Religious Right has effectively hijacked]--it also may be now running under the name "Constitution Party")--which has explicit party platforms calling for the US to essentially establish a theocracy--has links to not only a veritable who's who of the Religious Right (among them--James Dobson of Focus on the Family [a branch group of FoF, Family Research Council, is heavily pushing the censorware drive in Holland] [info here], Senator Bob Smith [info here], Matt Trewhella [who has advocated stuf like bombing abortion clinics, is a Christian Reconstructionist, and his group Missionaries to the Preborn darn near makes Operation Rescue look pacifist in comparison; info here], Pat Buchanan [yes, as in the guy who's now going for the Reform Party nomination and who has almost singlehandedly succeeded in destroying that party--info here], the heads of Operation Rescue, and the Rev. Rushdoony [the "main guy" behind Christian Reconstructionism--the canard that the Founding Fathers somehow meant the US to be a theocracy]) but also a surprising number of links to militia groups and--here's the kicker--Christian Identity groups (info here and here (this one is especially good--it turns out the very leader of the US Taxpayers Party runs a militia and calls for churches to form "Christian Patriot" militias), here, here, here, and here; if memory serves, there's also reference in the ADL's report on militias).

There's some more info here on the politics of the US Taxpayers Party. Keep in mind that this party has gotten big support from the Religious Right and (should the Republican Party ever find its cojones again and tell the Religious Right exactly where to go) it's strongly thought that (at the least) the 35 states in which the GOP party apparatus has been hijacked by the Religious Right would go to the US Taxpayers Party, as well as the majority of the Religious Right supporters of the GOP now. As it is, the US Taxpayers Party got on the ballot in 40 states last Presidential election...which is damned scary enough.

For some more happy links between the "non-racist" bits of the Religious Right and the scary folks making fertiliser bombs...

1) The Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation (a big Religious Right think-tank/bankroller--these are the guys who have the adverts for adoption saying "Choose Life" and the guys who have Jeff Gordon and NFL stars and the lady from "Children of a Lesser God" hawking "Power for Living" on TV ["Power for Living", btw, is basically a guide on how to get involved in coercive fundy groups :P]...) has founded at least one Christian Identity group in past.

2) Larry Pratt, who has worked with Pat Buchanan (among others) has some rather extensive links to militia and outright racist groups (more info, including on links between the Religious Right and the far right, here).

3) It seems that the Coors family (major bankrollers of the Religious Right) and the Heritage Foundation may have links to racist groups (info here).

4) The Free Congress Foundation, a subsidary group of the Heritage Foundation, has links with many racist and fascist groups (info here).

5) Pat Robertson could actually be considered borderline between "non-racist" fundies and the scary guys on the far right. Many of his books have actually contained "code words" common in the racist community, and at times he's been outright overt about it...it's probably best that you look here (thank you, Google, for caching--surprisingly, this is actually a critique from a conservative viewpoint!) or here to hear the guy in his own words...

6) More info here on a funding-group active in California.

This is not to indicate fundamentalists are racists. Most aren't, and I suspect most would be shocked to find what their leaders support...but there ARE links there, sadly. I'd be remiss if I didn't point that out (and for youse in Holland--it turns out that Focus on the Family is the group most consistently associated with the US Taxpayers Party--you may be able to use this to your advantage, possibly).