Ah, that ol’ “liberal media,” avoiding the truth and spreading lies. Well, part of that statement is correct.

(Feel free to skip the following introductory diatribe and go right to the featured link at the end of this essay. What it has to say is certainly more interesting and coherent than my ramblings.)

Until I gave up XM Radio, I used to listed to Air America all the time. It’s a very, unabashed, left-leaning radio media. And for the few years, during the Bush administration, that I listened to it, I would often hear of some new event, or disclosure, or revelation, or news of some sort that implicated Bush, Cheney, or any number of their cohorts, in war crimes at worst and outright deception at best. Now, knowing that I’m listening to a truly left-wing media outlet, (unlike most people who watch FOX news and listen to Limbaugh who think what they’re getting is “fair and balanced”), I would try to validate what I heard with other sources and gauge its certainty before I went around talking about it. If nothing else, I hate the idea of propagating a story to then turn around and find out it’s unfounded–but mostly, I worship at the altar of truth and try to live my life in discovery of what is and isn’t true.

Anyway, so when I would check out a story and find that it has enough credible, independent support to be true, I’d wait for this important, vital discovery or revelation to appear on mainstream news. And what would happen is maybe, maybe it might make a tiny appearance on Keith Olbermann’s show. Sometimes, rarely, it might get mentioned on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show (which is null of any affect since the context is it’s a comedy show). And if it did on either, it’d be the once and then never hear about it again. Would it get mentioned on other MSNBC shows? Nope. CNN? Never. ABC News and the like? Not hardly. The idea of the mainstream media being “liberal” was laughable!

For a long time, well…most of my life, I believed in the press as being on the whole fair and interested in the truth. It was our “fourth estate,” charged with uncovering the sometimes painful truth where those in power would want it buried. And then a few years ago, as I started to learn about who actually wielded socio-political power and discovered it was not the politicians by and large, but the top 1-5% richest people in the country (and the world), and that all aspects of our society are controlled and regulated (both intentionally and subconsciously) by capitalist hegemony, some truths started to come to light for me.

The mainstream news, the media, are all corporate owned. Major transnational, global market capitalist corporations which have as their bottom line…the bottom line, and not truth, news, fairness, balance. The money defines what becomes newsworthy and what gets ignored. The corporate media’s very close ties to the Bush dynasty helped keep his administration’s war crimes out of the news or its import minimized to insubstantial.

Now, at one time I would have argued that this control surely wouldn’t filter down to the reporters and the editors who research. Well, yes, it does. A climate, a culture, an agenda filters down from the top to the bottom and when people need work and can’t afford to be too choosy about who exploits their labor, er, pays them and provides their medical benefits, they’re willing to push what the overarching corporate agenda wants pushed and ignore what it wants ignored. And if that’s too much for a reporter to deal with, the editor above them, who has an even greater vested interest in his job, will help make sure the message conforms to the corporate agenda. And as the agenda becomes obvious and doesn’t remain latent, and the employee can’t handle being silenced, they’re free to work on the edges of society and blog, where they’re ignored by all but the fringes and are dismissed by society as irrelevant.

All this to introduce a recent SALON article which discusses this very corporate controlled media dynamic, even in what is thought of by most people as the most “liberal” of all media, Keith Olbermann. Enjoy:

• GE’s silencing of Olbermann and MSNBC’s sleazy use of Richard Wolffe

… Having Richard Wolffe host an MSNBC program — or serving as an almost daily “political analyst” –  is exactly tantamount to MSNBC’s just turning over an hour every night to a corporate lobbyist.  Wolffe’s role in life is to advance the P.R. interests of the corporations that pay him, including corporations with substantial interests in virtually every political issue that MSNBC and Countdown cover.  Yet MSNBC is putting him on as a guest-host and ”political analyst” on one of its prime-time political shows.  What makes that even more appalling is that, as Ana Marie Cox first noted, neither MSNBC nor Wolffe even disclose any of this….

(Facebook viewers: Any images or video from this post have been stripped by FB. To view the original blog post, go to: http://www.celticbear.com/weblog/)

Well, when you really think about it…

Addendum: If it’s not too late, Facebook people: the original post is http://www.celticbear.com/weblog/2009/08/19/some-grey-bloke-jesus-and-me/ with the video that FB strips.

First an annoying introduction; feel free to skip to the next heading:

I, unlike pretty much every other English grad student I know/have known, am not an English teacher. Not for high school, nor did I teach undergrads while earning my English MA. Chances are pretty certain, though, that when I go for my PhD or MFA I will have to endure the joys of teaching highschoolers or their very slightly more mature undergrad versions.

It’s not that I dislike the idea of teaching, I love the idea. But two, no, three things scare and frustrate the yellow paint off my pencils: One is that I’m afeared of the younger-than-25 crowd. And that ties directly into my second reason: I’m afeared about my own lack of classroom control ability. If you know me, you know that in person I’m more than a little bumbling, somewhat awkward, I stutter and mumble and have a very difficult time finding the words I want to say and especially stringing them together in coherent and understandable sentences. I’d (am gonna) get run right over the top of and lose all appearance of someone worth listening to, much less someone to give respect to. And they smell fear!

Thirdly, also tied into the previous two, is politics and mandated curriculum frustrates me. The politics of the public school system and college system would probably make me cringe and fill me with rebellious discord. I don’t like the idea of having to teach a class in the classical teacher-is-god/students-are-submissive-statues dynamic. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Montessori fan where the student basically does whatever they want and learning is expected to find the student. But… you know, I’m getting away from my original intent for this post.

I have a great deal of respect for good teachers. I have nothing but ire and derision for bad teachers. Both are because teachers have a great deal of influence over students and can significantly impact their lives, for the better or worse. I had one teacher in jr. high who inspired me and made me want to learn and grow and I’ll never forget her. I had a teacher in high school who embarrassed and shamed me in front of others and I will hold a place of irrational hatred for him for all my years. Because of the great power teachers have over students during their formative years, I absolutely believe bad teachers should be gotten rid of with speed and prejudice, and good teachers should be made into wealthy celebrities. All the crap they have to put up with from bad students, parents, politicians, it’s amazing we have any good teachers in the system.

Now for the main event:

Author Pat Conroy recently wrote an editorial in response to some attempts at book banning at a high school. What he had to say about the value of teaching, English teachers in particular, and books, I simply can’t improve upon and agree with every word.

So, I urge you to click the following link and read this short essay. See if you can recall your English teachers and what life lessons you may have learned from them.

http://www.randomhouse.com/rhpg/rc/library/display.pperl?isbn=9780553381535&view=qa