Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) August 24, 2011: Since its founding, the United States has been an experiment in a democratic form of government, a representative democracy. Through democratic elections, we elect representatives as law-makers. But of course we also reserve the right to throw the bums out of office in a subsequent election. So that's our form of democracy.
To many Americans today, it sounds undemocratic to refer to elites. As a result, populists of all persuasions (liberal populists and conservative populists) can refer to elites as the bad guys, with the populists themselves claiming to be the good guys. Using this kind of populist appeal, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the Republican noise machine like to denounce liberals as elites and/or as elitists. Within their broad populist appeal, they like to denounce the mainstream media for allegedly being liberal.
Please don't misunderstand me here. There are indeed ways in which we could show that media people tend to be politically liberal. For this reason, perhaps the admittedly liberal media people do manifest a generally liberal viewpoint in their media reports.
But I hasten to suggest that there are other ways in which media coverage can be criticized, other than considering the liberal/conservative political axis. For example, the mainstream media tend to be sensationalistic and superficial. Oddly enough, Limbaugh and the Republican noise machine also excel in sounding sensationalistic alarms and in being superficial.
From these observations we might conclude that both the mainstream media and the Republican noise machine gravitate toward the sensationalistic and the superficial.
But I want to dwell on the contrast between supposed elites and supposed non-elites.
Please remember that Rob Kall wants to work toward bottom-up change in the United States today through his efforts in orchestrating OpEdNews.com and his radio show. In principle, I have no problem with trying to promote bottom-up change in the United States today.
Nevertheless, I would point out that the expression "bottom-up change" clearly indicates that certain people are at the bottom of American culture. In addition, I would point out that trying to promote bottom-up change indicates that certain people are setting themselves up as agents of change who are trying to arouse the people at the bottom.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
