Media Rants: A Socratic Dialogue

The November Media Rant for the The Scene reveals that the great philosopher Socrates anticipated the schlock that today we call corporate media. --TP

MAD Media: A Socratic Dialogue

Media Rants

By Tony Palmeri

Classical Greek scholars were shocked recently when an Athenian farmer tilling soil in his olive grove accidently stumbled across a manuscript dating back to the 4^th century BCE. Believed to be a lost dialogue of Plato, the manuscript features the great philosopher Socrates in conversation with a dimwitted character called Hannityus. The best scholarly guess is that Hannityus was a disciple of Euthydemus, a popular public speaker in 380 BCE known to practice what Socrates called the “eristic” mode of communication. For Socrates, eristic wasn’t a form of argument designed to educate, but rather a method of humiliating opponents by showering them with verbal abuse. In the newly discovered manuscript, Socrates warns of a future world featuring eristic as the dominant mode of public discourse, with partisan verbal bullies presented to the masses as patriots. In what might be the earliest critique of media corporations, Socrates says that that “in a distant future, those organizations making profit by polluting the public discourse will be guided by the values of Mediocrity, Anti-intellectualism, and Disrespect. They will be truly MAD.” Media Rants is pleased to present an excerpt of the lost dialogue.

Hannityus: Good day Socrates. I noticed you in attendance at my debate with Democritus. You were impressed by my performance, yes?

Socrates: Good day Hannityus. Well, I heard Democritus arguing that the State ought to guarantee equality for all. To great applause, you mocked him, questioned his integrity and loyalty to Athens, and continually interrupted his attempts to substantiate his claim. Your performance . . .

Hannityus (interrupts): Certainly one as wise you does not sympathize with Democritus’ nonsense?

Socrates: As I was saying, your performance entertained the crowd with much ridicule and vivid condemnation of your opponent.

Hannityus: Much deserved ridicule and condemnation, good sir.

Socrates: And I must say that I was quite impressed by how you turned the tables and made into an enemy of the people a man who from his perspective was arguing in support of expanded rights and benefits for the people. You are quite clever Hannityus.

Hannityus: Euthydemus says that turning the tables is the height of communicative excellence.

Socrates: No, it is one of the many forms of communicative mediocrity. Like your calling Democritus an “idiot.”

Hannityus: A tactic I learned from Glennbeckus.

Socrates: Whatever. The point is that communicative excellence requires an honest attempt to discover the truth. I heard none of that in your so-called debate with Democritus.

Hannityus: Surely you are not saying that there could be any truth in Democritus’ claim that the State should guarantee equality for all?

Socrates: I do not know, as he was never allowed to elaborate. Does he mean the State should guarantee equal opportunity for all? Or does he mean the State should guarantee equality under the law? Does he mean the State should guarantee equal compensation for all regardless of effort? Or does he mean equal pay for equal work? These questions are all worth asking and thinking about, yet with all due respect your eristic approach to debate urges participants not to think. Or at least not to think very critically.

Hannityus: Euthydemus warned me that you are nothing but an elitist intellectual snob, Socrates. I must say that your comments validate his judgment of your character.

Socrates: As you wish. I am sorry to have sparked your antagonism, but the problem is not that you, Euthydemus, and Glennbeckus are anti-Socrates or anti-Democritus or anti-anyone else.

Hannityus: Pray tell oh wise one, what is the problem?

Socrates: The problem is anti-intellectualism. The refusal to take anything other than a black and white, good and evil, us and them approach to serious issues. Positions are taken not on the basis of principle or rigorous analysis, but on the basis of whether or not such positions support whatever particular team you happen to be on. It’s quite pathetic.

Hannityus: Are the so-called intellectuals any better? I’ve seen them in debates. Your student Plato, for example, and others in his Academy succeed only in putting people to sleep or leaving them in utter confusion.

Socrates: I would hardly hold up the academic intellectuals as role-models of how to debate in public. They too can be boorish, disrespectful, and willing to serve the team instead of search for the truth. In fact I can imagine a future in which intellectuals become a professional class that uses its brain power to aid and abet extremely abusive governments, businesses, and other institutions. They’ll create lies instead of expose them. Such “intellectuals” will be worthy of contempt.

Hannityus: You enjoy forecasting the future. Tell me, what will be the future of my brand of public debate? Surely it will someday rule the world?

Socrates: Those who can profit by polluting the water and air will do so. They can be stopped only when people acting collectively decide they no longer will tolerate drinking dirty water and breathing toxic air.

In a distant future, those organizations making profit by polluting the public discourse will be guided by the values of Mediocrity, Anti-intellectualism, and Disrespect. They will be truly MAD. They will be stopped only when people acting collectively decide they no longer will tolerate madness.

Mercury Marine and Media: The Low Road

Media Rants

By Tony Palmeri

The nonpartisan think tank Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS) distinguishes between “low road” and “high road” business strategies. The low road “is associated with downward pressure on wages, increasing job insecurity, more outsourcing of work to low-wage regions, greater environmental damage, underinvestment in productive public goods, and resistance to public standards on private firm behavior.” The [unfortunately] less common high road “is associated with higher and more equal wages, better labor relations, more environmentally sustainable practice, greater investment in productive public goods, and affirmative support for public standards on the private economy.”

Sadly, low road management conduct has become a badger state occurrence every bit as common as beer and brats at a Packer tailgate bash. In just the recent past, corporate cunning ended GM’s 100 year history in Janesville, Chrysler moved its engine work from Kenosha to Saltillo, Mexico, and we all know about private equity firm Cerberus’ contemptible closing of Kimberly Papers’ profitable mill.

In terms of sheer guile and gross bullying, it would be hard to find an example of low road posturing more outrageous than Mercury Marine’s recent extraction of huge concessions from International Association of Machinists (IAM) workers at the company’s Fond du Lac plant.

Let’s review the facts: in July, management of the boat engine maker Mercury Marine announced that unless union workers agreed to reopen a recently negotiated contract and accept concessions, the company would close operations and move manufacturing jobs and the corporate offices to Stillwater, Oklahoma. The proposed concessions, which union officials claim were non-negotiable, included 170 changes to the contract, most notably a seven year wage freeze, 30% pay cuts for new hires, and equal cuts for laid off workers brought back. The IAM, for its part, offered to accept pay cuts until the easing of the recession, on the condition that the company provide a written commitment to keep the jobs in Fond du Lac. Mercury rejected the offer without giving it any serious consideration.

On August 23, IAM workers voted to reject Mercury’s demands. Mercury immediately announced an intention to move to Stillwater, but left open the door for the union to vote again for the same package of concessions. On August 29, after intense pressure from the general public and media, the union voted again but failed to get the results in by Mercury’s deadline. A third vote finally yielded acceptance of the concessions. Mercury subsequently received $53 million in incentives from the city and county of Fond du Lac to keep jobs in the area. The county’s incentive package will be financed by a half-cent increase in the sales tax. The company also received an “aggressive” aid package from the state, part of which is designed to assist Mercury in moving jobs from Stillwater to Fond du Lac.

The most charitable thing that could be said of corporate media coverage of the Mercury affair is that it was worthless. Print and broadcast media enabled Mercury’s low road strategy by minimizing or flat out ignoring the very blatant labor violations taking place.

Indeed, sane commentary and reporting on the Mercury situation could only be found in the blogosphere. Writing in his Fighting Bob blog, Ed Garvey wrote that, “It used to be illegal for a company to threaten to close or move jobs as a bargaining tactic . . . They (Mercury) were not negotiating. They were the third grade bullies threatening to take their ball and bat and go home. ‘My way or the highway.’”

By far the best reporting on Mercury was done by freelance Wisconsin writer Roger Bybee in the “Workers’ Rights” blog on the progressive magazine In These Times website. In the Mercury situation Bybee finds a typical and disturbing pattern:

Mercury officials are congratulating themselves for carrying out what has become a standard corporate game plan when shutting down a major plant. The two key elements of this plan typically include: (1) Inciting the public against the union by continually asserting that it is the workers, not the corporation, that are making the decision to close the plant. The workers' refusal of utterly unacceptable concessions is equated with stubbornness and a selfish unwillingness to consider the overall impact on the community--as if the workers themselves will have a bright future after the shutdown . . . (2) Portraying the workers' wages as astronomically high by comparing them with the regional average, conveniently limiting the frame to exclude the standards of skill and pay in the particular industry.

The Fox Valley Gannett papers were, as to be expected, uniformly awful in reporting and editorializing about Mercury. Gannett’s Fond du Lac Reporter, to its credit, did allow UW Oshkosh Human Resource Management Professor Barbara Rau to state the obvious: "Unions are being blamed for the economy, but how is that possible, when only 7.6 percent of the workers are unionized?"

Corporate media enabled Mercury’s low road strategy via shoddy and incomplete reporting and cowardly editorializing. Are more Merc-like messes on the way? Roger Bybee says it well: “Until we put an end to this race to the bottom, we will see many more bottom-feeders like Mercury Marine manipulating states and even nations against each other.”

Week in Review on Friday

I'll be on WPR's Week in Review on Friday (8-9 a.m.) opposite Ann Althouse. You can join the conversation live by calling in at 1-800-642-1234. You can also email talk@wpr.org.

C.R.O.C PSA

hat tip: Counterpunch

The State of Working Wisconsin

From a recent report released by the nonpartisan Center on Wisconsin Strategy:

• Wisconsin has lost over 137,000 jobs, almost 5 percent of its pre-recession job level
  
• Nearly half of those jobs, 66,100, were in manufacturing.
• Manufacturing employment is down 13 percent from pre-recession levels and down 25 percent since 2000
• Wisconsin's 9.0 percent unemployment rate is twice its pre-recession level
• Wisconsin's real (inflation corrected) median wage is now $15.48, below the $15.74 national median and only 32 cents above its 1979 level, despite a near doubling in worker productivity
• While improving, the gender gap in Wisconsin wages persists. Women's median wage is 82 percent of men's. If men's wages hadn't fallen over the past 30 years, the gap would be 72 percent.

Read the full report here.

From the conclusion:

On this Labor Day, working Wisconsinites have little to celebrate about the economy. Despite a few “green shoots” and a slowdown in the rate of job loss, the state of their state’s economy — and the region’s — is grim.

What Wisconsin’s workers need is a real strategy for economic development. This strategy needs to follow from a sober and disinterested assessment of our current challenges, resources, weaknesses, strengths, needs, and viable opportunities. To actually raise living standards, it needs to be “high road” — competing on value rather than price, taking sustainability seriously, sharing created wealth more equally, friendly to any business that will do the same. This strategy needs to be clear in its policy priorities, implied investments, and funding sources. It needs to gain support from a critical mass of key actors — business, labor, state and local government, education, our Congressional delegation, the general public — whose cooperation and contribution are critical to its success. And it needs to be articulated forcefully and clearly by diverse champions — not just elected leaders — and widely and generally understood. This is a considerable organizing challenge.

Wisconsin can meet this challenge. We have more than enough intellectual resources, leading firms, progressive labor leadership, dedicated public servants, and good citizens to build a high road economy in our state. But will we?

Friday: Amina Figarova Sextet Live At The Time

In Oshkosh, the Grand Opera House is not the only historic theater in need of restoration. Just a few blocks from the Grand, at 445 N. Main St. community activists are trying to raise the funds necessary to restore the historic Time Community Theater. According to the Community Theater Group website: "We began our meetings in March 2007. The concept of the Time Community Theater was crafted by people interested in developing a place for community activity and creating a platform for local talent to perform. In order for this opportunity to take shape, a lot of reconstruction work needs to happen. Funds are needed to make the space performance-ready."

This Friday (September 4th) the Time features the Amina Figarova Sextet, an internationally acclaimed modern jazz troupe. They play in Minneapolis on Thursday and Chicago on Saturday;Time organizers are thrilled that the band to make a stop in Oshkosh on Friday.

The show starts at 7:00 p.m. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased at the door.

ObamaCare: Bad Press, Bad Policy, Bad Politics

The September Media Rant for the Scene takes a look at ObamaCare. Here it is.:

ObamaCare: Bad Press, Bad Policy, Bad Politics

Media Rants

By Tony Palmeri

Make no mistake: corporate media coverage of healthcare reform ranges from shallow to shameful. Need examples? How about the treatment of the proudly witless Sarah Palin as a serious critic of reform proposals? Or reporting on town hall chaos with a journalistic curiosity that has more in common with World Wrestling Entertainment than the late Mr. Cronkite? Or the sickening way in which mainstream media minimize or flat out ignore the fact that health insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies have literally bought the key congressional committees charged with enacting reform legislation?

Let’s x-ray that lobbying point for a moment. Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana), chair of the all powerful Senate Finance Committee, according to the Center For Responsive Politics raised $3 million from the insurance and health sectors from 2003-2008. The National Journal reported that protesters outside Baucus 10th annual “Camp Baucus” three day dude ranch fundraiser held up signs saying “Buy Back Baucus.” Most heavy Congressional hitters in the healthcare debate could and should face similar protests. Why is that not a repeated front page story or editorial topic?

And why do mainstream talking heads refuse to provide clear explanations of health reform proposals under Congressional consideration? As I write in mid-August, five different proposals circulate in the House and Senate, yet if you relied exclusively on corporate media for news, you’d know little to nothing about each. What you would know about are the bogus “death panels,” a product of Palinesque wingnut distortion and demagoguery. Maybe you’d know that the “blue dog” (i.e. corporate) Democrats, who never met an insurance or pharmaceutical company they couldn’t play lapdog for, somehow represent “moderation” on healthcare. You’d certainly know that congresspersons accustomed to spewing unfettered propaganda at town hall meetings are now getting shouted down by opponents from right to left. But would you know about the content of any plans, especially HR 676 (the single-payer option)? Methinks not.

But as bad as the media (non)coverage of health care reform has been, President Obama’s major problem isn’t bad press. Rather, he’s chosen to get behind a very bad policy prescription for healthcare reform. Similar to President Clinton’s failed approach to reform in 1993, Obama starts with the presumption that a single-payer, truly national health insurance plan just isn’t possible in the United States. No, we just can’t have Medicare For All. Instead we need a “uniquely American” solution to healthcare; code for “reform legislation written by and for the private insurance lobby.”

The President doesn’t even talk about healthcare reform anymore. Rather, he argues for health “insurance” reform, a linguistic shift that’s part and parcel of what progressive journalist Norman Solomon calls “the incredible shrinking healthcare reform.” Instead of guaranteed access to healthcare for all Americans, Obama appears to be leaning toward a national model of Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts nightmare: force everyone to purchase health insurance, with subsidies in place to help the poor buy into an inferior “public option.”

Some believe Obama’s a pragmatic politician who understands that even a weak public option would establish some competition for the private insurance companies and lead to their eventual demise. But as of mid-August, it’s become clear that Obama won’t even fight for the meager public option. Somewhat disgustingly, he’s begun to employ a Clintonesque “triangulation” to justify abandoning the public option. Triangulation is a rhetorical strategy of framing the Left and Right as loonies so as to make policies hostile to Main St. but friendly to Wall St. sound “centrist” or “moderate.” Here’s what the president told a Colorado audience: "The public option, whether we have it or we don't have it, is not the entirety of healthcare reform. This is just one sliver of it. One aspect of it. And by the way, it's both the right and the left that have become so fixated on this that they forget everything else."

I suppose it’s not surprising that Obama won’t fight for real healthcare reform. In our corrupt political establishment, by the time a Democrat or Republican gets to be a serious presidential contender, he or she has sold out so many times that when they assume office we are left having to pray for the best but always be ready for the worst. Obama still strikes huge numbers of Americans as something different; as a person who actually experiences pangs of conscience that might make him stand up and struggle for socially just policies in the letter and spirit of his heroes like Martin Luther King, Jr.

I’ve got to believe that somewhere in his being Barack Obama knows that HR 676 (the Medicare For All bill) is the most moral, most workable, and the most cost effective proposal on the table. His handlers probably think it’s just bad politics. But is it? Listening to public radio today, I heard an Obama voter named Paul talk about his disenchantment with the president’s healthcare plan. Said Paul, “I need something to fight for. Mr. Obama, God bless his soul, he needs to give us something that’s solid.”

Paul’s touching on the right prescription: we need a solid presidential proposal, an engaged populace, and a responsible media. Go to www.hr676.org/ to help support the movement for real reform.