February 19, 2009
Ever since Obama's stimulus package went through, the propagandists have begun to pound a new horror into the public psyche as noted by Alex Koppelman in "Fox, The Socialist News Network"
A search of transcripts available on Lexis-Nexis -- a limited sample, unfortunately -- for Fox's programming from Tuesday shows that in the span of just six hours, the network managed to squeeze in five segments devoted to a discussion of impending socialism; the words "socialism," "socialist" and "social democracy" were used a total of 37 times. "Your World with Neil Cavuto," "The O'Reilly Factor" and "On the Record with Greta" all managed to stay socialism free, but "Special Report" and "Hannity" each had two segments about it, and "Glenn Beck" had one. No transcript for "FOX Report" was available, but I happened to see the show repeat one of the segments from "Special Report," for a total of six time slots on the subject between 4 p.m. ET and 11 p.m.
As usual, Fox is wrong. The phenomenon we are really seeing is lemon socialism From Randy Shaw at Beyond Chron :
Jack Lemmon won an Oscar for Best Actor in ""Save the Tiger", a 1973 film in which he played Harry Stoner, an owner of a garment factory in Los Angeles. The business faced tough times, but Stoner felt that if the government could only give him a little break—like it did in the real world to save the giant weapons contractor Lockheed Corp—he could get by. But the message of the film is that the government does not step in to help “little guys” like Stoner—it saves its massive bailouts for the big fish like Bear Stearns or, this week, A.I.G. This used to be called “lemon socialism,” which described how the government would bail out or take over faltering private enterprises—i.e. ”lemons,” only to then have free market ideologues point to these businesses as examples of how government regulation hurts business. This “heads government loses, tails the private sector wins” economic agenda convinced millions of United States voters that government harmed rather than fostered economic growth. It also helped persuade voters that government was powerless to bolster the nation’s manufacturing sector, enshrining a false philosophy of “government shouldn’t pick winners and losers” that continues to this day.Back in the 1970’s, activists used such phrases as “lemon” socialism, trickle-down economics, and “Pentagon capitalism” to describe the fraudulent aspects of “free-market” capitalism. We’ve had a great demonstration of all three policies during the Bush years, with the government takeover of failed free-market enterprises gathering most of the attention this year.
Too dry and technical for you? Let us turn over the action to Lansing, Michigan Mayor Virge Bernero squeezing a few lemons over at Fox (scroll down for the video)
Photo note: Because lemon shots are buried too deeply in the archive, we have chosen instead, a picture of pigeons lined up ready to poop on the worker
Posted by Dakota at February 19, 2009 08:03 PM