GREAT interview! I think that's the most to-the-point and persuasive I've ever seen Begala. God I hope somebody's listening to him!!

an email I sent to TPM

Running up an avalanche

My two cents, after the DNC. I don't watch and listen to the pundits much, they infuriate me too much. It is not that the pundits are effete, or territorial, or cringe-inducing, or thick-headed, or too cocooned in the beltway swaddling blanket.

The fact is, even for the best of them it is a job. Even when there isn't a particular hatchet-job being done (like the vanilla coverage of the first night of the DNC, all the commentors are just rubbing along) they inject so much into the coverage. Triple questioning of trifling details, strawmen and boogeymonsters, talk about how you have to capture the hearts and the minds of the TV audience and that B H O just wasn't doing that.....blah blah blah. The worst of them inject so much more. THEN the bigwigs back at the studio assemble multi-panels of suited men and women who sit around and generally assail democrats with every possible doomsday scenario, and generally give the repub a free pass and say if he can just hold it together a little longer, he'll be ok. Much worse, things like Fox yesterday when their cub reporter was getting a little too "inside" the Recreate 68 march in Denver.....the blonde anchor looked shocked and frightened and made many references to the unsightly and frightening mob....all designed to marginalize the majority of the country and use fear to direct the political will.

I have been a meta-media watcher for over 20 years. If you spend your time watching for the manipulation, rather than falling for the illusionist's trick, you can infer a lot about what is going on inside the Media Mind.

I would appreciate TPM bringing to the reader's attention that B H O is basically trying to run up an avalanche.
Even the best of the corporate media coverage is basically 70-30 against B H O. While Maddow and Olbermann say the things we want said, their network spends the rest of their time slots burying the ideas and coverage that M & O unearth. Even the best of the Corporate Networks programming is busy filling our heads with confidence issues so we'll buy zitcream or deodorant or viagra. Even the best of their coverage is aimed to Not Alienate the largest amount of people. Even the best coverage makes NO MENTION WHATSOEVER about corporate malfeasance, MIC ties, Message Force Multipliers, and the hijacking of the american dream by corporations. I guess it would be suicide for them to report on their own behavior, which instantly disqualifies them from holding the reins on our airwaves and their monopoly on news/information.

The worst of these networks put a lot of effort into sliming the dem candidate, always trying however not to impugn the avg dem voter.
Why is it that brilliant, honest, bright lights of our country (time and time again) get reduced to quivering wimpy half-fag america haters by the end of every election? Was it something that they said?! No, it is the script according to CorpMedia. Without being too overt and nasty, the flow is relentless and accumulative.

B H O is trying to run up an avalanche. Trying to win as a Dem, with the Corporate Media as your medium, is probably one of the hardest things to accomplish on earth. It takes an amazing unforeseen event to derail the CorpMedia Story. Their only weakness is that they cannot totally control the immediate future....and real events sometimes can upstage their narrative. They cannot entirely keep REALITY at bay, tho god knows they can do it most of the time.

The media is in a perfect position. They decide what gets shown to you, and just in case it wasn't perfectly to their script, they get to re-run it, twist it, chisel it, re-think it for us until we have been brought around to a better storyline from their standpoint. The dem doesn't get unlimited do-overs, but the repubs and their corporate allies do.

We desperately need to take the narrative away from them. Hoping to win an Ad war and Buzz war, on the CorporateMedia terms, is the height of folly and shows a decided lack of perspective and knowledge of the enemy.

Walrus:
If Corporate Media is your medium, how do you engineer said "teardown"? It boils down to if they will let you engineer a teardown, and it is quite obvious they won't.

I would like to see some ideas where reality intrudes on the media narrative, or replaces it. Got any? The Keychains is one good idea, but it requires network lenses.

Somehow the media always decides whether it would be fair to McCain. Somehow, Dem ads and even tv shows get cancelled....but rightwing swiftboat ads always get aired (FUX and ABC). Their little 9-11 miniseries always get run. Even if you get something aired, the media can spend the next two weeks nullifying it with endless re-spin.

Attack, Attack, Attack....yes. But we have to find ways other than just ads. The web has been marginalized as a real deal breaker. The last 3 or 4 elections proved electronic action does not necessarily faze the networks, nor does it translate into shoe-leather action. I think bodies have to be layed on the gears of the machine until it is brought to a halt.

If Corporate Media is your medium, how do you engineer said "teardown"? It boils down to if they will let you engineer a teardown, and it is quite obvious they won't.

I understand the frustration. While I don't disagree, it's too easy to blame a corrupt Media for inept, fractured strategies from the Democratic Party. The Media's bias to those in charge at any given moment is certainly pernicious but these are two separate issues and one doesn't necessarily enable (or disable) the other.

The attacks have to be at the media who got us into the Iraq war,gave us eight years of Bush and bankrupted this nation.The media are the enemy.If we forget,that we`re dead.
The gressroots can kick the media ass.GET YOUR WALKIN` SHOES, and let`s start Truckin`.

I am not a big fan of Begala, but he makes more sense than the "Team Defense" Obama has assembled.

Paul is the only one who brought up that although Sarah Palin said she will be a big supporter for the families with children having special needs, budget got down from 8 million to 2 millons (I don't know whether as a governor or mayor). It is not only worth checking it should be brought to front page news somehow. Ms. Buchanan was shocked to hear about it on CNN but I never heard it back from any of you or from Obama campaign. What is going on. Kerry's campaign repaeted?
PNNJ