JOHN PILGER - JOURNALISTIC INTEGRITY

Just saw John Pilger, on Democracy Now, speak about how “professional” journalism has become understood to be from “official” sources and true journalists become heretical “agents for truth rather than courtiers of power.” While American citizens get mindhandled into belief in their exceptionally righteous purpose and benevolent intent, the United States has overthrown 50 foreign governments, some duly elected democracies, and bombed 30 of them, staking the absurd claim to be making the world safe for its citizens any damned where they and Visa Card want to be.

He told of a Czech claiming to be lucky in a dictatorship in a way Pilger wasn’t in the US or Australia, “In a dictatorship, we don’t question whether the papers lie, we know they do.” Another added, “We don’t believe anything until it is officially denied.”

Impartiality is a principle to be dispensed with when the government is threatened and the rpms on the spin doctor corps revs up the sound bytes to normalize the unthinkable, make atrocities unhappen, disopen leaks, call bureaucratic huddles forever.

The giant, spoiled baby of public opinion pops in the mind controlling pacifier of the latest on Lindsey, Britney and Paris and sympathizes with its pained leader, betrayed and abandoned by his own appointees, advisors and generals.

As eyelids droop the happy place is found in knowing, “… at least I’m not him.”

“I wonder if he’ll eat me last?”