Palin the Propaganda Pitbull Unmuzzled

From Sam Stein of the Huffington Post: "Say It Ain't So, Sarah: Palin Smears Obama With Year-Old Discredited Attack"

When the comment was first made, Republicans were eager to mold it into an electoral liability. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and the RNC called it disrespectful and unbecoming of a presidential aspirant.

But within a day, objective observers were knifing through the faux-outrage. The AP fact-checked the claim by pointing out that none other than President Bush himself had bemoaned the excessive loss of innocent Afghani lives and the setback such casualties caused for U.S. military efforts there.

And yet, the GOP couldn't and wouldn't let the canard die. One year after Obama's initial remark, the McCain campaign marked the anniversary by randomly raising it in the form of a biting press release. That charge didn't create many waves. (The Huffington Post wrote an article examining that attack as well.) But the McCain campaign kept at it.

On Thursday night, Palin brought it up directly in the vice presidential debate, and actually intensified the smear. Rather than painting the remark as a gaffe borne of inexperience, as Republicans claimed last year, Palin implied that Obama was slandering U.S. forces as little more than murderers.

Read the entire Sam Stein Huffingon Post story here.

The youtube clip was posted by Veracifier on August 16, 2007. The info tag that accompanies the clip states: "Mitt Romney recently attacked Barack Obama over his comments regarding the war in Afghanistan and the need for more troops on the ground, so as to reduce the reliance on air raids that have often resulted in Afghan civilian casualties. Romney called Obama's comments "outrageous" and "a suggestion that somehow our troops are not noble and dignified." But even a quick glance at the realities of the situation in Afghanistan shows that Romney has remarkably little understanding of the facts."

Josh Marshall from TPMv:

Presidential Politics? US Senate to Vote on Bailout Plan

To make Republican Senator John McCain look good, the House Republicans threw their vote to humiliate Nancy Pelosi and push for a Senate vote. That way, Republican John McCain can look like he actually DID something. So, in a highly unusual manoeuvre, Senate leaders agreed last night to vote this evening on the package before the lower house has passed it. Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate leader received unanimous consent for a vote on the bail-out.

It's the same Republican dirty tricks, and the Democrats as well as the American people keep voting these greedy money changers into office.

The McCain campaign needed to do something before the Vice Presidential Gaff-off on Thrusday.

Palin Propaganda Edward Bernays-style

Governor Sarah Palin is to American women's freedoms and liberties, what breaking the gender taboo on cigarette and tobacco usage to women's health. Equally as deadly and deathly marketed. In the sweet name of Jesus during the Easter Parade commemorating the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, Edward Bernays persuaded women to smoke. George Hill, the president of the American Tobacco Company, to gain half of the market share to sell cigarette smoking to women. Much like the Republican Party's selling of Sarah Palin, the myth and the narrative. She gets women excited and gins up support amongst the Republican base. Beware, Mrs. Palin is just as toxic and deadly as the cigarettes that the manufacturers sold American women for decades. They dressed-up tobacco in a pretty package with lipstick and pretty face. Behind the facade, however, lies the biggest health risk of tobacco addiction and the loss of millions of women's lives, slowly over time. It's all about packaging and marketing, substance and consequences be dammed.

Edward Bernays even called cigarettes as "torches of freedom" for women. They symbolized little penises and now with smoking, women could control and have their own. This image and symbolism sold to women for years, Virginia Slims devised a cleaver campaign to coincide with the Women's Movement by saying "You've got Virginia Slims now baby, you've come a long long way." They even used vintage photos of oppressed women juxtaposed with glamorous models.

Unfortunately, American women are gullible and will fall for this marketing prestidigitation..........and poof! Up pops Sarah Palin, moose hunter and hockey mom. Like the debutantes that Bernays brazenly displayed smoking cigarettes, Palin supports teenage pregnancy, no time off with a special needs infant, no health care for mothers and infants......Sarah Palin is against EVERYTHING that the Women's Movement worked so hard for.

According to Noam Chomsky, Edward Bernays was one of the early founders, gurus, of the public relations industry...It was understood, both in Britain and the U.S., that people have won too much freedom for the state to repress them by violence, and therefore, both in Britain and the U.S., the two most democratic countries, there was a growth of the public relations industry, to try to control attitudes and beliefs, since you can’t control people by force. And Bernays was a leading figure.

Bernays' first great achievement: A public relations campaign trying to get women to smoke. So he had models walking down Fifth Avenue smoking cigarettes and showing how it makes you beautiful and slim. We can’t estimate how many tens of millions of people he managed to kill by that, but a substantial number. And that put him on the map.

From Smokey Imagery and the 7 Deadly Myths by Liz Jones: For as long as any of us can remember, the deep-pocketed tobacco industry has bought and sold the imagery of cigarette smoking. Image one: the independent, tough, leather-skinned cowboy. Image two: the thin, liberated woman enjoying an active, love-filled life. In fact, the tobacco and public relations industries have been instrumental in defining how females perceive smoking and how society perceives women who smoke.

The 1929 Easter Parade in New York City marked a magnificent triumph for the tobacco industry in its ability to manipulate women and foster their addiction to a deadly habit. Promoted as a publicity stunt for "female emancipation" in these post-suffrage days, the parade featured a contingent of New York debutantes marching down Fifth Avenue while openly lighting and smoking cigarettes. It was the first time most Americans had witnessed any woman who wasn't a prostitute smoking in public.

What the bold debutantes didn't know was that their expression of "freedom and equality" was orchestrated by George Washington Hill of American Tobacco and Edward L. Bernays, public relations mastermind and nephew of Sigmund Freud. In addition to boosting sales for American Tobacco's Lucky Strikes, the demonstration succeeded in breaking the taboo of women's smoking.

Often cited as one of the most ingenious and effective PR stunts of all time, the parade is viewed by some as a coup that launched a distinctly new American industry and further reinforced the deceptive power of PR flackery.

GOP Attack Machine

As he bids to be president, Barack Obama is feeling the force of the mighty Republican propaganda machine. TV and radio hosts, authors and well-funded lobby groups have joined forces in a sophisticated and aggressive smear campaign. Paul Harris, from across the pond at the UK Guardian reports on the attack dogs

The Republican war room in Denver looked harmless. It was on a busy road in a neighbourhood of modest motels and petrol stations. Only a handmade sign, emblazoned with an arrow and the words 'John McCain', pointed the way.

But looks can be deceiving. More than two dozen Republican staffers were camped in Denver last week, spearheading the latest assaults on Barack Obama who was addressing the Democratic convention nearby. 'We came here to piss the Democrats off,' said one Republican aide with a grin.

They have largely succeeded. Each day new adverts have hammered a relentless drumbeat of negativity, painting Obama as too liberal, too inexperienced and practically a danger to America's future. Leading lights of the Republican universe have paraded in front of the cameras in a disciplined display of party message-making. A typical performance came from former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. 'There are still a lot of serious questions about Barack Obama's preparedness to lead the country,' Giuliani said, before stepping aside to showcase the latest ad on a huge flat-screen TV.

The ad attacked Obama as being so ignorant of foreign affairs that he was virtually a security threat himself. It touched on scare issues such as Islamic terrorism and Iranian nukes. Then it represented Obama's positions on national security as naive and weak. 'These are contrast ads,' Giuliani said afterwards. 'And both sides do them.'

That is only half-true. Democrats do launch attack ads and campaign negatively but no one does it like the Republican party. Under a succession of dark geniuses, the party has perfected the black art of negative campaigning. It has created the most effective attack machine in the Western world, with the sole purpose of destroying opponents and winning elections. For opponents it is a source of shock, misery and more than a little envy. Its tentacles stretch from the McCain campaign into the murky corners of talk radio, the internet and shadowy groups willing to use any outlandish smear.

Now that machine is focused with laser-like intensity on Obama. The clamour is loud and shrill: Obama is vain, inexperienced, liberal and dangerous. It is backed by a clandestine chorus whispering that he has a secretive Islamic past and it uses racially loaded language. It is also only going to get louder. This week, as McCain and the Republicans gather for their party convention in the Minnesota city of St Paul, the noise will become deafening. It has one purpose - to keep the White House in Republican hands at all costs and against the odds.

Read the full article, by Paul Harris, here.

Oprah under Attack

The Republican noise machine has Oprah Winfrey in their cross-hairs. Now Matt Drudge, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh have mounted a sustained attack against Oprah. The GOP's rebel battle cry to rally around McCain's Vice Presidential running mate is to bark and snarl “misogyny” and “sexism”. It's one of their talking points to shut-down any oppositional or probing questions. However, Drudge, Hannity, Limbaugh, et al have forgotten that Oprah is a one woman, too. It seems like the rightwing noise machine only thinks that white women are "women,” but black women like Oprah also belong to the female sisterhood of the XX chromosomes.
It certainly is ironic that Palin just took the liberal media to the woodshed in her snarky acceptance speech. Then it begs the question, as to why should Sarah Palin browbeat and bully Oprah for airtime. In light of the fact that Oprah is the queen of the so called liberal elite media talk show daytime divas.
Oprah could have an open mike for reporters to do a Q&A with the Republican choice for Commander in Chief.. Or let some real American people asking questions. Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are ALL media outlets, so why are they selling wolf tickets to bully your pitbull dog in lipstick to appear on the Oprah Show. Why doesn't Gov. Palin avail herself to the press?