by William Skink
I love not having cable news, but when I am around a tv with cable, I do like to check in to see how things are being framed. Such was the case on Monday as I sat in a hospital room with my new little bundle of joy sleeping soundly in my arms, blissfully unaware the world she was just born into is going off the rails.
On MSNBC, Chris Hayes had Susan Sarandon on doing the surrogate thing for her candidate, Bernie. Sarandon is obviously very informed about the terrible candidate Hillary Clinton would be, and made her case for backing Bernie Sanders. When Hayes asked if she would support Hillary if she got the nomination, Sarandon shocked Hayes by not immediately saying yes:
The actress and activist has been a powerful surrogate for Sanders on the campaign trail over the past few months, and during an interview with MSNBC’s All In With Chris Hayes Monday night, she said she doesn’t know if she can bring herself to vote for Clinton if it comes down to it.
“I think, in certain quarters, there’s growing concern that the folks that are into Bernie Sanders have come to despise Hillary Clinton or reject Hillary Clinton and that should she be the nominee, which is as yet undetermined, they will walk away,” Hayes said.
“That’s a legitimate concern,” Sarandon replied. “Because they’re very passionate and principled.”
“But isn’t that crazy?” the host asked. “If you believe in what he believes in?”
“Yeah but she doesn’t,” Sarandon shot back. “She accepted money for all of those people. She doesn’t even want to fight for a $15 minimum wage. So these are people that have not come out before. So why would we think they’re going to come out now for her, you know?”
Pushing for a more personal response, Hayes pressed Sarandon on whether or not she would vote for Hillary and this is what Sarandon had to say:
As they continued to discuss the issue, Hayes pressed Sarandon to see the election as potentially a choice between Clinton and Trump, arguing that Sanders himself would “probably” urge his supporters to vote for her.
“I think Bernie would probably encourage people, because he doesn’t have any ego in this thing,” Sarandon told him. “But I think a lot of people are, ‘Sorry, I just can’t bring myself to [vote for Clinton].’”
“How about you personally?” Hayes asked.
“I don’t know. I’m going to see what happens,” Sarandon said.
That bit of honesty prompted Hayes to stop in his tracks. “Really?” he asked incredulously.
“Really,” Sarandon said, adding that “some people feel that Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately if he gets in, things will really explode.” Asked if she thinks that’s “dangerous,” she replied, “It’s dangerous to think that we can continue the way we are with the militarized police force, with privatized prisons, with the death penalty, with the low minimum wage, threats to women’s rights and think you can’t do something huge to turn that around.”
After the Sarandon segment, Chris Hayes had Dan Savage on, and Savage made a point before going into his schtick to respond to Susan Sarandon with the lesser-evil trope, emphasizing that Trump would not trigger the revolution.
By now Sanders supporters know corporate media is desperately trying to bury Bernie Sanders. If you want to better understand why, this Zerohedge post connects Bernie’s consistent message to enact campaign finance reform with the corporate concern of losing millions in easy ad revenue, a revenue stream traditional media very much needs. From the link:
When a Super-PAC raises $100 million for Hillary, Jeb, et al., where does 90% of that money go? To the Corporate Media. Corporate Media gorges on political media buys every two years, and increasingly depends on this feasting on Super-PAC money for its outsized profits.
As more and more advertising dollars flow to digital media (online search, Facebook, etc.), traditional media dominated by a handful of corporate giants needs the massive influx of campaign dollars to offset its stagnating revenue model.
My source notes that there are rarely any discounts for campaign media buys–the super-PACs and candidate’s campaigns pay full pop, and typically pay in cash: no 90 days receivables for campaigns.
Political campaign buys are almost pure profit, as there is minimal sales effort required and the campaign/super-PAC is paying full freight.
Real campaign finance reform would gut Corporate Media’s profits. No wonder the Corporate Media downplays Sanders’ campaign, his personal integrity and his chances to become president.
And why do we have a deplorable media landscape? Because Bill Clinton signed into law the telecommunication act of 1996, leading to two decades of media consolidation.
The link above goes to a Truthout piece, a news source one would hope would be less inclined to undermine its credibility in order to protect Hillary Clinton from bad press. Unfortunately journalist John Pilger dashes those hopes in a piece that calls out Truthout for trying to editorially soften his criticism of Hillary:
On March 23, CounterPunch published my article, “A World War has Begun: Break the Silence”. As has been my practice for years, I then syndicated the piece across an international network, including Truthout.com, the liberal American website. Truthout publishes some important journalism, not least Dahr Jamail’s outstanding corporate exposes.
Truthout rejected the piece because, said an editor, it had appeared on CounterPunch and had broken “guidelines”. I replied that this had never been a problem over many years and I knew of no guidelines.
My recalcitrance was then given another meaning. The article was reprieved provided I submitted to a “review” and agreed to changes and deletions made by Truthout’s “editorial committee”. The result was the softening and censoring of my criticism of Hillary Clinton, and the distancing of her from Trump.
Pilger then includes the portion of his previous piece that the editorial committee wanted excised from Pilger’s article. The intent was obvious:
The “editorial committee” clearly wanted me to water down my argument that Clinton represented a proven extreme danger to the world. Like all censorship, this was unacceptable. Maya Schenwar, who runs Truthout, wrote to me that my unwillingness to submit my work to a “process of revision” meant she had to take it off her “publication docket”. Such is the gatekeeper’s way with words.
If Clinton formally secures the nomination it will be interesting to see how the corporate media reports on the growing email scandal. Will attention be paid to Clinton’s poor judgement, prioritizing the convenience of using her personal Blackberry over little pesky nuisances like following the law and national security? Zerohedge will sure be paying attention:
At this point it’s abundantly clear that Clinton would have been far better off telling the truth from the very beginning and the fact that incremental information continues to surface certainly seems to suggest that the former First Lady fully intends to admit only what someone else can prove. That doesn’t exactly inspire much trust.
“So now we know that, contrary to her statement under oath suggesting otherwise, Hillary Clinton did not turn over all her government emails,” Tom Fitton, the head of Judicial Watch said in a statement. “We also know why Hillary Clinton falsely suggests she didn’t use clintonemail.com account prior to March, 18, 2009 — because she didn’t want Americans to know about her February 13, 2009, email that shows that she knew her Blackberry and email use was not secure.”
While we would note that there’s a bit of confirmation bias going on there (i.e. Fitton said the messages he uncovered earlier this month were proof that Clinton knew her BlackBerry wasn’t secure and now he says the new e-mails are proof that that proof was indeed proof), Fitton is probably right. Clinton most likely would rather not have been forced to admit that she and Cheryl Mills essentially tried to browbeat the NSA into figuring out how to accommodate the BlackBerrys because the very fact that they had the conversation in the first place suggests Clinton and Mills knew the devices weren’t secure.
Read the whole article for full context, but that little tidbit right there is pretty damning. But what’s lying under oath for a serial liar like Clinton? And with the looming specter of a Trump candidacy, who really believes Democrats will do anything other than rally behind this terminally flawed candidate?
I’m not sure if there has ever been a presidential candidate running for the White House while being investigated by the FBI, but if Clinton is the first, it’s not the first her campaign wants anyone to think too much about. The duel factors of having a vagina and running against the anti-Christ are the main considerations Clinton sycophants will be emphasizing once Bernie is taken care of one way or another.