Right or Left: Which Does the Mainstream Media Fear?

The corporate media likes to pat itself on the back for the fact that it is criticized by the right-wing and the left-wing, because, it is facilely argued, this means that it is "objective."


I'm more certain that what we usually see is that the mainstream, corporate media operates on varying degrees of wrongness and cluelessness about the world. Give or take the odd factoid, the corporate media operates at a less-wrong/crazy/stupid level than does the right-wing.


From time to time, I read in the right-wing blogsosphere about how the mainstream media is afraid of them. How it's the right-wing that holds a trembling liberal media to account. How the "elites" conspire against the noble, ordinary white folks on the right, blah, blah, blah.

But the cute thing is that whenever the US (especially) or even (to a lesser extent) Canadian mainstream media bitches and whines about "uncivil" and "angry" bloggers, it's the left-wing they criticize.

Whenever they deign to pluck a blogger from the internet and give them a forum on the mainstream media, it is more often than not a right-wing blogger like Michelle Malkin or Glenn Reynolds who they choose.

It's pretty obvious that the mainstream media fears the left more than it does the right. For all their talk of "rebellion" the armies of the right-wing don't really call for anything that threatens the elites. True, the right-wingers are racist and angry/stupid, and they need to be controlled like unruly dogs, but they can generally be counted on to line-up behind a status-quo political party, and do what they're told to do. If they have complaints, it's generally that the political party isn't as enthusiastic enough in pursuing wars that it wants to pursue, and in trashing the social safety-net that many of these right-wing jerks actually depend on or would benefit from.

As a group, the US right-wing is strangely beholden to blatant con-men like Rush Limbaugh, who admits to "carrying water" for the Republican Party, even when he doesn't believe what they're doing. US right-wingers bark out their approval to this slimy, hypocritical, snakeoil salesman, and he gets rich pushing the anti-people Republican line.

And for the most part, these fools still support the Republican Party, even as "the troops" die needlessly, or as the wounded veterans lie in their urine at Walter Reed, while the party elite dined at Jack Abramoff's restaurant, or consorted with prostitutes or teenaged boys (when they weren't telling the rest of the country to conform to "family values").

Rebels? Hardly. Dupes? Yes, exactly.

The elites fear the left, because the left has more brains, uses those brains to actually expose the workings of the system, and calls for changes that genuinely threaten the position of the elites. Exposing imperialism and imperialist wars. Thwarting the "divide and conquer" racist policies of the right-wing, capitalist class. Resisting the police-state powers that would give them greater control over our lives and allow them to crush genuine protest. Renouncing the materialism that the elite's fortunes are based on. And calling for the equitable division of society's wealth with all of humanity, which threatens their entire position.