Guest Opinion

When Tasers Shock More than Lost Votes

By Rebecca Ann, 9-23-07

On balance, the nightly televised news once again failed the nation last week, leaving open the question of who’s the bigger loser.

Given the opportunity to knock a softball out of the park in the bottom of the 9th and bring the long-suffering home team a much-needed win, Big Media whiffed. What’s worse is they got caught looking like overpaid chumps, like Jake LaMotta taking a last nosedive for a fat payoff, instead of going down swinging.

Of course, I’m talking about the mainstream packs’ fraud disguised as objective reporting on the Andrew Meyer’s fiasco at Florida University on Sept. 17. Nearly to a news station and to an anchorman or woman it was about as bad and biased as it gets.

But let me say here that my complaint has nothing to do with whether Meyer’s behavior was legal or illegal.

Further, this jeremiad is not about arguing against whether Glenn “No Neck” Beck or others believe Meyer to be a jerky, self-promoting publicity hound.

Those wrapped up in the self-deceiving schadenfreude of seeing a loud-mouthed Florida J-school student get what was coming to him – and now insist he needs to take ‘responsibility’ for whatever they or Beck might think Meyer was irresponsible in doing – are too busy getting their rocks off getting ahead of the story to get the story.

Those arguments, valid or invalid as they may be, are irrelevant to me. For my indignation is more academic and maybe even metaphysical.

If ever there was a test case to suggest that the modern corporate media apparatus and their gutless apparatchiks are on the take this could be it.

And in the process of solely worshiping their bottom lines and selling their incurious journalistic souls, they’ve dragged all of us into the uniformed abyss of slanted, self-censorship. They have also elevated the integrity, reliability and “truthiness” of that leftwing cabal of anti-corporate news mongers led by Amy Goodman and her whacky “Democracy Now” ilk.

Before this story becomes another unexamined dead horse in the dung heap of discarded and deliberately ignored news worth a second look, the Andrew Meyer’s debacle might just prove the tinfoil hat wearing crowd has a good case.

But first, some housecleaning is in order.

Those who believe they’re sufficiently well-informed on the Meyer’s controversy to have formed an opinion on it one way or the other kindly tell the ‘un-deciders’ among us: What were the three questions Andrew Meyer peppered Sen. John Kerry with before his microphone was cut off?

If your answer contains at least three separate statements, two of which deal with voting and impeachment, there’s a good chance you’re getting your daily news from somewhere besides a television.

However, for those who rely on “CNN” or “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” there’s a better than average chance you’re unable to recite any of the substance of what set Meyer off on hectoring the senator from Massachusetts before the cops busted up his one-way, one-man debate club in Taserville, U.S.A.

But it’s not your fault. It’s Anderson Cooper’s and Keith’s slack substitute for a co-anchor, Alison Blew-it, or whatever her face is, and their producers’ decisions to present superficial snarky commentary, ignorantly dismissive remarks and highly edited and selective video instead of thoroughly balanced, fact-based reportage.

To say nothing of their complete pass on any contextual analysis or Anderson “keeping them honest”.

While Meyer’s third question about Bush’s and Kerry’s common fraternity to the super secretive Skull & Bones Yaley Society is a well-known fact, what’s less well-known is the foundation for Meyer’s muzzled allegations of widespread electoral shenanigans and the spoilage of millions of votes in 2004.

Don’t believe me?

Check out the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’ investigation into recent national and statewide voting snafus. And if you’ve got some more time to get up to speed, on this largely buried travesty at the bedrock of our withering democracy, read “Armed Madhouse” by investigative BBC journalist Greg Palast.

For those who don’t know, “Armed Madhouse” was the mysterious yellow book Meyer clutched like the Holy Grail and didn’t let touch the ground as the fuzz whisked him away to their S&M four-way in the back of the classroom.

Lastly, riddle me this: When the hell will our walking while still sleeping American brothers and sisters wake up, avoid the mall or the golf course for a day, and confirm or deny for themselves whether their vote counts as much as the citizen who shines their wingtips or mows their lawn?

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