Its still not national news that a white supremacist neo-nazi who hated Obama was assembling materials for a dirty bomb. But then again, he was no Jose Padilla, so I guess the different treatment of the two by the media makes sense. Right?
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Of course it does, Steven! Unless you think corporate media’s actually meant to benefit the public-at-large or somethin’.
Exactly!
I just made that comment in Jesselyn Radack’s entry on kos – currently on top of the reco list.
Swept under the carpet (6+ / 0-)
They represent a real threat.
How quickly did this story disappear from coverage…
BELFAST, Maine — James G. Cummings, who police say was shot to death by his wife two months ago, allegedly had a cache of radioactive materials in his home suitable for building a “dirty bomb.”
[…]
The FBI report also stated there was evidence linking James Cummings to white supremacist groups. This would seem to confirm observations by local tradesmen who worked at the Cummings home that he was an ardent admirer of Adolf Hitler and had a collection of Nazi memorabilia around the house, including a prominently displayed flag with swastika.
by ask on Tue Feb 17, 2009 at 09:03:31 AM EST
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This is the first I’ve heard about this. (2+ / 0-)
Cummings sounds like an actual terrorist threat.
The Canary in the Coalmine is available for purchase at patriotictruthteller.net
by Jesselyn Radack on Tue Feb 17, 2009 at 09:43:29 AM EST
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Even the well-informed Jesselyn was unaware…
http://rolcats.com/
There is the common idea that limiting media visibility would reduce the threat of copycats.
That did not appear to be a concern when in the case of Jose Padilla, did it?
Nor has it ever appeared to be a concern when the “suspected terrorists” have been Muslims or “Middle Eastern looking”.
The difference is that Padilla was useful in presenting al Qaeda as infiltrating the Homeland.
Wingnut bombers do not help that meme, so such a case won’t become a political football.
More Padillas would have helped Bush pursue his domestic agenda which was anti-left and anti-foreigner. Such cases keep the ‘threat’ in the news.
More wingnuts in the news would have justified slowing this same agenda. You can’t ignore them forever.. but you can try.
Yup. The Bush Administration had a clear purpose in pushing the Padilla story – it generated fear that there was a secret invasion of the US being undertaken and that anyone vaguely swarthy-looking could be plotting the next 9/11 even as we speak. So we’d better go fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here. (Illogical, but whatever – gut propaganda isn’t logical, it’s emotional.)
OTOH, the Obama Administration probably doesn’t think it’s in their best interest to push stories like this. For one thing, making it look like there are a lot of folks secretly working to violently overthrow the government because a black dude is in charge probably doesn’t help them push any policy objectives – they’ve definitely got a “we’re all in this together” approach that they’re trying to leverage.
And as for the media picking this up themselves – they don’t do that. I don’t think they have ever done that except for a brief glimmer during the Vietnam/Watergate era when the whole country was in a turmoil and some young-punk journalists somehow got off their leashes and stirred up trouble. For the most part newspapers have a long history of repeating the propaganda of the elites that the newspaper owners sided with. Television journalism has a much shorter history, and it tends to revolve more around being completely inoffensive to anyone who wasn’t an obvious pariah already and definitely trying hard to NOT piss off any politicians – especially those who sit on committees that could be looking at regulating your use of the public airwaves. This has changed only fairly recently as cable TV has changed the dynamic, so now the cable news stations are falling back into the dynamic of newspapers – repeating the propaganda of the elites that the station owners side with.
This is not anything new. And people who bemoan the state of journalism in this country are bemoaning a very tiny sliver of journalistic history that stretches between around 1970 and 1979 or so. A single generation of newsguys changed how journalism worked for a very short span of time, but that’s it. Things have reverted back to the historical status quo (though the Internet revolution is starting to bring about some of the same kinds of shake-ups that the television revolution did, and as long as no one “owns” the Internet the dynamics may be able to shift a little more permanently in the future).
Thanks for bringing up the obvious double standard.