Media engages in class warfare

[Lanya]

[.......]

Media engage in class warfare

It's enough to make you wonder about the princely sums folks like Brian Williams and Chris Matthews and Glenn Beck and Wolf Blitzer and Neil Cavuto are presumably paid by General Electric and Time Warner and News Corp.

An article in the May 14 issue of Fortune certainly seems to suggest that corporations like those should be "afraid" of a candidate like Edwards. Billed as the first in a series "Race for the White House 2008: What business needs to know ... an inside look at the 2008 candidates and what their ideas would mean for business," the Fortune article carries the sub-headline "John Edwards believes a new labor movement is the answer to the country's great divide. Should corporate America be afraid of him?" It concluded:

    hould Edwards overcome stiff odds and win the presidency, a new and more hostile day is sure to dawn for Washington's business interests, particularly if Democrats retain control of Congress. Legislation to make union organizing easier would readily pass (already it passed the House this year), as well as other measures to boost the bargaining leverage of organized labor. Universal health care, mostly resisted by the private sector, would top his agenda.

Incredibly, during Beck's man-of-the-people rant, the excitable host suggested that Edwards is "in bed with big business." That's a nonsensical claim, of course, as the Fortune article made clear.

But Beck's bizarre claim fits in quite nicely with other things the media continually tell us about Edwards: He's rich! He gets expensive haircuts! He has a big house! He makes a "nice little bundle" of money! He's a millionaire! He's in bed with big business!

The message is clear: John Edwards isn't like regular folk. It's important to Malcolm S. "Steve" Forbes Jr. and (highly paid GE employees) Wolf Blitzer and Glenn Beck that regular folk understand this: John Edwards is different from you. He's rich.

Now why on earth would Malcolm S. "Steve" Forbes Jr., a fantastically wealthy man who would presumably pay more in taxes if John Edwards were president than he does now, think it so important to make the poor and middle class understand that Edwards is so very rich, and so very unlike them? Why on earth would it be so important to Glenn Beck for you to understand that you and he live in one America, while John Edwards lives in a mansion? Just a few months ago, Beck dismissed an effort to raise the minimum wage for the first time in a decade as "nothing but a political issue." What could possibly cause this well-paid television anchor to suddenly pretend he is a friend of the working man in order to engage in class warfare against Edwards?

And make no mistake, that's what Beck and Forbes are doing -- they're asking their viewers to judge John Edwards not on what he believes, or what he'd do as president, or the policies he supports, but on the size of his bank account. These rich men are trying to drive a wedge between the middle class and the poor (an electoral majority, in other words) and a candidate who would raise taxes on the rich in order to help the middle class and the poor.

This is, of course, nothing unique to John Edwards at all. When John Kerry was the Democratic nominee, a bunch of highly paid media figures made sure to tell the people over and over that Kerry was a rich man who gets manicures and windsurfs and just isn't like you and me. (Meanwhile, wealthy conservatives like George W. Bush can count on being portrayed by the media as Regular Guys even as they zoom around their estates on $13,000 worth of bicycles.)

So, if the media are going to suggest that wealthy candidates who propose progressive economic policies are hypocrites and portray them as out of touch with the people who would benefit from their policies, should progressives find messengers of more modest means? Well, in the short term, that seems unlikely to happen -- all of the most likely Democratic presidential nominees are of above-average means. That should come as no surprise; as we constantly hear (usually from the news media), the political process favors candidates who are wealthier than average (the typical schoolteacher isn't as able to campaign for office full time, as is the typical CEO). So the system is slanted in favor of wealthy candidates, and the corporate media portray wealthy candidates who propose middle-class-friendly policies as out-of-touch hypocrites. Intentional or not, the effect is the marginalization of progressive economic policies.

And if, say, the Democratic Party nominated a steelworker as its presidential candidate, and that steelworker ran on a platform of rolling back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy in order to pay for universal health insurance, you can be sure media figures like Glenn Beck and Steve Forbes would be quick to denounce the candidate for shameful "class warfare." And it's worth keeping in mind that Bill Clinton did not become wealthy until after leaving office, but his personal finances were subject to greater scrutiny than any politician in American history -- orders of magnitude more scrutiny than his wealthy conservative successor.

Heck of a racket, isn't it?
[............]

http://mediamatters.org/items/200705120002

[BT]

Edwards is rich. And apparently he is not immune from flaunting the trappings of such wealth. So i'm not sure what the problem is here.

[_JS]

Edwards is rich. And apparently he is not immune from flaunting the trappings of such wealth. So i'm not sure what the problem is here.

So what? I keep hearing y'all harping about this, but it really is a non-issue. There is no reason that a wealthy individual cannot be an advocate for the poor and speak about the gap between wealthy and poor individuals. In fact, with capitalism where it is now, one should expect this to be the case.

What business needs to know ... an inside look at the 2008 candidates and what their ideas would mean for business...

Of course Fortune magazine is going to run such articles. The ruling class will always look to protect its wealth, power, and prestige.

Class struggle is a fact. Hiding it, pretending it does not exist, decrying the discussion of it as "engaging in class warfare," and so forth is a predictable exercise for all involved. The fact that Edwards is extremely wealthy and no doubt sees a populist side to this discussion is in little doubt either. On the flipside there is little doubt that those attacking Edwards would have no more sympathy for someone who had less money and less ability to make his or her voice heard on these issues.

[BT]

So what? I keep hearing y'all harping about this, but it really is a non-issue.

Who's harping? Edwards is rich as the article states. What he does with his money should be his business, just as what others do with theirs should be their business.


So i agree with you in that sense, it should be a non issue what a persons net worth is.

[Plane]

So what? I keep hearing y'all harping about this, but it really is a non-issue.

Who's harping? Edwards is rich as the article states. What he does with his money should be his business, just as what others do with theirs should be their business.


So i agree with you in that sense, it should be a non issue what a persons net worth is.

I see it as an issue.

Edwards is  devider, he wants there to be two Americas with a severe demarcation between the two based on class.

If he persists in reduceing us to castes , it need to be made clear which caste he belongs to.

[BT]

Edwards is  devider, he wants there to be two Americas with a severe demarcation between the two based on class.

I'm not sure that is true. I'm not sure he wants two americas as much as he is observing there are two americas and is exploting that observation to his own ends.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I see it as an issue.

Edwards is  devider, he wants there to be two Americas with a severe demarcation between the two based on class.

If he persists in reduceing us to castes , it need to be made clear which caste he belongs to.

==================================================================
This is ridiculous. There are and have always been two Americas. Those who are independent of someone for a paycheck, and those who are dependent on someone for income. The rich and the poor.

The three main political issues in the US are rich vs. poor, black vs white and war vs peace.
Slavery was a major issue until it was abolished in the Civil War. But it was a Black vs White issue.

The other issues (abortion, gay marriage, the flag) are smokescreens used by the elite to win the votes of the hoi polloi.

Some other issues are related to rich vs poor, such as health care, the minimum wage, immigration.

It has always been thus.

The environment is in several ways unrelated to the major issues, which is one reason why it has had such difficulty getting traction. When the elite recognize that a gated community and armed guards will not protect them from rising water, bad air and a lack of water, it will become a major issue.


The great reformers have often been aristocratic "class traitors": Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy.

It is almost unprecedented that a reformer is from the impoverished class: Even LBJ and Huey P Long were members of a local gentry.

As a rule, the dependent ones have zero options about their taxes: their taxes are deducted from their checks by law.\
About 2% of the population owns 80% of everything that produces income. The very wealthy mostly control the rest of the people through a system of mortgages, credit cards, installment payments and social demands (such as promoting what is stylish and what is not). This system is vastly more effective than anything that the Nazis or the Communists have ever had.

When it looks like there will be a labor shortage, they enact laws which will impoverish a percentage of the population and force them back into the workforce. Observe that first there was no gambling except in Las Vegas, then state lotteries, then cruise ship casinos, and now there is gambling everywhere. The effect is to impoverish a percentage of the population by making paupers of them.

War is always a good way to give the economy a shot in the arm. It sells weapons, and it dislocates families, who must move and relocate and therefore buy more crap.

The division has always existed, and it has become much more pronounced since Reagan was elected.

Edwards is certainly not inventing it, even if he is exploiting it.

[_JS]

I see it as an issue.

Edwards is  devider, he wants there to be two Americas with a severe demarcation between the two based on class.

If he persists in reduceing us to castes , it need to be made clear which caste he belongs to.

It doesn't matter what Edwards wants. Class exists. It always has and will for as long as there is capitalism.

Arguing that there is no difference in class, or that it does not exist is the equivalent of arguing that there is no difference in night and day and that the Earth does not rotate upon its axis.

I'm not sure he wants two americas as much as he is observing there are two americas and is exploting that observation to his own ends.

I don't necessarily agree with Bt's conclusion, but he is correct in that this is a matter of opinion. Certainly some people, especially politicians will use class as a matter for exploitation. Of course that goes both ways, with the right-wing politicians typically denying its existence or arguing that it should not be a subject for debate (when of course it should be the topic of debate).

[BT]

Why should class be THE topic of debate?

[Xavier_Onassis]

Why should class be THE topic of debate?

==============================
I don't think it is THE topic. The main topic of the presidential race is and will be the Iraq War, followed by healthcare and perhaps the environment.

It is up to you, Plane, to decide what class Edwards belongs to. It is the Republicans that want to make this an issue, not Edwards. It appears that you have already decided this, anyway.

If Edwards doesn't get the nomination, it will be mostly because there are so many Americans who hate and mistrust lawyers. Class will be at most a secondary reason.

Again: there are three main issues in American politics: War and Peace, Black and White, and Rich and Poor.

Since we are presently in a really absurd war, War and Peace will be the big issue. Black and White will come in second if Obama runs for President or VP on the Democratic ticket. Otherwise, healthcare will be the second most important issue. Or so it seems now.

[domer]

The mix of principles that Edwards deftly presents to the electorate at once celebrates the bounty of hard work, a bedrock American value, but also the relative equality of outcome, most often stated in terms of opportunity but having a resonance in absolute terms due to the very nature of human enterprise, and expressed most memorably, perhaps, as the pursuit of happiness (and not the pursuit of a fool's errand). The first thing to note is that there are very many hard-working Americans who are not wealthy, just as there are many who are wealthy but slothful according to an objective scale of effort. These observations set the American Dream on its head. It really cannot be that we want to reward the idle rich or those selfishly choosing a lucrative profession for the "higher rewards of life" when teachers, policemen, firemen, and all their brethren in the private sector are inveighed upon to "serve" without "reward" commensurate with their value. To emphasize the sanctity of the market when contemplating this tableau is plainly and simply to distort our values, which we lose sight of due to the heavy weight, the unbearable, inexorable burden of our social structure.