councilor.org
| Source | Steve Zeltzer |
| Date | 01/02/09/10:35 |
| ZNet Commentary / Edward Herman / February 8, 2001
The media normalize a rightwing coup d'etat By Edward S. Herman We have just gone through a remarkable moment in U.S. history, in which a Republican activist-dominated Supreme Court has refused to allow a complete vote count in Florida which would have given Al Gore the presidency, and by judicial fiat simply awarded the presidency to their preferred Republican candidate. The tricks by which Scalia and company accomplished this were extremely crude, their judicial reasoning was puerile and cited no valid precedents for their actions and rulings; and Scalia even wrote that the final ruling was no precedent but was "limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities." But the ruling was quite clear that varying standards in counting votes violates the 14th amendment, and could be the basis of undercutting any election. As Vincent Bugliosi points out in a crushing article in The Nation ("None Dare Call It Treason," Feb. 5, 2001), "in other words, the Court, in effect, was saying its ruling 'only applied to those future cases captioned Bush v. Gore. In all other equal protection voting cases, litigants should refer to prior decisions of this court.'" The Republican activist majority on the Supreme Court, usually gung ho for deferring to state rights, and who "almost never use equal protection jurisprudence except in striking down affirmative action programs" (USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky), were brazenly explicit that they were overridding a state court, and stopping a vote count, because it might cause "irreparable harm" to George W. Bush. The fact that stopping it might cause "irreparable harm" to Gore and deny voters their opportunity to have their votes counted was of no concern. They then terminated the electoral process in Florida because there wasn't time for a vote count which they had delayed to assure that result. This was a genuine coup d'etat, with the the Republican Court majority simply awarding the election to their favorite and denying the general populace the right to determine an election outcome. Not only did Gore already have a national majority, the actual retrospective vote count has shown that he won Florida as well and thus an Electoral College majority. But this judicial theft of an election was quickly normalized by the mainstream media. The court was criticized for its actions, sometimes even a bit severely, but only for a day or so, and in a tone that hardly did justice to the events. The Philadelphia Inquirer's editorial on the subject was entitled "Hail To the Chief," giving Bush immediate full recognition, and their text says "Accept Bush's win, but also lament the high court's sad failure." (Dec. 13, 2000) In the New York Times, the court was alleged to have "rarely seemed so openly political" and "missed the chance to reach an enlightened compromise" (ed., Dec. 14). These seem a wee bit mild, considering that the activist Republicans on the court had simply taken it upon themselves to choose the president, "abandoning any pretense at behaving like a court of law" (law professor Anthony Amsterdam). The media had been full of election details for months on end, and here we had the Supreme Court nullifying all that purported democratic activity by its hugely political intervention, and we are asked to just "lament" this lapse and hail the new chief. And in the succeeding weeks the media pretty much dropped the subject. When in late January, retrospective vote counts disclosed that the Court action had deprived Gore of a majority vote in Florida, The Guardian of London reported this under the title "Florida 'Recounts' Confirm Gore Winner" (January 29, 2001). But the Philadelphia Inquirer and New York Times didn't even find this story newsworthy. Although Bush not only didn't have a "mandate" but rather lost the popular voting election and represents illegitimate authority, his monstrous selections of Ashcroft, Norton, Chavez (then Chao), which were aggressive assaults on minority groups, environmentalists, and labor, were treated very gently by the mainstream media (even though both the Inquirer and Times came out against the Ashcroft nomination). They didn't question these appointments in terms of the non-mandate of voters, or juxtapose these appointments with his alleged aim of "civility" and "unity," and the Times took at face value "his drive for bipartisanship" (ed., Jan. 24). For the Times, "Bush's Transition [Was] Largely a Success, All Sides Suggest" (Jan. 28, page 1). With Monica Lewinsky the media were pleased to stay with a topic that had no inherent political relevance for months on end, giving it hundreds or thousands of times the space devoted to the Supreme Court's coup d'etat. This is media manipulation and corruption of a high order. Why have the media normalized the Republican coup d'etat? One reason is that the Republicans are far more aggressive in pursuing their political ends than the Democrats, and in fact the Democrats quickly folded after the Supreme Court coup decision and failed to seek justice either in the Senate or law courts. I am convinced that just as the Republicans pursued the Lewinsky case without relent, so if the Court had treated them as Gore was treated they would have fought back and the subject would be highly newsworthy. Of course, the Republicans benefit from the fact that they dominate the pundit and talk show host cohort and have the Wall Street Journal editorial page continously available to press their agenda aggressively and with great indignation. This enables them to push their cases a la Lewinsky, with "liberal media" cooperation, whereas the Democrats repeatedly defer to the "national interest" and need for "unity" in letting the Republicans get away with serious political crimes (the Iran-contra scandal, the "October surprise," the Bush administration's secret support of Saddam Hussein). But the other factor is that the corporate media are part of a national establishment that is highly sympathetic to the political and economic status quo, and just as they treated Nader as outside the pale and the two party and plutocratic domination of the election as highly satisfactory, so they are anxious to legitimate no matter what the outcome. So while the Guardian of London may be prepared to find deep flaws in the 2000 election here, and dwell on the subject, the mainstream media are not. In his devastating analysis of the Court's actions Bugliosi makes a compelling case that "These five justices are criminals in every true sense of the word, and in a fair and just world belong behind bars." Nothing like this in the U.S. mainstream media. The Philadelphia Inquirer could editorialize that Clinton's last minute blitz of pardons was "One last outrage" (January 23), which is what it was, but the far more outrageous actions of the Supreme Court are merely something "sad" and to "lament," not "outrageous." The mainstream media are agents of power and in this role handled the 2000 presidential election well. |
Copyright (c) 1998, Joongpil Cho