 |
It's hard to know where to begin on Mike McCurry's rhetorical
belch, except to say, wow, did we piss him off. He even forgot
to spell check.
Matt Stoller
and Sean-Paul
have led this fight from the beginning, with many of us joining
in. Today, Pach has an action item up, so make sure you get
involved if you haven't already. But when Matt took out after McCurry, it
evidently just about blew his money grubbing head off. Mikey better stay away
from this
major post, because it will just plain kill him.
As for me, when I read McCurry's ramblings I really had stop and think twice
about one particularly passage. So did Josh
Marshall, and with good reason. See if you can figure this one out.
Oh yeah, how many of you lifted a finger to protect the First Amendment when
the Washington Post and other “MSM” cited it to ferret out the truth
about WMD and the wars inside the U.S. intelligence community over the pre-Iraq
war (and now pre-Iran war)? (And don't lecture me about how they failed to
do their job — I have had Pultizer Prize winning reporters tell me that they
feel intimindated and they lack public support. Of course they — and their
editors– feel that way. Most of the blogosphere spends hours making them
feel that way).
Hostile
Commentary and Net Neutrality, by Mike McCurry
Huh?
At first I thought he might be talking about Judy Miller going to jail, but,
nah, she was a Bush rube. As for bloggers going after the “MSM,” well,
they deserve it when they get the story wrong, or back their corporate boards,
or when they choose to remain silent when they should speak up, as in the case
of Bob Woodward regarding Plamegate.
Wait a minute… Is McCurry talking about Woodward? Never mind.
Leaving the first sentence of McCurry's midlife crisis claptrap alone — because
it's indecipherable — I come to the second part of the OH, WHOA IS ME, I'M
JUST A POOR WELL PAID JOURNALIST nonsense. To use one of Mike's opening words,
“puh-leeeze.”
It's been a very long time since mainstream media journalists have had any
discourse with we the people. The Internet gives us access we've never had.
It also gives writers and radio personalities like myself, frozen out by the
traditional media, a place to make our stand. The Internet democratizes the
news, the reality and our involvement, which make some journalists uncomfortable.
We don't care who you are, but we do care about what you're saying and if it's
true or not.
I still want to like Mike McCurry. But I can't right now because he's doing
a truly awful thing. Not only is he serving as the mouthpiece for AT&T
and other corporations who self-servingly want to end the free and open Internet
as we know it, but he is committing the cardinal sin of any spokesperson:
He is outright lying.McCurry is co-chair of a front group set up by Internet operators like AT&T.
These companies are spending millions lobbying Congress to destroy Network
Neutrality–the First Amendment of the Internet–in the next few weeks.
No corporation as middle man, making sure the reporter's words come out soft and sweet for
the masses. It's in your face if you screw up on the blogs, or get your facts wrong, or just out and out pander to the powerful. It's the same in radio.
But I'd still like to know what the hell that sentence means.
Comments are closed.