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Now that “The Big Bang Theory” has moved ahead of “Two and a Half Men” into second place among non-football related television shows, I think it’s time to critique what may be the most ideologically-driven entertainment on TV today.

In its premise, its characters, its jokes and its plot lines, “The Big Bang Theory” constantly promotes some of the most pernicious aspects of American consumerism. Masquerading as entertainment, it serves up a stew of propaganda, much of it either false or dangerous to the well-being of the country. But these pieces of propaganda do support the ideological imperative to think less and consume more.

For those who haven’t heard of “The Big Bang Theory,” here’s a quick synopsis: It is a situation comedy about four single male scientists and engineers, all in their late 20’s or early 30’s, who are socially maladroit, unable to pick up on the social cues of others and immature in their interests and predilections. In the parlance of American mythology, these guys are “nerds.”

I usually do an hour’s worth of channel surfing every night at about 9:00 pm and have the TV on when I exercise in the late afternoons, so I’ve been seeing bits and pieces of the show (and maybe five full shows) in reruns on cable stations.  The propaganda barrage I’ve seen is as relentless as a speech by the mayor of a large Soviet city would have been in the 1930’s.

Here are the main ideological points behind “Big Bang,” all of which have made the OpEdge list of the mass media’s major ideological principles:

The characterization of intellectuals, academics and smart people as unsexy, unpopular, bad athletes, unstylish and socially inept.

This old saw is offensively wrong, but it continues to predominate in the mass media, which wants us to believe that those who are very smart or academic are not attractive to the opposite sex.

But the idea that smart people are unsexy and socially backwards does not stand up to the least bit of scrutiny.  While most of us knew very smart kids in high school who were socially backward, we also knew lots of average or less-than-average kids who were also weird or anti-social.  Most kids at all levels grow out of this awkward stage, yet only the intelligent have the “nerd” label stick to them for life. But here’s what else changes as teenagers grow into adults: Those with college educations start to make more money than those without, and those with advanced degrees make the most of all. Ability to contribute to the family’s finances is a major factor that both men and women consider in a mate.  So in fact, once education has been completed, the more educated have an advantage in the mating game.

The “Big Bang” theory drills the anti-intellectual, anti-education ideology into its details: for example, the only one of the four “nerd protagonists” who makes something, as opposed to sitting around all day thinking and engaging in scientific experiments, is also the only one without a PhD.  The hidden message: the more you learn, the less active you are in “the real world.”

The infantalization of adults.

Outside of work and the search for mates, the four “nerd protagonists” spend most of their air time talking about or doing things related to continuing childhood pursuits such as comic books, juvenile science fiction movies and old video games. Here they are, established in their careers and living on their own (with the exception of one), and they obsess over the joys and hobbies of their years before college. I have yet to see a bookshelf in any “Big Bang” set, nor see an open book; they’re all too busy with their video games and comic books! Beyond the jobs, they are immature teens.

One of the major trends since the baby boomers reached adulthood, one spurred by Disney and other mass media, is that more and more adults are enjoying the entertainments of their childhood instead of graduating to mature activities.

The danger in infantilization is that it degrades the mature thought process, in a sense, keeping people from thinking like adults. Childhood entertainments are simpler; often there are only “good guys” and “bad guys,” with none of the nuances and ambiguity of characters and situations one finds in adult movies or novels, or in life itself. To contrast extremes, pulling at a joy stick takes a much lower level of sophistication than listening to Beethoven.

The other problem with infantilization is that it keeps people self-centered, as children are before socialization. Much of the work of psychologists and psychiatrists not involved with writing prescriptions for pills has to do with pushing people to confront the unhealthy or anti-productive patterns of childhood.  From Pixar and Disney to computer games for adults, infantilization reinforces these childhood and childish patterns.

Life is lived through consumption.

Like in most TV shows, desires, emotions, relationships and celebrations are typically manifested in “Big Bang” by buying something.

Even in plot details, the show depends upon myths and misperceptions.  For example, at an academic conference, the short Howard (the one without the PhD) meets the old boyfriend of his girlfriend.  The former lover is extremely tall and an African-American.  During the remainder of the show, Howard obsesses because he is certain that he has a smaller sexual organ which provides less pleasure to his girlfriend than the former lover’s did.

The show thus promotes two false myths at one time—that men of African decent have bigger sex organs and that women prefer bigger ones. Studies show, of course, that there is no difference in average penis size between races, and that while penis size matters to some women, a majority of women don’t care, or only care if all other things are equal; there are a lot of those “other things” though, including attraction, time of month, appropriateness as a father, tenderness, technique and endurance. Men obsess much more about size than women do, and that’s the point. The objective of promulgating the size myth to men is similar to pushing the myth of beauty to women—to keep them insecure. Like the immature, the insecure are more likely to believe the ads and other propaganda that tells us that buying something is the way to feel, and be, better.

There is, however, one saving grace to “The Big Bang” theory, and that is the character of Sheldon, brilliantly rendered by Jim Parsons. Sheldon is the one with the photographic memory, thought processes that are more computer-like than human and the rigidity of nature that is constantly setting rules about small and large matters. I think that Sheldon is the most original character on TV since Jaleen White created Steve Erkel and energized “Family Matters,” an otherwise dreary 90’s sit-com. Like Jack Nicholson, Greta Garbo, Charlie Chaplin or Johnny Depp, it’s hard not to keep one’s eyes on Parsons when he is on screen.

While I reject the ideology that formed the Sheldon character, I nevertheless thoroughly enjoy Sheldon/Parsons’ monologues, responses and takes, all delivered with truly impressive acting technique. When someone reaches a pinnacle of artistic expression, we don’t forgive and forget their obnoxious beliefs, but we do put them to the side when considering their work. We do it with racists like T.S. Eliot, Ferdinand Celine (French novelist) and Buster Keaton, and we do it with supporters of totalitarian aristocracies like Leni Riefenstahl, Moliere and Aristophanes. It’s too bad that to see Parsons create his character, we also have to watch the rest of this dreadful sit-com.

You may notice a few new links on the OpEdge home page this week: They link to the websites of two well-respected national publications, The Progressive Populist and Jewish Currents. Progressive Populist has started running all the OpEdge blog posts at its website, while Jewish Currents is running the occasional post its editor thinks is of particular interest to his readers.  I can hardly express how pleased I am to be associated with these publications, both of which are leading the progressive charge in the news media.

Progressive Populist is a biweekly that tends to reprint news reports, opinion columns, blog posts and political cartoons by progressives and liberals that appear first in other venues.  It carries regular columns by such left-wing stalwarts as Jim Hightower, Amy Goodman, Jesse Jackson, Alexander Cockburn and Ariana Huffington, among others. 

The November 1 issue of Progressive Populist exemplifies how the publication can serve as a great cure for the mainstream media blues.  It has 9 stories about Occupy Wall Street, all sympathetic to the protesters.  Other articles in this issue analyze water policies, the proposed gas pipeline from Canada to Texas, campaign finance, the presidential race, farm policy and GE ending its pension plan for employees, all written from the liberal or progressive perspective.

Another antidote to the mainstream news media is Jewish Currents, a progressive Jewish bimonthly magazine that carries on the insurgent tradition of the Jewish left through independent journalism, political commentary and a “countercultural” approach to Jewish arts and literature. Jewish Currents stands out among Jewish publications in its commitment to diversity and democracy in Jewish life and the independence of its political voice.  While we see many Jewish publications veering rightward, Jewish Currents continues to be an outspoken progressive and secular voice in the Jewish community.

Its 16-page arts section, “JCultcha & Funny Pages” is also very cool.  JCultcha showcases contemporary well-known and underground Jewish artists and poets — including my poetry. Subscribers also receive a daily dose of Jewish history with the publication’s “JewDayo” email posts.

I urge all OpEdge readers to subscribe to or contribute to Progressive Populist, and all with an interest in Jewish matters to subscribe or contribute to Jewish Currents.  (And while they don’t carry OpEdge, I can’t forget to recommend Nation and The New York Review of Books as well). Take a break from the free market propaganda and trivialization of issues found in the mainstream news media!

When Julien Benda wrote The Betrayal of the Intellectuals (in French: La Trahison des Clercs) in 1927, he defined the “intellectual” (or “clerc”) much as we define the “knowledge worker” today: the professionals who manipulate  bodies of knowledge to deliver mostly services, such as university professors, policy wonks, writers, lawyers, accountants, doctors, teachers, engineers and designers. 

In his long essay, Benda argues that that European “knowledge workers” of the preceding hundred years often ceased to follow their professional dictates to reason dispassionately about political and military matters, instead becoming apologists for nationalism, warmongering and racism.

The most obvious contemporary betrayal by a knowledge worker must be John Yoo, the lawyer who at the behest of his bosses in the Bush II administration concocted a legal argument (mostly built on invalid premises) to justify the use of torture. 

We are seeing two examples of knowledge worker betrayals dominate the news right now: the medical decisions made by Dr. Conrad Murray, Michael Jackson’s physician, that first incapacitated and then led to the death of the pop entertainer, and the decision by at least two Penn State administrators to conceal the predatory sexual abuse of children by a long-time assistant football coach.

Jackson’s doc and the Penn State administrators have a lot in common:

• Both sets of actions were made to avoid horrible truths, i.e., this talented entertainer had a major substance abuse problem and an adult in authority was having sex with 10-year-olds.
• Both focused on short-term issues, i.e., keeping Michael happy and damage control.
• Both acted to protect institutions, for Michael Jackson had (and still has) the kind of institutional brand of a Penn State.
• In neither case were decisions colored by important concerns of true community scope, such as the hypothetical example of killing someone to keep millions of people from starving. At the end of the day, we’re talking about trivial matters—pop music and football.
• In both cases, behind the trivial matter was a whole lot of money at stake. 

Most in common, though, is the fact that in deciding to act illegally, they also acted unethically. They betrayed their professions. Education in all professions emphasizes ethical behavior. Additionally, all professions have a code of ethics, which stress these principles:

1. Always act on the truth, which means making decisions based on the truth, not what you want the truth to be.
2. Always tell the truth and never cover up the inconvenient.
3. Act in the best interests of your institution or client and the community, but put the truth and the community’s interest ahead of the client’s desires.

While no set of professional ethics may employ these precise words, the thoughts behind these words serve as the ethical foundation of all knowledge-based professions, such as teaching, law, accounting, human resources, advertising, engineering and research.

It’s clear that in the decisions they made, both the physician and the administrators betrayed the ethics of their profession, and of all knowledge workers.

The same, sadly, can be said about football coach Joe Paterno, who should now consider resigning. Paterno has been exonerated by the authorities because he did his job by kicking the accusation upstairs to the administration, although he claims to have done so without inquiring as to the exact nature of the horrific acts his graduate assistant reported to him. Maybe he did his job, but if someone came to me—or virtually everyone I know—and told any of us he saw a coach doing something inappropriate with a 10-year-old, we would certainly ask what it was. And once we heard that what was seen was a sexual act, we would not only pass the information to the boss, we would bug her or him frequently about the status of the case. Joe-Pa never did, and that makes him culpable.

Last night police used tear gas and billy clubs to prevent Occupy Wall Street protesters from expanding the area they control in Oakland, California. Suddenly the fact that a very small number of individual protesters had broken windows earlier in the day fell to page 100 of the news coverage. The main stream and rightwing news media could have gone to town trying to attach the destructive values of the vandals to everyone else in the peaceful and peace-loving Occupy Wall Street movement. But the police attack was a much more powerful, and frightening story that drowned out the peccadilloes of the few vandals in the crowd.

The lesson once again, the one that Oakland authorities don’t seem to want to learn, is that most of the public favor the protesters and it therefore attracts very negative publicity to act violently against them. As I explained to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter a few days ago, governments and corporations should wait out the occupiers.  Although I support Occupy Wall Street, I nonetheless predict that the movement will either graduate to other methods or play itself out when the weather turns cold.

Meanwhile, another phalanx of the rightwing news media launched an attack on the Occupy Wall Street movement yesterday. Unfortunately, it’s a dud that shouldn’t do any damage to the image of the movement, at least not among those who can do some common sense thinking.

The Daily Caller, a Washington, D.C.-based website founded by conservative pundit Tucker Carlson and former Cheney factotum Neil Patel, reported that the average value of the homes of Occupy Wall Streeters arrested in NYC was $305,000, almost 70% more than the national average of $185,400 across the country. 

The headline shouted out the message: Many Occupy Wall Street protesters live in luxury.

As experts, the article quotes other Daily Caller writers: “Sleeping beside the hardcore activists are increasing numbers of wealthy students turning up to make the most of the party atmosphere, drugs and free food,” reporters Paul Bentley and Micela McLucas wrote in October. “While they dress down to blend in, the youngsters’ privileged backgrounds are revealed by glimpses of expensive gadgetry or the absent minded mention of their private schools during heated political debates.”

We’re supposed to frown on these lazy rich kids who want to party instead of getting jobs. 

But the statistic is both misleading and meaningless. Misleading, because they are based on arrests made in the New York City protest. Even if many of the protesters came from around the country, the largest number will naturally have come from the immediate region, i.e., New York City, Long Island, Northern New Jersey, Westchester county and Western Connecticut,  all of which have among the very highest costs of living in the country. I’m sure the average cost per home of protesters in Cleveland and Pittsburgh are much lower, because most of the people protesting in those towns live in those low cost areas.

The statistics are meaningless for two reasons: The one message that all of the various Occupy Wall Street movements around the country have broadcast clear from say one is that the movement represents the other 99%.  I assure you that someone living in a home worth $305,000 is not among the wealthiest 1% of the population, who, let’s remember, own 35% of all U.S. wealth.

But beyond that, who cares if some of the protesters come from the wealthiest 1%?  I would be delighted if it turns out to be the case that people in the top 1% have financed the Occupy Wall Street movement. It means that there are unselfish people around who realize that they have been taking too much of the pie resulting in recession, joblessness and widespread economic unease. It means that there are people willing to put their society ahead of increasing their own largess, to sacrifice for the good of the nation.

Of course, some might call them class traitors. To be sure, anyone wealthy who is part of Occupy Wall Street is a traitor to the basic American ideology since the time of Reagan: the principle that people should always seek what is in their own best interest.  The theory, which takes out of context and then misinterprets one sentence of the 18th century Scottish economist Adam Smith, proposes that if everyone seeks his own selfish good, unimpeded by the state of course, then society will prosper. History disproved this theory even before Smith was born, for example, Spain under Phillip II, the French ancien régime and the last centuries of the Roman Empire.

The number of traitors to Reaganism increases on a daily basis, even if most of our elected officials still prefer to ignore or diminish our growing numbers. If in fact some truly wealthy people are involved in Occupy Wall Street, it’s good reason for the other 99% to rejoice.

The cover of yesterday’s Parade showed Ellen DeGeneres holding a giant lit-up pumpkin. The headline read “Happy Halloween from Ellen DeGeneres.” 

Inside was an article that essentially was an interview of the terminally nice Ellen. The secondary headline was: “Our Halloween treat for you—a sit-down with Ellen Degeneres, the new queen of daytime talk.” This piece of text, by the way, was arranged to be the carved-out nose of a pumpkin. The main headline, a quote from Ellen in red, served as carved-out mouth: “Making people FEEL GOOD is all I ever wanted to do.”

The inside back cover displayed a full-page ad for a Cover Girl line of makeup called “Simply Ageless.” The ad focused on the spokesperson for this line of cosmetics, who happens to be…you guessed it!…Ellen DeGeneres.

A hat trick consists of three goals in one hockey game scored by one player, and Parade certainly scored an ideological hat trick with this issue.

Here are the three big ideological scores Parade made:

1. Advanced celebrity culture, which offers conspicuous consumption and anti-intellectualism as the aspirations for the public.  The celebrity as behavior model typically involves buying something, which Ellen suggests almost first thing in the article. We see two foci on celebrity culture in Parade: 1) We celebrate a holiday through the celebrity; 2) We navigate a controversial social issue—gay marriage—through a celebrity.
2. Promoted cultural homogenization: Cultural homogenization is changing parts of an authentic experience, e.g. the spices in Indian food or a novel with a tragic ending—to make the experience more like a standard issue one that will be milder, less controversial, more inclusive and/or easier to understand.  Think of the Mexican-themed restaurant at which you can’t get corn tortillas.  Parade homogenizes Halloween by forgetting about the scary trick and the family tradition parts, and focusing only on the treat—those little pieces of candy that seem to go down so easily, one after the other after the other.  The treat isn’t candy, though, but a chat with that nice gay lady, Ellen whom you get to see on TV almost every day.  Talking to Ellen for Halloween is akin to thinking that picking up trash in a city park commemorates Dr. Martin Luther King because it’s service to others.
3. Made the commercial transaction the center of all concerns: All Ellen does in the article is sell something as the answer for emotional needs.  She sells her show, she sells her new book, she sells her cosmetics. Of course, the entire article was bought and sold by the Simply Ageless line of cosmetics. In the ad biz, we call buying an ad and getting an article for free a “pay-for-play.”

Lots of my younger readers may be scratching their heads and saying to themselves, “That old codger OpEdge, to think that anyone reads Parade anymore!”

Whether people read this long-time mélange of celebrity news, bad food advice, well-worn health tips, patriotism and middle American values I can’t say. But I do know that virtually every local Sunday newspaper in America has a copy slipped into the coupon section. Add up the circulation of all those thousands of newspapers and it’s hard not to conclude that more people read or have the opportunity to read Parade than read or have the opportunity to read virtually any other media outlet in print, on line or over the airwaves (even with the decline of newspapers).  Parade is one of the most important taste-re-enforcers in American society and one of the most effective propaganda vehicles for the ideology of consumerism.  

I do commend Parade for accepting Ellen’s homosexuality matter-of-factly and for promoting a gay as America’s replacement for our “big sister” Oprah Winfrey.  But remember, Parade is never a frontrunner on important issues, only an indicator that the American people have made up their mind and believe whatever it is that Parade is promoting, be it recycling, the widespread impact of post-trauma stress disorder or gay marriage.  Representing consensus thinking enables Parade to do it what it does best: sell the idea that buying stuff—for example stuff that celebrities buy and recommend—is the be-all and end-all of the good life.

The death of Steve Jobs led to a tidal wave of sympathetic news coverage. Jobs the entrepreneur. Jobs the visionary. Jobs the entertainer. Jobs the philanthropist. Jobs the college dropout who showed those pointy heads that college isn’t needed (while creating thousands of jobs for the college educated and virtually none for anyone else).  Jobs the obsessed perfectionist.

 Not much of it made sense to me, except from the standpoint of mainstream propaganda about the business person as heroic maker of history. Then again, I had recently spent two hours trying to convince my 22-year-old engineering graduate school son that Jobs was less important to world civilization than Gustave Flaubert, the great French novelist who is routinely credited with a large number of innovations in prose writing that we now take for granted.

 Sue me if I’m not impressed with the portability of the iPod or iPhone, but am negatively influenced by the tinny sound and small screen. And sue me again if I never saw any advantage in an Apple computer over a standard issue PC. And sue me a third time if I’m not enraptured by animation—I am after all, an adult.

 I kept my silence about Jobs, though, as it seemed to me that it would be sour and small-minded to complain about the outsized coverage of Jobs’ death, which continues unabated three weeks later.

That is until learning in The Economist that Steve Jobs was the largest single shareholder in Disney. 

Disney represents a number of pernicious trends and ideological imperatives in American culture.  Let’s see how many of them would apply to Apples, iPods, iPhones, iPads and/or Pixar films:

• The infantilization of adults, which means that adults continue pursuing the immature  entertainments of their youth such as Disney theme parks for adults, slapstick buddy movies and video games, instead of growing into more adult preoccupations. Pixar fits right into that trend. So do iPods and iPhones, because they give you music and information right here right now, just like a child likes it to be delivered.
• The idea of putting a brand on everything, which replaces real sentiment with a commodity to which artificial (or manufactured) sentiment has been attached through applying a label.  Movies become books, comic books, mugs, posters, lunchboxes, pens, tee-shirts, key chains, glasses, dolls of various sizes and materials, jigsaw and crossword puzzles, board games, television shows, theme park rides, theme park characters, and, finally, sequels.  Again, the Pixar connection is obvious.
• The homogenization of culture, which means that instead of a mosaic of subcultures each of which offers authentic experiences drawing on centuries-old traditions, there is one homogenized culture everywhere.  In a sense, the dominant culture extinguishes the smaller cultures, much as dominant species can wipe out the weaker species in an ecosystem and thus spawn long-term ecological disaster.  Disney represents cultural homogenization more than any other company or brand. Whatever the big city, you can find a Disney Store somewhere, with a Hard Rock Café, a P F. Chang, a few Starbucks, McDonald’s, Olive Garden and a Subway or two close by. And an Apple store, too, now that you mention it. Part of homogenization is to make everything taste or feel the same. For example, the bagel chains have increased the size and sugar content of a bagel so much that the standard bagel is no longer a bagel, but a sweet roll in a different shape. Or think of how many of today’s movies reduce to the same video-game-like explosions, crashes and chases. If you want to see homogenization at its best, go to a Mexican or Italian theme restaurant at a Disney theme park. You’ll get the colors and the names, but not the food. Jobs’ products (excepting the movies) fought homogenization by lowering the cost of setting up a special interest network, e.g., for an ethnic or political group or for people who like model trains. But Jobs’ technology also made it easier for the technical integration that helps large media conglomerates control all their hundreds of media outlets and thereby homogenize the news and information we receive.
• The Victorian Disney morality, which I will exemplify with two recurring Disney themes:  

1. The Disney Princess, which trains little girls to be pedestal-dwelling clothes-and-jewelry consumers who find value in being “treated like a princess.” As Betty Friedan described it more than 50 years ago, being treated like a “princess” leads to the malaise of the imprisoned. The princess on the pedestal is both worshipped and enslaved.
2. The Disney belief that the best lifestyle is to be found in a homogenous small town based on everyone owning a car. Even in the age of Disney cartoon heroes of color, this small town vision dominates Disney theme parks, Disney literature and Disney movies.

From what’s coming out in obituaries and rushed biographies, Steve Jobs clearly did not subscribe to the Disney moral vision, and that’s to his credit.

But regarding the basic business ideology, Jobs and Disney were very much on the same page. The commodification of emotional value through branding, the infantilization of adults and homogenization away from authenticity towards some lowest common denominator—these methods of Disney were not alien to Steve Jobs the business person. 

Over the weekend New York Times opinion columnist Joe Nocera went for a propaganda hat trick: At one time he tried to rewrite history, rehabilitate rightwing jurist Robert Bork and place blame for the politicizing of court confirmations on Democrats.

In his piece titled “The Ugliness Started With Bork,” Nocera says yesterday marked the 24th anniversary of the Senate turning down Bork’s nomination for the Supreme Court. Forgetting the earlier politically inspired rejections of Nixon-nominees Clement Haynsworth and Harold Carswell, Nocera writes that it was the Bork process that led to the politicizing of Supreme Court and other judicial confirmations in the U.S. Senate, as well as to the current coy practice of court nominees fudging about what their past record and political opinions are.

Nocera blames the Democrats for voting against Bork because they feared that with Bork on the bench, the Supremes would overturn Roe V. Wade, the landmark decision that affirmed that under the laws of the United States a woman has a legal right to have an abortion.

What Nocera never mentions is the outrage that the entire country felt over the nomination to the Supreme Court of the man who had implemented what is still called the “Saturday Night Massacre.”

Let’s take Mr. Peabody’s WABACK (pronounced way-back) machine to Saturday, October 20, 1973. Archibald Cox, President Richard Nixon’s special investigator into the Watergate break-in is about to release evidence that implicates all the President’s men.  Nixon asks the Attorney General and life-long Republican Elliot Richardson to fire Cox and Richardson
resigns instead.

Nixon then asks the Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, another rock of the Republican Party, to give Cox the axe.  Ruckelshaus also prefers to resign than commit this unethical act.

The next guy on the list is Solicitor General Robert Bork and Bork does it.  Bork fires Archibald Cox, setting the Watergate investigation back a few months, but more importantly symbolizing to the American people the enormous grasp at unlawful power that the Nixon Administration has taken with Watergate and the cover-up.

Some, including Bork himself, have justified the firing of Cox as legal and therefore permitted if requested by the Commander in Chief.  Let’s leave it to those attracted to discussing the number of angels fitting on a pinhead to determine if the act was technically legal.

The narrow issue of legality is moot: Everyone knew then and knows now that when Bork fired Cox he was taking part in a government cover-up of illegal activity.

The American public quickly came to regard Bork as a symbol of the Watergate cover-up, as much of a symbol as Ehrlichman, Haldeman, Dean and Hunt.

The Democrats voted against Bork because of his role in the Watergate scandal.  In writing that it was anything else, Nocera participates in the campaign to rehabilitate Bork that the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Times and other media have pursued for many decades now.  There is now a similar intermittent campaign for John Yoo, who wrote Bush II’s odious justification for torture: if the President orders it, it’s not illegal by definition.

Nocera’s conclusion is truly precious: “The next time a liberal asks why Republicans are so intransigent, you might suggest that the answer lies in the mirror.”

It’s sheer nonsense.  Republicans are intransigent because they realize that their political and economic stands benefit only a minority of the citizens of the United States.  Intransigence in Congress, like passing laws to limit voting, outright lying about facts and linking of economic positions that only benefit the wealthy to social issues such as abortion—these are merely the means by which these exponents of the ultra wealthy keep control.

Perhaps the next time Nocera looks in the mirror, this long-time distinguished reporter should ask himself how good he feels about revising history to rehabilitate one of the chief implementers of an illegal government cover-up, just so he can throw a stone at the Democrats.

It has been absolutely amazing to see the uniformity of coverage by the mainstream news media of President Obama’s announcement that virtually all U.S. troops and mercenaries will be out of Iraq by the end of the year.  It was as if every reporter wrote down practically rote from a government news release.

I analyzed 10 original stories about the announcement of war’s final end found in 10 major national media, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Associated Press (for example, as published in the Detroit Free Press), CNN, ABC, MSNBC, CBS and National Public Radio.

Now that’s pretty much a “who’s who” of the influential mainstream news media.  And all essentially gave the same report!

All the stories mentioned the number of Americans killed (about 4,400) and wounded (about 32,000).  Most of the stories also mentioned the commonly accepted low side estimate of $700 billion as the cost for waging the war.  Virtually all the longer stories also mentioned that some 4,000 mercenaries will remain in Iraq, although in the polite parlance of pro-war reporting, these hired hands were called “military contractors.”  Many of the stories also give a brief history of the war’s endgame, typically mentioning the 2007 surge, the withdrawal agreement President Bush II negotiated with whatever was the Iraqi government at that time and President’s Obama’s pledge to get our troops out.

But two facts that should have been vital to the news coverage of the end of this long, bloody and useless war were missing in all the mainstream reports:

• How it started
• The impact on Iraq

I can understand why the mainstream news media would want to avoid talking about the war’s start, because collectively these supposedly independent organizations did a very poor job of analyzing the assertions by the Bush II Administration that served as justification for the war. President Bush II, his VP “Darth” Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield and even the estimable good soldier General Colin Powell all lied to the public about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They all fabricated a connection between Iraq’s former dictator Saddam Hussein and the terrorist coterie that planned and realized the 9/11 attacks.  They lied and the news media by and large swallowed the lies hook, line and sinker.

And I guess I also understand why not even one reporter mentioned the damage done to Iraq during the extended discussion of the war’s cost to the United States.  Estimates I have seen range from about 110,000 Iraqis dead (by Wiki-Leaks, the Iraq Body Count Project and the Associated Press) to more than a million dead (found in an Opinion Research survey).

Among those proffering the 110,000 number, about 67,000 is established as the number of innocent Iraqi civilians who died in the war.  That’s compared to zero in the United States, which makes sense since the war was not fought on our ground.  I have been unable to locate any numbers for the numbers of Iraqis wounded, but I do know that the war has led to 2.1 million Iraqi refugees in Syria and Jordan and another 2.25 million Iraqis displaced from their homes to someplace else in Iraq.

Since the reports blasted out the cost in dollars to the United States of the 9-year war in Iraq, we should also take a look at the financial damage to Iraq. Many cities were turned to rubble and the Iraqi industrial base and economy were destroyed. So were many priceless cultural relics from the ancient epoch in which Iraq was the focal point for the development of human societies.   I can’t find a total damage estimate but it is surely in the tens, if not the hundreds of billions of dollars.

I find it both narcissistic and hardhearted for the United States, as represented by our major news sources, to dwell on our own relatively light pain from the war while completely ignoring the enormous suffering we have wrought on the Iraqi people. It’s as if someone causes a 10-car pileup that critically injures 25 and walks away with one small scratch on his knee but loudly complaining because he’s not getting the medical care he urgently needs.

There have already been many reactions to President Obama’s announcement of war’s end.  Democrats rejoice, while Republicans tend to sound cautions.  But no one is showing any contrition.

Another analogy comes to mind: A police force raids the wrong house, smashes all the furniture and rips up every sofa and mattress looking for contraband, finally realizes that they have the wrong address and leaves without apologizing or pledging to fix the damage.  This analogy isn’t perfect, though, since in this imaginary police raid, no one dies.

After excoriating Michele Bachmann and Cowboy Rick Perry, at least symbolically, when they first began to make noises in the polls, I initially decided to hold my silence for a while about Herman Cain, the latest Republican right-wing flavor of the week.  The news media seemed to be doing a pretty good job of explaining why Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan is regressive, which means that poor people would pay a higher share of their income and of all taxes paid and that wealthy people would pay a lower share.  Surely, once more people knew what 9-9-9 really meant, Cain would fade.

It’s still early in the flavor-of-the-week cycle, but Cain appears to be gaining ground.  A new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll of GOP voters finds Romney leading Cain by 1 point—26 percent to 25 percent, a 14-point jump for Cain since the last poll taken three weeks ago.  The poll has a 3 percent margin of error, which means Romney and Cain are virtually tied.    Time flies when you’re having fun, but I think Cain has now held the non-Romney lead longer than either Bachman or Perry.

I think that Cain has one big advantage over the other non-Romneys in the race:  Koch Brothers money and Koch Brothers-hired operatives are fueling the Cain campaign.  The Kochs, owners of widespread energy and manufacturing interests and long-time opponents of government regulation and all environmental laws, are also the primary bank for the Tea Party.  The Kochs and their network of wealthy friends may enable Cain to go the distance.

The Koch money legitimizes Cain in the way that big money always does.  As I have written before, the media always tends to provide more and more positive coverage to the candidates with the most money. In the case of the Kochs, moreover, the legitimacy of their support also helps with the lie-and-myth-addled rightwing media.   

The mainstream media has been pointing out some of Cain’s big verbal faux pas, for example, his call for building an electric fence between the United States and Mexico and his flirtation with the “birther” fallacy. 

But no one is asking the broader, more important question: Is Herman Cain qualified? Or to coin a biblical pun: Is Cain able?

The fact that he worked his way up from relative poverty, like Bill Clinton and unlike the always-wealthy Mittman, speaks well for Cain’s abilities, at least his abilities to rise in the highly self-contained world of large corporations.  That his field was fast food doesn’t make him any more of a bad guy than Romney is for his role in combining and fracturing companies, always leaving a much leaner workforce.  Both represent the amoral aspect of business: we are here to make money, even if it puts a lot of people out of work or poisons them with too many calories and too much fat, sugar and artificial chemicals.  And each represents another strand in the fabric of current American society: fat and unequal when it comes to wealth.

The media has tended to take Cain’s outrageous statements as proof of his clownishness, while giving Romney the benefit of the doubt.  The assumption is that Cain believes his rightwing cant against environmental regulations, immigrants, unions, taxes and healthcare reform, whereas, when Romney repudiates his own healthcare reform or rails against all regulations, he’s playing to the crowd and will start to articulate moderate views once he has locked up the nomination.

To my mind, they’re both panderers, but learning the art of pandering is what made them business successes and will certainly help both continue to raise money.  Romney has government experience.  He was a relative success as a moderate Republican governor of one of our bluest of blue states, although he had the help of an economy in full bubble.  One could make a case that Cain is as qualified to be president as the Mittman.  I wouldn’t make such a case, because Cain’s views disqualify him off the bat: they are too extremist and too much based on myths and lies.

I’m still confident that Cain will fade, just as Perry and Bachmann have.  The Republican party seems hell-bent on nominating Mitt Romney.  You could make the case that he’s the best of the lot, but keep in mind that at heart Mitt is a born-rich boy representing the interests of the rich.  That’s not a lot different from a got-rich boy representing the interests of the rich.

OpEdge is expanding into the performing and other arts by offering a new blog titled “OpEdgy Arts & Performance,” written by distinguished choreographer and dance scholar, Mark Franko. On an occasional basis, Mark will write on various aspects of the performing and other arts.  Mark’s writing fits nicely into the OpEdge mentality: it’s provocative, precise and challenging.

You will always be able to find OpEdgy Arts & Performance through a link on the OpEdge homepage.  We will also blast tweets and Facebook updates when a new blog entry appears. 

In his first blog entry, Mark analyzes the recent production of Lully’s Atys at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City.

Now something about Mark: Mark is a Professor of Dance and Chair of the Theatre Arts Department at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He has written several books, including The Work of Dance: Labor, Movement, and Identity in the 1930’s, Dancing Modernism/Performing Politics, Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body, and The Dancing Body in Renaissance Choreography. His articles on dance and performance have appeared in Discourse, PMLA, The Drama Review, Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics, Theatre Journal, and in numerous anthologies.

Mark is also a distinguished choreographer. His company, NovAntiqua, have been performing in the United States and abroad since 1985. Franko’s dancing background is diverse: he began his dance career with Paul Sanasardo Dance Company, later appeared in classical repertory, as well as in Oskar Schlemmer’s “Bauhaus Dances.” His choreography has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Harkness Foundation for Dance, the Getty Research Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, the Zellerbach Family Fund and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. NovAntiqua has appeared at the J. Paul Getty Museum (Malibu), the Berlin Werkstatt Festival, the de la Torre Bueno Award Ceremony (Lincoln Center, New York), France’s Toulon Art Museum, the Montpellier Opera, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival, the Princeton University Theater and Dance Series, the Haggerty Art Museum (Milwaukee), and ODC Theatre San Francisco.

Mark’s a pretty impressive guy and we’re lucky to have him become part of the OpEdge family.