On last week's NoOne's Listening podcast, Irene McGee interviewed linguist and media critic Noam Chomsky. (Previous post about Irene McGee here.) Professory Chomsky gives his short, sharp take on corporate news (the stuff between the ads), consumer propaganda, and the potential of citizen journalism. Amazingly, Chomsky is able to maintain his optimism about this country. From the podcast:
Both political parties and the media are far to the right of the general population on a whole host of issues. And the population is just disorganized, atomized… And that's why the media and campaigns keep away from (political) issues. They know that on issues, they're going to lose people. So therefore you have… George Bush… this pampered kid who came from a rich family and went to prep school and an elite university. And you have to present him as an ordinary guy who makes grammatical errors, which I'm sure he's trained to make–he didn't talk that way at Yale–and a fake Texas twang, and he's off to his ranch to cut brush or something. It's like a toothpaste ad. And I think a lot of people know it.
