Media Cannot Be Blamed For Following Owners' Orders*

(*Unless at a war-crimes tribunal.)

Elsewhere today, yer ol' perf' saw repeated another iteration of a constant, common complaint that the "media" are responsible for all our ills, because they don't present 'our' side of the stories as sympathetically as those of the (in this case) 'education deformers.'

And it occurred to me to repeat my customary reply: They're "just doing their jobs."

The 'media' is/are wholly owned subsidiaries of huge, enormous, globe-spanning, wealthy corporate enterprises which gobbled them up like jellybeans during the Raygoon years. The 'media' print, publish, broadcast, and otherwise disseminate what they are TOLD to publish, etc.

The "press" unself-consciously constitutes itself as gatekeepers. The best way to exert thought-control is not directly, by telling folks WHAT to believe. It is by influencing what they think ABOUT--the narrative--and the language and vocabulary of images with which they think about it. That's what 'the media' does.

Control over the gate-keeping function--directing the narrative, vocabulary, and syntax of the 'public mind' and the power it implies--is what is at stake in the debate (such as it is) about who can CALL themselves 'journalists.'

It is worth recalling, too, Upton Sinclair's admonition: "It's hard to get a man to understand what his paycheck depends on him not understanding."

Worth remembering, as well, as we wade ever deeper into the morass of the Big Muddy/CorpoRat State: In the corporate state, corporate media are State Media.

Stone and Bone: The basic bits of carpentry and joinery

Yer ol carpenter has a treat: Here's a gay-ron-teed Joiners and Carpenters NERDGASM. I LOVE stuff like this.
"Primitive" people aren't intellectually less competent than civilized ones. They just haven't had the need or the occasion to think THOSE thoughts.  That's why there are no "superior" or "inferior" languages--or morality systems, either. They all do only and exactly what the people who usae them need them to do.
The take-away, for me  --the ex-journeyman ClassA spike spitter: Basically, all the cuts, joints, channels, mortices, and the other tricks of wood-working were already in use 7, 8, mebbe 10 THOUSAND years ago. Done with stone-and-bone, alone; and intuition gained from experience, of course.
I could go on...
I won't....
Enjoy!

"Selfie" -- 10/17/14

For someone approaching their 69th birth anniversary (in six months), having been run relatively hard and put up wet a few times, veteran of one war, three marriages and countless close encounters, and a dozen or more careers, to say NOTHING of the bales of cannabis, gallons of beer and whisky, and the other drugs I eagerly sought and consumed, this (I think an unbiased observer might remark) is an amazingly un-lined, un-wrinkled, un-scarred, UN-careworn countenance, nest paw?

(There is, I should say, I room we don't enter, wherein hangs a portrait we don't discuss...)

I had the extremely good fortune to be born at a time when my race, gender, family class location and historical moment made it possible for me to do just about whatever I ever wanted to do.
Not that I ever WANTED to do much of anything. I am lazy as paint. Indolence is my life-long avocation
But that same 'fortune'/location that could have propelled me into high echelons of anything I'd cared to work hard at also made it possible for me to simply do whatever came along well enough to get along.
I'm not now wealthy, though I'm not 'poor.' I endured my parents (lord love 'em) long enough to have earned a small inheritance, with Soc. Sec, and a (much diminished, thanks to 2007-09) small stash I put away during the last two decades of my working life when I was steadily and gainfully (and for by far the longest durations) employed as a paid, professional scholar, distorting and distressing the placid certainties of complacent, bourgeois, college kids in two states. I don't think I'll out-live it, ceteris paribus.
But I don't lack for anything I really want, that much, these days. I got a roof over me and Budreaux, food for us, and wheels to get us around (e.g., a trip to the groomer last evening to get nails trimmed). It's not bad...

Dr. Woody'z "Iron-Clad Lawz," Rulez, Maximz and Operational Definitionz For "Binnezz" and Politicz

Dr. Woody'z "Iron-Clad Lawz," Rulez, Maximz and Operational Definitionz

Dr. Woody'z Iron Clad Law of Congressional Compromise:

If compromise is unavoidablly required in order to pass legislation, no compromise may be proposed or accepted which does NOT maximize ass-fucking the poor and helpless.

Dr. Woody'z Iron-Clad Law of Political Economy: 

 It is futile, if not indeed impossible, to try to conduct a meaningful political democracy within the structure of a totalitarian economy.

Dr. Woody'z Iron-Clad Law of Political Succession:

The apparent ease with which power transfers is an accurate index how little of it actually changes hands.

Dr. Woody'z Operational Definition of Racism:

There is ONLY one kind of 'racism:"Structural racism. It's almost redundant. Individuals may be biased, bigoted, discriminatory, prejudiced. There are such individuals in EVERY group. But they are not necessarily "racist." For such attitdes/behaviors to become "racism," they must occur in a system which (even tacitly) approves of, authorizes and empowers such behaviors as means to interrupt, exclude, or deny the fair and equal participation in a society's "cultural goods" to people deemed "inferiors" to the dominant group. Racism requires "structural" complicity and acquiescence.

Dr. Woody'z Iron-Clad  Rule of Racial Ressentiment:

Low-ranking members of racial majorities will endure a small diminution of their own condition or reduction in their benefits if, by doing so, they believe they can ensure those whom they detest as inferiors will suffer greater reduction and discomfort.

Dr. Woody'z Iron-clad Law of  Human Regulators:

If there is ANY possibility for abuse and/or corruption to occur, abuse and/or corruption WILL occur.

Dr. Woody'z Iron-Clad Rule of Media-State Relations

In the Corporate State, corporate media are State Media.

Dr. Woody'z Operational Definition of Propaganda.

The purposes of propaganda, in no particular order, are: One: to gin up--create a climate of-- hatred and fear against external--or/and designated internal--enemies/antagonists
Another: to shape popular compliance with large, 'national' or even international agendae.
Again: to construct and disseminate the dominant 'national' creed/mythology/narrative, and make that dissemination ubiquitous and invisible.
A further one: to normalize and/or rationalize purposeful, manifest falsehoods: The Big Lie is a famed and famously successful 'propaganda' tool.
And yet another: (possibly the culminating and final purpose of propaganda) to create public narratives that legitimize existing power relations and structures. The easiest to propagandize are those who have the most invested in its 'truth.'

Dr. Woody'z Inviolable Revolutionary Maxim:

When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. Revolution is 'rational.'
But when you have anything, you have EVERYTHING to lose. Revolution becomes 'irrational.'
The 'genius' of the present system is to make sure EVERYBODY (nearly) has SOMETHING to lose.

Dr Woody'z Second Law of Revolutionz:

Regime change does no more or less than what it says it does: changes the regime, like a wardrobe, or tires. One group of oligarchs, technocrats and lickspittles gets replaced by another group of oligarchs, technocrats and bootlickers; with the additional caveat that the replacements won't be any better than the replacees at the things they were replaced for not doing well, and may well be MORE venal and corrupt because they'll be the more eager to replace the wealth spent to gain power.

Dr. Woody'z Iron-Clad Rule of  Political Civility:

Civility is the shit-soaked ball-gag the Bosses force into the mouths of workers to deprive the workers of their only real weapon: Their rage...When they tell you to be "civil," they're saying you're not ENTITLED to your rage, to your resentment at being screwed yet again, to your resistance. When they tell you you have to be "civil" to speak, they're really telling you to shut the fuck up!
Don't. 

Dr. Woody'z Five Unbreakable Rules of Business:

1) Buy low; sell high.
2) There are three necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for success: Location, location, and location.
3) A fool and his money are soon parted, and there's a fool born every minute.
4) There's an ass for every seat, so never give a sucker an even break.
5) You CAN cheat an honest man; it's not even that hard. 

Prof. Wombat's Ancillary Commandments of Finance:

1. Always use other people's money.
2. When conducting trades of securities worth as much as toilet paper, take your commissions in real cash money.
3. Speculation is far more lucrative than providing actual goods and services that are worth something in themselves.
4. An excessive concentration on product and customer reveals a lack of managerial expertise.
5. The proper definition of 'long term' is two quarters from now.

Dr. Woody'z Iron-Clad Rules of Understanding the Rich:

1) No large fortune was ever made without an equivalent crime ("You'll find it in Balzac!").
2) When the wealthy say they got their money through hard work, ask WHOSE.
3) No "self-made" person ever really is.
4) The wealthy do not discriminate between truth and falsehood.
5) There is no such thing as a "free market"; everything has its price.

Dr. Woody'z Revolutionary Haiku:

Tumbrels lie, discarded.
Dull'd with age, disuse: the blade.
Still, roses may grow.

Hitting a Child IS "Child Abuse." Period!

One thing I'd bet dollahs to quatloos: Someone who beats a child was beaten AS a child.
You NEVER forget...(Woody blushes, autobiographically)...
Ask anybody.
There's never any ambiguity: you were beaten (spanked, whipped, call it what you will) by someone who was supposed and pretended to protect you (a parent); you remember.
If it happened more than once, there is no "why." It's just a fact of life: When you get home, yer gonna GIT it!
Abusers were abused. It's not an "excuse" It's what happens. Even when there's a realization that it might be "wrong," the abuser finds rationales for their actions, which also function to excuse their abusive parent.
Did you see/watch that Hannity clip where he's smacking the crap outta his desk with a belt while explaining how he'd bee3n beaten by his father, and HE was okay?
Funny how that works.
Oh, yeah, no doubt: It's probably the main reason I NEVER wanted children.
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/9/adrian-peterson-nflspankingchildrencorporalpunishment.html

Labor Day: The USer Middle Class IS Closed

How yer ol' Perfesser seezit, applicationz to the middle class in the USofA, as a function of mobility dependent upon advancing status of workers, are closed, til further notice.

"The Middle Class," itself, has been the most significant USer 'export' for the last 30 years.

Prosperity--'the Middle Class'-- is what has been sent overseas with all those millions of USer jobs that went along with the industries which the Gummint--BOTH "Parties"--encouraged, via tax incentives, etc., to relocate to Asia and Latin America...

In the early '80s, "IT" began to take over, and it taught GlobalCorpoRatz that increased productivity did not NEED to be shared with mere workers; the proceeds could and should be funneled to execs and shareholders. With "IT" it was no longer necessary that workers be "literate." All that was taken care of in the programming of the work/machines. All they had to be was "trainable." And this reduced the need to educate workers, and hence undercut the "Middle Class" aspirations of labor.

The world-corpoRatz learned that they didn't really need a relatively affluent USer middle class--which had grown 'spoiled,' and 'too demanding,' and unruly in it's acquisitions, unions, and privileges.

So the JOBS were exported to 'newly developing' economies where the workers would be 1) (more) grateful for their jobs, 2) less demanding about pay and conditions and 3) less careful about regulation and pollution, and where developing STATES could reap financial benefits and social stability.

Moving the jobs CREATED markets in the newly developing locales by making consumers out of the locals, willing to purchase and use the international "brands." Cars, refrigerators, cell-fones, computers! Suddenly brands like Marlboro took OFF!

To the optimists, I caution: The jobs won't be returning to the USofA anytime soon; not as long as there are environmental regs, unions, and "high" corpoRat taxes. Not, that is, until USer workers are willing to be recompensed like their counterparts in the 'developing world.'

A Biblical Tempest...

This got me thinking (seldom a good idea):

This discovery turns modern Christianity on its head! This bible, dating as far back as 2,000 years, details the Gospel of Barnabas, a disciple of Jesus Christ, which shows that Jesus wasn’t actually crucified and doesn’t claim him to be the son of God, but instead a prophet. The book charges that Apostle Paul was “The Impostor.” The story is completely different. In the Book of Barnabas, Jesus wasn’t crucified, but ascended to heaven alive, and Judas Iscariot was crucified instead.
Read more at http://higherperspective.com/2014/05/1500-year-old-bible.html?utm_source=HP

What could ever be the actual, real, concrete consequences of such a debate? Even if PAUL was an "impostor? " So fucking what?

Since there are no contemporaneous records of EITHER "His" alleged birth or the the alleged death of any such person as "Jesus"--the rebellious, miracle-working, dead-raising, leprosy-curing, water-into-wine-changing, mystic carpenter, and his jolly band of devout catamites, in Roman Judea of that period, or any OTHER period--yer ol' perfesser regards the manner of "His" alleged demise is just as spurious a concern as the manner of "His" alleged birth.

This prompted a further thought, not consequential, but possibly explanatory: 
Christianity did not persist in the West and become the dominant cult for all those centuries because of the soundness of its doctrines, or the generosity of its institutions, or the wisdom of its saints.

It persisted because of its utility in keeping peasant hordes pacified (usually; though there were lapses) from the fall of the Roman empire until the beginning of the 19th Century, Common Era.

Marx famously observed that religion is the opiate of the masses. Christianity indeed is. Opiate's don't dull pain, they relieve mental anguish and anxiety ABOUT pain...Which was what the "pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die" rhetoric of the Church, and still all its scion cults proclaim (except the prosperity preachers). Be patient, endure, offer your suffering up for the souls in purgatory, and when YOU die, there's gonna be the Baby Jeebus waiting at those pearly gates.

This was an extraordinarily persuasive epistemology for 1500 years, in the west.
And the West was where they had perfected, and then linked together, metallurgy, gun-powder, and square-rigging, and set out to conquer the world. Christianity, as interpreted in Rome in the Middle Ages onward, provided the 'ethical' justification for the conquests which the emergent technologies permitted and eventually demanded.

Evangelizing the Word, while collecting slaves, booty and territory? Who could complain with that?

Just as, at the end of the 'Christian" era, and the beginning of the Industrial Age, Utilitarianism appeared--via Bentham and Mill, partly Jevons-- to rationalize and give 'spiritual' weight to--and a priori, to excuse, to shreve--the emergent demons of Capital.

Utulitarianism seeks the "greatest good for the greatest number."
Which really DOES "beg the question": What is "good?"
What counts as the "greatest number?"

In the 1970s, John Rawls, the Harvard philosopher, proposed a theory by which behavior would not be evaluated by the standard of the "greatest good," but that of the "least harm." A sort of social equivalent to the Hippocratic oath: First do no harm!; or the Precautionary Principle, in science. Both are analogous.

It is the same sort of argument which would urge that, if you can discern the lesser evil, and there is no OTHER way to assure the least harm, there would be an affirmative 'duty' to, e.g., vote for it.