The Daisy Spot and Sean Hannity

A young girl is playfully counting as she pulls the petals off of a daisy. She is counting incorrectly. Suddenly, a man's voice starts a count-down of his own: 10-9-8-7 and so on until zero. At the end of count-down, we see a horrible mushroom cloud and hear: "Vote for President Johnson on November 3rd. The stakes are too high."

Run by the committee for the re-election of Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and against the arch-conservative and father of today's conservative movement, Barry Goldwater (Ronald Reagan was not the father of this neo-fascist movement,like many want to believe, but rather merely its offspring).

Produced by the advertising pioneer Tony Schwartz, the ad immediately created an uproar amongst Republicans. They feared the images would too accurately show Goldwater for what he was: a man of extreme views and liable to act without thought as opposed to being a moderate, as they were trying to sell him to the American public.

Image Manipulation

The soundtrack for this ad, the images, the allusion that if Goldwater were elected we could expect nuclear war, were next to genius. They were primitive and straight-forward assaults upon the emotions of the viewers: tactics very common at the time. A billboard in Pittsburg, PA in 1959 showed the hand of a black man in a menacing, reaching pose, fingers curled as if ready to pounce and a white woman with a purse is reacting in horror supposedly seeing this hand. Beneath this imagery are the following words: "Vote Republican on November 4th."

Wow!

Although it seems we have been evolving away from such outright manipulation, such overt racist abuses in political ads, we should not forget Republican abuses like the Willy Horton ads run by George Bush I. I want to hope that that was the exception, really, and that even the win-at-any-price, earth-scorching Republicans know not to abuse black-white tensions so openly--not to say that it still doesn't happen.

This new era of high-tech manipulations, putting people in photos when they weren't there, putting in soundtracks that come from completely different situations, splicing in video in :03 seconds chunks and bits interlaced with venomous so-called "news-reporting/commentary" harkens back to clumsy and historically obvious cuts and purges of photos during Soviet times.

An entire exhibition in Moscow a few years back showed how Russian/Soviet history had lost figures from prominent photos only to see them reappear in the same photos some years later when the "lost person's" standing was renewed: the Soviets proved that the manipulation of journalistic history for control sake, for victory was a valuable tool; a tool in a society that is run by corrupt and evil-doing dictators. As a result, today few Russians put any stock in photos or video for they all know that it can be manipulated and doctored to sell any "present or historical truth.:" reality is in the eye of the editor.

The Republican Party's Propoganda Station: Fox TV

No one can ever accuse Fox-"News" of being journalistic. Truth and facts are not issues they seek to report but rather simplified and emotional versions of the former and latter. A less diplomatic person than myself would call what they report as "news", outright and blatant lies.

Many Americans tune into this channel for their daily dose of news. Sadly, the vast majority who thrive on the Kool-Aid ladled out by Fox-"News" don't seek to back up their information with other more reliable and factual sources: the Associated Press being the least opinionated of them all. The average Fox-"News" watcher doesn't read books on history or political histories. He doesn't have the time, desire or inclination to study these things and that is his free-choice. More power to him.

My beef is not so much with the arguably lazy Fox-"News" viewer as it is with the creators of the reality they pass off regularly as facts. These people are abusing a privilege they have earned from the blood, sweat and tears of generations of Americans who came before them. The boys who assualted the beaches at Normandy would be the last ones to lie or embellish the reality of their accomplishments of that "longest day." As was so sappily brought to my attention recently, the ideas for which our flag stands are ones of honor, truth, goodness, fairness and America.

Sean Hannity's abuse of journalistic principles, his open and obvious manipulation of video footage to create news where news was void, is heinous, irresponsible and should result in castigation. The fact that the ever-vigilante and real-left John Stewart caught this "mistake" should not draw our attention away from Fox's abuses of modern technology.

Fox regularly manipulates and bends the truth via video and audio technology in order to destroy any fair chance democrats--Obama--can have at properly and sanely governing our nation through hardship. Fox was the biggest cheerleader on the race to the illegal invasion of Iraq. They spliced and split and lied to provide "factual news coverage" to the viewers who use this news medium as their sole and gospel one. So many still believe that bombs of mass destruction were found and that Al Qaeda was funded by Saddam Hussein, all thanks to Fox and their support of Bush's lies.

Fox-"News" is not a news organization. It is mouth-piece of the GOPCON Party. It is the propaganda bureau of the GOPCON Party. Fox-"News" is no better than ITAR-TASS--the official "news" organ of the communist party in days gone and now the United Russia Party.

Nevertheless

Sean Hannity and his abuses will go unpunished. Fox-TV will actually gain viewers thanks to this scandal. GOPCON'ers will actually express delight about the fact that they are being duped, entertained by the likes of Hannity. In the vein of Limbaugh, these lazy and dangerous followers of propaganda geniuses on par with Goebbels, will become more boisterous and more anti-America than ever before.

And, as the problems fester and the calls for more tax breaks and less governance increase thanks to lies and abuses of journalistic rights, rights which have been guaranteed thanks to the spilled blood of soldiers past and present (and future), Fox and Hannity will keep laughing their way tot the bank as their viewership increases and the advertising dollars pile up.

The Daisy ad was genius as it mastered the subtlety of allusion. The Daisy Spot was a paid-for political advertisement. Fox-TV pawns off this mockery as factual news coverage or somewhat biased commentary; commentary, however, they claim based on facts. Like the Swift Boat scandal, which was proven to be all lies after the election was "won" by W, the Republicans continue to demonstrate that they will stop at nothing to denigrate Democrats and our president.
And in attempts to hide these despicable tactics, they drape themselves in flags and the memories of battles fought by soldiers in whose ranks they never stood. They cry patriotism when they fail to realize that their tactics for maintaining power are anti-America, anti-small town values, anti-freedom. They too become the walking, living lies that they listen 24/7 on the channels led by the likes of a drug-addicted fat-ass, Limbaugh, and Mr. Hannity.

Journalism is dead, long live journalism!


http://www.pbs.org/30secondcandidate/timeline/years/1964b.html