Daily Dunklin Democrat: Story : Column by Gene Lyons: "%uFFFD
Propaganda machine encounters reality
Gene Lyons
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
For years, the Republican media machine has dominated national politics. Through a combination of ideological certitude, message discipline and bullying, the right often succeeds in defining issues its way. Outfits like Fox News, the Washington Times, and Wall Street Journal editorial page, as well as Rush Limbaugh and his cohorts, serve as propaganda organs of the Republican National Committee.
Democrats have no equivalent apparatus. Indeed, one of the GOP's most useful fictions is 'liberal bias,' the idea that big city newspapers and TV networks pick on poor, beleaguered Republicans. But nobody touted Iraq's imaginary WMDs harder than The New York Times and Washington Post.
With Republicans controlling the White House and both houses of Congress, GOP agitprop [as Marxists called it] has grown increasingly brazen. As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, puts it 'we're living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. ... [T]here are now few, if any, limits to what conservative politicians can get away with: the faithful will follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern.'"

New York Times: "I have a name for it: 1775 disease. The United States of America wasn't born of the pretty words from Jefferson's pen in the declaration signed on July 4, 1776. It was born of anonymous gunfire at Lexington on April 19, 1775. And ever since, we have carried our violent nativity within us like a virus, a virus that lies dormant from time to time only to break out again and again.
We celebrate the Minutemen of 1775. And I'm not saying we shouldn't. I do love a good 'Listen, my children, and you shall hear' legend. In fact, my mushy nationalistic heart skipped a beat when an old Minuteman statue, caked in alien goop, made a cameo in Steven Spielberg's 'War of the Worlds.' All I'm saying is that there is an inherent pitfall in revering the volunteer militiamen of Lexington and Concord, our beloved raggedy, gun-toting amateurs who defied the powers-that-were. As when today's raggedy, gun-toting amateurs defy the powers-that-be in their honor and someone gets hurt. Timothy McVeigh, for example. Ten years ago, he bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City - on April 19. And now - someone alert the C.D.C. - 1775 disease is breaking out in at least 18 states, thanks to the Minuteman Project. What started back in April as a nutty experiment involving armed citizen volunteers patrolling the Arizona-Mexico border to thwart illegal immigration is spreading to non-border states as well. This week Tennessee got its own Minutemen."