I was looking for another book this morning when I came across a 1969 hardcover copy of The Establishment Is Alive and Well in Washington, by one of the two maestros of humorous column writing of the mid- to late 20th century, Art Buchwald. I had paid probably 50 cents for it used a decade or three ago so it didn’t owe me anything, but the title jumped out. The Establishment is still alive and well in Washington, where corporate interests reign.
If Buchwald and fellow humor columnist Russell Baker were still alive and writing, either would do well to train his sights on fellow Establishment columnists and reporters and editors who serve the Establishment so well that readers and TV news watchers blame elected politicians and whatever (major) political party for problems — while not realizing that without the Establishment-serving columnists and reporters and editors, the Establishment-serving elected office-holders couldn’t serve the Establishment so well, to the detriment of majorities in “our democracy” which they might be expected to be trying to serve.
In short, to paraphrase the late Marshall McLuhan, the media is the problem.
The media that the Establishment (corporate) media tirelessly blame for “misinformation” are the uncontrollable independent (often retired) individuals trying to figure things out — often with the help of non-Establishment, non-corporate media authorities.
How often, for instance, have newspaper readers and TV news watchers been reminded that the pharmaceutical industry (raking in the money from vaccines, free from any liability thanks to Congress) vies with the weapons-manufacturers for the title of most powerful/influential single one of the Establishment interests in Washington? Often enough?
What interests benefit from the current government/media fixation on vaccines and vaccine mandates as the cure-all globally for the coronavirus pandemic? Why, pharmaceutical ones.
I know that I am led to this line of thinking because I am reading Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new book, The Real Anthony Fauci, which has not — to my knowledge — been reviewed in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, or an other publication Americans are encouraged to look to for guidance. Maybe soon a decent, even negative, review will show up in an Establishment publication, and if this happens I’ll make note of it.
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In the meantime, how about THIS opinion column headed “Two-faced COVID madness” Wednesday in my local daily, The Berkshire Eagle, by Paul Waldman, who writes a blog affiliated with the (Establishment) Washington Post? Waldman takes off after a congresswoman named Nancy Mace. On one TV program she likes what natural immunity can do against Covid, while on another TV program says “I have been a proponent of vaccinations.”
For Waldman, natural immunity is “dangerous lunacy.” Mace has been in favor of vaccines. So is Robert Kennedy Jr., who describes himself as not anti-vaccine across the board but skewers Dr. Fauci for promoting vaccines (along with Bill Gates) as the answer to everything coronavirus.
For my money, Waldman’s is an exemplary propagandandistic hit piece aimed not so much at Mace as at Americans who question the government/media insistence that vaccine, vaccine, vaccine is the answer to Covid. Waldman, an openly left-of-center writer with close-to-zero medical or scientific credentials, has latched onto the establishmentarian side of the divide on combatting Covid. Readers of the blog you are reading now would do well to click on his column and note the loaded language.
Get vaccinated, he urges — while employing “conspiracy theory” (the term) twice and lamely throwing up a couple of straw men to swat down. The column is without substance. Do read it for the lessons in dubious rhetoric it can teach. He targets a politician, but also everyone out there including his readers who don’t swallow the one-sided and overly simplistic government/media line.
Would Art Buchwald or Russell Baker be amused? Would either do a column lampooning Waldman? That’s doubtful, because he’s a fellow journalist. Who knows? But it’s not funny.
— Mark Channing Miller