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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us July 8, 2005 I’ll Shut Up — Right After This Speakers know truth can scare John Darling They don’t have the charisma and fame of their martyred fathers, but Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Martin Luther King III are deeper, more wounded by what’s happening to the world, and more measured, wise and candid in speaking out against it. After all, they don’t hold political office (they could easily be senators) and that independence gives them the platform to say what’s real. We live in upside-down times, Kennedy says, when lies parade as truth — there is no global warming, we’ll always have oil, Saddam had WMD and al-Qaida ties, tax cuts help everyone, evolution is just a theory, rolling back eco-laws is OK — and the supposed antidote and guardian, our press, has self-pityingly taken a step backward, sighed and resigned its role, saying the public doesn’t want to hear it. I’ve heard plenty of editors whine about that over the last quarter-century. Well, duh, start publishing what’s real and maybe people will start buying papers. Stop sleeping with power — and, in Kennedy’s words, start speaking truth to power. A light drizzle is falling. Kennedy speaks rapid-fire, attack-dog style, no notes, barely pausing to take a breath, barely indulging in the gestures and accent of his assassinated dad and uncle. I say to the World Wellness Weekend organizer, hey, if he cleaned it up for prime time, he could be president — and he whispers back, well, he wants to live. It sounds like it’s about acid rain, mercury in the water, coal-fired plants being set free from environmental restrictions, but as Kennedy talks, you realize it’s about telling the truth and, as in the days of King John, it’s about a small band of rich thieves looting the commons — air, water, forests, wildlife — that aren’t the property of anyone, but are supposed to be used and stewarded by all. What we see now with the president and his corporate cronies? “That’s how King John got in trouble with Robin Hood.” It was RFK’s best line. And who’s the hero in the Robin Hood story? It’s not King John, who said only the aristocracy can hunt deer and who was finally forced to sign the Magna Charta, laying the foundation for democracy and common rights. The hero of the story is the anarchist, dressed in forest green cammies, armed, living with a small band of ruffians, farmhands, ale-guzzlers and busy moms and hewing to a moral law that’s grounded in nature and common sense — and a respect for the common good. It became the model for the American Revolution and all revolutions since. When any of the four medieval estates — nobility, clergy, middle class and press — get too much power and wealth and fail in their duty to protect the common good, the others arise against it or a fifth, revolutionary, estate arises to shift everything. Today, the four estates seem comfortable in their oil-driven wealth and partnership, although the middle class is rapidly losing the ability to pay for health care and housing and finding itself more and more sounding like the Merry Men of Robin’s gang. But Kennedy’s message is not so much about distribution of wealth and power, but about the failure of virtually all media (80 percent of newspapers are now owned by six corporations) to be able to create and pursue an agenda that embraces the real problems and wrongdoings of our society. In other words, in an age of fully-wired, full-saturation media, control of “what’s real” is the real power. That’s why so many people didn’t just object but became outraged about the Tidings front-paging of body piercing suspension. Putting it in the mainstream media makes it real. Before that, it was like UFOs, chemtrails and — until USA Today finally put it on the front page as “real” — global warming. A prestigious environmental lawyer, Kennedy speaks to a lot of groups, including the more conservative, moneyed groups. He does it without rhetoric, just laying down what’s “real,” as if what’s real is not a matter of opinion or cultural persuasion. It’s just real. Either acid rain and mercury come from coal-fired plants or they don’t. Either they poison mother’s milk and damage brains or they don’t. Science says they do. It’s “real.” But the press, when they notice it at all, put it on page 16 and just report the mouthings of the polluters, leaving it the public to draw their own conclusions that it may be “real” or maybe not. When Kennedy gets down with your average red-state Republicans and tells them how the environment is being trashed and looted by King John’s nobility, they say, “How come I’ve never heard about this?” Where, asks Kennedy, do you get your news? From Fox and Rush Limbaugh, they say. But even if you get it from the New York Times and Washington Post, you have to heavily augment from the blogosphere and seemingly wild-eyed Robin Hood-type Web sites, then average out the information. The once-heroic networks, founded on Edward R. Murrow’s documentaries (exposing migrant worker exploitation and destroying McCarthyism), have dumped all investigative reporters and 80 percent of foreign correspondents, Kennedy says. The time-honored fairness doctrine, requiring that both sides actually be told in the news, was dumped by Reagan’s FCC, allowing the rise of telebigots like Limbaugh. Network news is “no longer functioning” but is only a corporate profit center, he says, entertaining the reptile brain’s need for sex and violence with unrealities like Michael Jackson and depriving us of the information we need to live in a democracy. What’s real is that there’s really no split between those who support the environment and those who want the economy. No one wants to see the natural world looted for the profit of the few. What’s real, says Kennedy, is that we’re a society in thrall to the Big Lie technique, created by Nazi propagandist Goebbels, but turned into a globally encompassing political way of life. Orwell saw it 80 years ago in “Brave New World,” but he probably didn’t see it becoming a form of entertainment that, far from having to be forced on a tyrannized people, would actually be embraced by them. Contact John Darling, an Ashland writer and counselor, at [email protected]. DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Deep Muscle Stimulator Ceramic Piggy Banks FREE Entertainment Guide Women's & Men's Slippers Accelerate Weightloss Products Backpacks Generic Viagra Vegas Travel Guide Search Engine Optimization Sportsbook Absinthe Supply Student Loans Hotel & Airline Reservations African Safari Hammocks Helzberg Diamonds Online Casinos Community Bonus Casino King of Spirits ink cartridges Mortgage Calculator Security Systems Mailing Lists Click Here Advertisement .:Advertisements:. 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