Calling Townhall to Account

I posted a piece about neurosis and the corporate mindset to my Daily Kos diary. It is meant to open a thread on a theme that we intend to take up here over the coming weeks, about the infestation of a corporate consciousness into both our public and private lives.

Anyway, if you'd like to have a little fun to start the week, head over to the neocon punditry center, townhall.com, and take a look around. There are a number of mindless, pointless articles with the lamest possible headlines ("Cheney, Saudi King discuss trouble spots"; "Why Gays Cannot Be Pro-Choice"; "Bad Credit is a Way of Life--It Shouldn't Be!"); along with the obligatory picture of a Democrat looking shrill or silly. But, wouldn't you know, there is nothing of substance about what's going on in the world.

Such as any discussion of civil war in Iraq. Apparently, even the neocon press is beyond the point of questioning or denying that there is now a civil war in progress, although they probably still imagine that a civil war features a gray army and a blue army clashing on a broad meadow.

Nor is there any discussion of General Karpinski's comments about Rumsfeld's written endorsement of torture. I'm sure that once they awaken from the sting of the initial reports, they'll get all shrill and remind us that the General is merely recounting a memory of having seen such a document, and after all, Rummy's been sacked, so what's the point of hacking on about it?

I also couldn't find, even with their search engine, anything at townhall.com about the duration of this Iraq War--that it's lasted longer now than WWII. As Tony Snow would remind us, it's only a number.

The day of reckoning will come for all the war criminals in Washington. But we will also have to recall who in the media used their influence to endorse or disguise the crimes, for they are complicit in every useless, agonizing death. This is no longer a left wing-right wing / red state-blue state issue. The results from the polls three weeks ago showed us that. This is now an issue of a free people holding those people accountable, in both government and the media, who defaulted on a public trust. The next generation, and the one after that, are going to want to know what we were doing when the foul corporate windbags were playing the mouthpiece to tyrants and liars, and why we weren't able to stop them.

No one would dare expect government to be flawless; being responsible will do. And certainly no one would expect journalists to be perfect; to question and to seek truth would be plenty enough for us to accept. But a program of pathological lying, unquestioningly repeated and broadcast by a bought-and-paid media, comprises an attack on every citizen of a democracy.

This is why I disagree with Ms. Pelosi, and many Democrats, about impeachment. We need it--not so much to punish the criminals, but to expose them and their allies in the media; so that we will the more readily recognize them in time when they come back, telling us oily lies and conspiring in the deaths of half a million innocents, through fear-mongering cloaked in the sibilant whispers of a sacred arrogance.