October 02, 2014

Shane Smith - The media and establishment is inherently conservative


In 1993 Christopher Hitchens said, "there is one party - that is a beltway party, a Washington party, a permanent party, the party of those in power and most of those in the leadership of the Washington equipe of which the press are members of it and proud of it and lucky and afraid of the possibility of falling out of favour." Shane Smith also speaks critically of the US politico-media establishment. He said:

"The problem that we’ve had is four media companies run media, globally. And some say they’re on the right and some say they’re on the left; look, they’re all afraid of losing Ford as a client, so they’re all, by definition, huge companies that are going to be inherently conservative."
And in 2008 said:
"We're not trying to say anything politically in a paradigmatic left/right way... We don't do that because we don't believe in either side. Are my politics Democrat or Republican? I think both are horrific. And it doesn't matter anyway. Money runs America; money runs everywhere."
He also said:
"What fucking liberal media? They’re all afraid of losing Budweiser of GM as a fucking advertiser. They’re all multi-billion dollar companies. There’s four companies that do all news in America. And they just said, well we’ll take the Left, and we’ll take the Right, and we’ll just do school-yard bullying, we’ll just do name-calling, partisan name-calling."
Shane said that the Iraq War was a result of the "failure of the Fourth Estate." He also said:
"I don't give a shit about the Left or the Right... You don't have radical critique, which there should be. It's fine that there's a Right and that they have their publications and their TV shows, and we have a Left. But we don't have the sort of centrist, pure news, we don't care about any paradigm. In fact we're going to ridicule both. Going forward that is the appetite, therefore there will be more."

Here's what Christopher Hitchens said in 1993, in full:
"You all hear it in the everyday practice of Washington. Why should it be that the word partisan is an automatic pejorative in Washington discussion? Have you noticed that the word partisan is always an insult and the word bipartisan is always a compliment? If these words, as used, meant what they normally mean, what the consensus would be saying would be the following: If it goes on like this, partisanship, will end up with a two-party system. Now I don't believe that this is what they mean to say, but it is the journalism that they actually commit. Always look to the language. Alway look to what is staring you in the face. Always look at the obvious. In any other discourse the same people would say its the proudest boast of he US, that it is the most politically pluralist country in the world - but its discourse gives away the secret. The secret is bipartisanship is to be feared because it would mean two parties and the secret is, there is one party - that is a beltway party, a Washington party, a permanent party, the party of those in power and most of those in the leadership of the Washington equipe of which the press are members of it and proud of it and lucky and afraid of the possibility of falling out of favour."

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