AD WATCH CONTINUED: HARRY AND LOUISE WITH A FAKE REPORTAGE TWIST


Federal investigators are scrutinizing television segments in which the Bush administration paid people to pose as journalists praising the benefits of the new Medicare law, which would be offered to help elderly Americans with the costs of their prescription medicines. The government also prepared scripts that can be used by news anchors introducing what the administration describes as a made-for-television "story package."

In one script, the administration suggests that anchors use this language: "In December, President Bush signed into law the first-ever prescription drug benefit for people with Medicare. Since then, there have been a lot of questions about how the law will help older Americans and people with disabilities. Reporter Karen Ryan helps sort through the details."

The "reporter" then explains the benefits of the new law.

See also, 'misunderestimation' , below.

[Apparently operating under the premise that it is impossible to underestimate the intelligence of the American public. Wouldn't it be ironic if the Invisible Hand, instead of leading to Nozick's libertarian utopia, led to state-controlled media? -MoF ]

[Finally! A chance to drop in a classic Marxist reference: One Dimensional Man, by Herbert Marcuse, with the straightforward, somewhat mistaken but hard to refute thesis that all cultural products in a capitalist system are commodified, and hence affirm hegemony. Thanks for indulging, won't happen again soon. Also, please refer to this page for a complete lack of information. -PWP]

[I am not proud of this, but I got a good grade on an all-night term paper in college entitled "Marcuse's Royal Scam", so titled because I was listening to the Steely Dan album as I frantically wrote it. My main point was that this commodification destroys the underlying humanity and dynamism of society, which must be replenished by bringing in immigrants, who, in their turn, lose their identities and work as wage slaves in commercial dystopias. Lest we forget:

And they wandered in
From the city of St. John
Without a dime
Wearing coats that shined
Both red and green
Colors from their sunny island
From their boats of iron
They looked upon the promised land
Where surely life was sweet
On the rising tide
To New York City
Did they ride into the street
See the glory
Of the royal scam

They are hounded down
To the bottom of a bad town
Amid the ruins
Where they learn to fear
An angry race of fallen kings
Their dark companions
While the memory of
Their southern sky was clouded by
A savage winter
Every patron saint
Hung on the wall, shared the room
With twenty sinners

See the glory
Of the royal scam

By the blackened wall
He does it all
He thinks he's died and gone to heaven
Now the tale is told
By the old man back home
He reads the letter
How they are paid in gold
Just to babble in the back room
All night and waste their time
And they wandered in
From the city of St. John without a dime

See the glory
Of the royal scam

- MoF ]