[Peace-discuss] On courtiers, by Chris Hedges

[Brussel Morton K.]

Real Journalists Don't Make $5 Million a Year
By Chris Hedges, Truthdig
Posted on June 26, 2008, Printed on June 30, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/89301/

Washington has become Versailles. We are ruled, entertained and  
informed by courtiers. The popular media are courtiers. The  
Democrats, like the Republicans, are courtiers. Our pundits and  
experts are courtiers. We are captivated by the hollow stagecraft of  
political theater as we are ruthlessly stripped of power. It is smoke  
and mirrors, tricks and con games. We are being had.

The past week was a good one if you were a courtier. We were  
instructed by the high priests on television over the past few days  
to mourn a Sunday morning talk show host, who made $5 million a year  
and who gave a platform to the powerful and the famous so they could  
spin, equivocate and lie to the nation. We were repeatedly told by  
these television courtiers, people like Tom Brokaw and Wolf Blitzer,  
that this talk show host was one of our nation's greatest  
journalists, as if sitting in a studio, putting on makeup and  
chatting with Dick Cheney or George W. Bush have much to do with  
journalism.

No journalist makes $5 million a year. No journalist has a  
comfortable, cozy relationship with the powerful. No journalist  
believes that acting as a conduit, or a stenographer, for the  
powerful is a primary part of his or her calling. Those in power fear  
and dislike real journalists. Ask Seymour Hersh and Amy Goodman how  
often Bush or Cheney has invited them to dinner at the White House or  
offered them an interview.

All governments lie, as I.F. Stone pointed out, and it is the job of  
the journalist to do the hard, tedious reporting to shine a light on  
these lies. It is the job of courtiers, those on television playing  
the role of journalists, to feed off the scraps tossed to them by the  
powerful and never question the system. In the slang of the  
profession, these television courtiers are "throats." These  
courtiers, including the late Tim Russert, never gave a voice to  
credible critics in the buildup to the war against Iraq. They were  
too busy playing their roles as red-blooded American patriots. They  
never fought back in their public forums against the steady erosion  
of our civil liberties and the trashing of our Constitution. These  
courtiers blindly accept the administration's current propaganda to  
justify an attack on Iran. They parrot this propaganda. They dare not  
defy the corporate state. The corporations that employ them make them  
famous and rich. It is their Faustian pact. No class of courtiers,  
from the eunuchs behind Manchus in the 19th century to the Baghdad  
caliphs of the Abbasid caliphate, has ever transformed itself into a  
responsible elite. Courtiers are hedonists of power.

Our Versailles was busy this past week. The Democrats passed the FISA  
bill, which provides immunity for the telecoms that cooperated with  
the National Security Agency's illegal surveillance over the past six  
years. This bill, which when signed means we will never know the  
extent of the Bush White House's violation of our civil liberties, is  
expected to be adopted by the Senate. Barack Obama has promised to  
sign it in the name of national security. The bill gives the U.S.  
government a license to eavesdrop on our phone calls and e-mails. It  
demolishes our right to privacy. It endangers the work of  
journalists, human rights workers, crusading lawyers and whistle- 
blowers who attempt to expose abuses the government seeks to hide.  
These private communications can be stored indefinitely and  
disseminated, not just to the U.S. government but to other  
governments as well. The bill, once signed into law, will make it  
possible for those in power to identify and silence anyone who dares  
to make public information that defies the official narrative.

Being a courtier, and Obama is one of the best, requires agility and  
eloquence. The most talented of them can be lauded as persuasive  
actors. They entertain us. They make us feel good. They convince us  
they are our friends. We would like to have dinner with them. They  
are the smiley faces of a corporate state that has hijacked the  
government and is raping the nation. When the corporations make their  
iron demands, these courtiers drop to their knees, whether to placate  
the telecommunications companies that fund their campaigns and want  
to be protected from lawsuits, or to permit oil and gas companies to  
rake in obscene profits and keep in place the vast subsidies of  
corporate welfare doled out by the state.

We cannot differentiate between illusion and reality. We trust  
courtiers wearing face powder who deceive us in the name of  
journalism. We trust courtiers in our political parties who promise  
to fight for our interests and then pass bill after bill to further  
corporate fraud and abuse. We confuse how we feel about courtiers  
like Obama and Russert with real information, facts and knowledge. We  
chant in unison with Obama that we want change, we yell "yes we can,"  
and then stand dumbly by as he coldly votes away our civil liberties.  
The Democratic Party, including Obama, continues to fund the war. It  
refuses to impeach Bush and Cheney. It allows the government to spy  
on us without warrants or cause. And then it tells us it is our  
salvation. This is a form of collective domestic abuse. And, as so  
often happens in the weird pathology of victim and victimizer, we  
keep coming back for more.

Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, is a Senior Fellow  
at the Nation Institute. His latest book is Collateral Damage:  
America's War Against Iraqi Civilians.
© 2008 Truthdig All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/89301/
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