Sartorial Smackdown Of The Smear

DisablingTheCatapault
AntiPropagandaVille

I have been listening to a guy named Bernie Ward, on and off, for quite awhile now.

In fact, I'm listening to his talk show from San Francisco right now.

Mr. Ward, who is a former Franciscan priest and an unabashed liberal, has been an outspoken opponent of his country's immoral occupation of Iraq since the beginning.

And as you might imagine he was often pilloried for speaking truth to power back in the darkest of dark days before the shiny black propaganda wall began to crack.

But Ward has never wavered, and in the last year or so many have begun to take him and his message more seriously, so much so that occasionally the Media Megalopolists now call on him to give the so-called progressive side of the story against a designated screamer.

Which is what happened earlier this week on CNN when Ward went up against a screamer named Chris Baker in a 'debate' about the NYTimes/BankSpy/FreedomOfSpeech issue.

And it was magic. Ward, who never backs down, stayed on message and just kept asking Baker if he wanted the government to decide what the NY Times can and cannot print. Baker refused to give a straight answer and finally began to make fun of Ward's weight before he stormed off the set because he knew that if he answered in the affirmative he would be confirming that he and all the other screamers, including the Cheney Administration itself, are actually calling for the abolition of the 1st Ammendment of the US Constitution. Here is the final exchange just before Mr. Baker turned tail and ran.

Baker: Don’t put words in my mouth…

Ward: You don’t have a mouth to put it in. You just said you want the government to determine what’s national security…

Baker: I got one chin man, I mean Jesus (garbled) Christ man, what do you want? Why don’t you just surrender. Just surrender.

Ward: It’s simple. Do you want the government to tell news papers what to do or not?

You can watch the entire thing here, but be forewarned, it's not for the squeamish or, to be more precise, progressives who think that we will ultimately prevail if we just keep on making nice with a ruthless propaganda machine.

And the best thing about all of this is that the pushback is no longer restricted to the small audience/regional guys like Ward or the satirists like Jon Stewart because folks like Keith Olbermann are going at this thing hard. All of which makes one wonder if James' Wolcott's Press Poodles have been sent to the kennel where they belong so that the real dogs can start to do a little bit or real investigative reporting.

Which would be a very, very good thing indeed.

.