By Brad Friedman on 9/10/2010, 4:01pm PT  

Following up on our posting of NewLeftMedia's interviews earlier this week with disinformed Tea Baggers at Glenn Beck's recent D.C. rally for...something or other...Sam Seder jumps in with his own collection of disinformed numbskullery at the same event...


The responses from the disinformed interviewees in both Seder's and NewLeftMedia's videos are remarkably similar to those featured in our own set of interviews in "Rise of the Tea Bags" as filmed nearly a year ago at the Tea Party Express II kick-off event out here in Los Angeles.

When we released "Rise of the Tea Bags," many of the defensively dismissive comments from Tea Baggers accused us of having "cherry picked" who we decided to highlight in the video. No, we didn't, we repeatedly responded at the time. In fact, while the responses seen from many of those we did choose to show made them appear at times as blithering idiots, we had actually gone out of our way to be as fair to all of them as possible in the edits, and even determined to not show a number of folks because some of their responses were just so laughably idiotic it would have appeared as if they were either plants or had somehow been set up by some dishonest scam to appear as fools.

Anybody who appeared ignorant, in our video at least, had only themselves to thank if they came off looking foolish. We didn't gin up anything and took a great deal of time and care in editing to ensure that was the case.

The thing is, getting these kinds of interviews on tape, at this point, during these types of Rightwing gatherings, is as easy as throwing a stick. This is an illustration of the triumph of mass disinformation...

I have no reason to believe that either NewLeftMedia or Seder "cherry picked" those whom they decided to highlight in their own videos. The folks at these gatherings --- many of them very, very nice, by the way, no matter how foolishly they may come across in the interviews --- are simply being utterly, wholly, and inexcusably disinformed and/or misinformed by their media outlets.

We decided to title the previous batch of interviews, from NewLeftMedia at the Beck rally, as "Hey Fox 'News,' Proud of Yourselves Yet?" in hopes of highlighting the shame that a legitimate news organization, as Fox still pretends to be, might feel in seeing just how desperately out of touch with reality and facts their own devoted viewers had actually become.

In truth though, given the nearly-full year that has passed since we originally highlighted these folks at the gathering out here in L.A., and the fact that they have become no better informed --- and, arguably, even more disinformed --- since then, the blame must really be spread out to the rest of the corporate mainstream media as well.

If this many folks are that clueless about the workings of their very own country and government it bespeaks a complete failure and breakdown of the mainstream media outlets whose job it is to not just entertain, not just get ratings, not just "report" what is going on at any given time (which we might generously credit them with accomplishing in general), but in actually educating the populace by helping them to understand and become more informed about the real world in which they live.

The failure is not just Fox's. In fact, as Fox is not in actuality a news organization by any stretch of the imagination, but rather a political propaganda outlet, the misguided brain-warp of its viewers is actually a "success" for them, rather than a failure (we had described it as "Mission Accomplished" in the previous article on this topic). The real failure is that of the theoretically-legitimate media which continue to play by rules that no longer apply, serve a constituency that no longer exists, and have otherwise failed in their most basic, constitutionally-protected function of informing and educating the citizenry.

The American corporate mainstream media have failed. They have failed in a monumental, perhaps irretrievable, historically inexcusable fashion. Had they not, these sorts of videos would not be so incredibly easy to produce, at least without resorting to Breitbart/O'Keefe-style fakery in order to make the subjects appear to be something other than what they really are --- which is nothing short of grotesquely disinformed about virtually every single thing they believe they know to be true.

Shame.

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