Anything But Straight

Keeping track of right wing lies is like counting raindrops in a monsoon. Fortunately, David Brock and his new group, Media Matters for America, has embraced this critical task with Brock emerging as one of the most important activists in the nation.

Brock, a gay man, was once a right wing mercenary who made his reputation by sabotaging Bill Clinton and savaging Anita Hill. He sold his soul and helped catapult the Republican’s to national power. But a funny thing happened on the way to Hell - Brock bought back his soul and now exposes the right wing with a vengeance.

Brock’s new book “The Republican Noise Machine” may be the most important book of the year. He paints a chilling portrait of Republican ideologues that have been on a thirty-year mission to infiltrate the media, culture and politics with right wing pundits and propaganda. They have been largely successful by creating a dizzying array of well-funded front groups.

This is how it works: A core group of conservative leaders in cahoots with the Republican Party meet in secret to set the national right wing agenda. More than 500 “think tanks” and advocacy groups lavishly funded by four right wing foundations, known as “The Four Sisters”, carry out their marching orders. The Four Sisters are: The Olin Foundation, The Coors Foundation, Richard Mellon Scaife and the Smith Richardson Foundation.

The Four Sisters funnel billions of dollars to these quasi-independent, GOP-supportive groups to achieve power and favorable policy changes. These biased organizations advance the cause of their money masters by creating a political and cultural climate that discourages objective, good faith evaluation of issues.

Obfuscation is a necessity because their ideas rarely stand up to academic scrutiny or scientific standards. Where most universities and Think Tanks provide genuine, unbiased, scholarship, these groups provide “Dollarship” where third-rate academics are paid handsomely to refute real experts in various media venues.

These charlatans spread their pernicious product using a powerful right wing media empire that includes FOX, The New York Post and the Moonie-owned Washington Times.

The problem is your average person can’t distinguish between a revered scholar and a phony academic “Fellow” provided by the Heritage Foundation. What’s worse, the media rarely tells the audience when a talking head is tainted by Four Sisters money.

According to Brock, the right wing circle is completed by media “watch dog” groups, such as the Media Resource Center, that operate more like attack dogs. If a media outlet doesn’t carry their water, they are crucified in right wing print media or by toady Republican mouthpieces like Rush Limbaugh or Bill “GOP” Reilly.

This system of systematic sliming is best evidenced by the recent Swift Boat controversy. The GOP was worried that Kerry’s distinguished war record could diminish Bush’s lead on national security issues. So, they decided to distort and discredit his record.

Republican operatives surreptitiously recruited disgruntled veterans to level false allegations against Kerry in a sleazy ad. In normal times, the media would have rejected these ads as gutter politics. But today’s right wing machine gave these unsubstantiated rumors legs and a veneer of credibility.

Right wing websites and talk radio hosts shamelessly promoted the ads, as did Four Sister subsidized columnists and pundits. Countless Think Tank talkers were trotted out as “experts” to reinforce Kerry as an opportunist who is unworthy of his medals.

This clamor gave the appearance of a scandal where none existed. The mainstream media was then pressured to report on the non-story as if it were real news. And before you could say Purple Heart, Kerry’s medals had become an albatross around his neck. But if you look at his record, nothing had really changed other than perception. Kerry is the same hero today that he was in Vietnam.

Sure, Kerry could have responded quicker, but the problem isn’t entirely with the campaign. The left simply doesn’t have a mechanism in place to effectively respond to the right. While the Republican Noise Machine attacks Kerry by bellowing through a megaphone, the current Democratic infrastructure only allows Kerry to respond by yelling through a hollowed-out Dixie Cup. We are 30 years behind and we must catch up fast.

Interestingly, the gay community was one of the first groups to face this right wing mud machine. Our community has had to fight phony statistics and “doctors” who doctor the facts. On TV and radio I have had to battle think tank “experts” on same-sex marriage and adoption who have never met a same sex family.

David Brock is a man with his hair on fire warning us that we are up against a power scheme that is more complicated and elaborate than most people imagine. His group Media Matters is documenting the truth and countering the lies. We better start taking note before it’s too late.