The Pseudo-Email Scandal - a podcast by Laura Flanders

Hi I’m Laura Flanders of GRITtv, for the Progressive Voices channel on Tune-In

A year from now we’ll be in the election’s grimmest days; those weeks before the

voting when every scrap of dirt that can be hurled at the candidates will have

been unearthed, souped up and chucked, and whatever can’t be unearthed will

have simply been made up.

According to today’s estimates, campaigns are set to spend some $4.4 billion

dollars on 2016 political advertising. They call it advertising, but most of those

billions will be used to attack.

While there’s little evidence that attack ads persuade undecided voters they do

have real impact and they create their own credibility – mostly because people in

the credibility business talk about them. Be it gossip rumor or slander if enough

people are talking about it especially on TV and in the papers, it starts to sound

as if it’s true.

Take this cycle. There are plenty of reasons to oppose Hillary Clinton. She’s a

centrist and a hawk, for starters. But there’s precious little evidence she did

anything with her emails that every Secretary before her didn’t do – and the rules

she supposedly broke weren’t made until after she left office. As for preserving

public records and transparency the GOP hypocrisy is stinking. I don’t blame

camp Clinton for screaming to high heaven about Dick Cheney’s energy task

force.

Still, before you shed real tears for the pols, remember, the name-calling some of

the most powerful people in the world are complaining about now, is the same

name-calling some far less powerful people feel all the time.

You don’t have recall the Witch Hunts, the red scares or the FBI’s co-intell-pro

wars to find victims of slander. This time of year also marks the four year

anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, a national stir that seemed like it could kick

off a new grassroots movement, until people with influence cast it as a leaderless

mess, mucked up by infighting, and then failed to cover the actual violence of

coordinated police raids on defenseless occupiers.

Some people are always getting smeared. Consider “juvenile predators”, “welfare

queens” and “ illegal aliens” Year in year out, people in power say disparaging,

fact free things to serve their own interests. The difference is, in election year,

other people in power get upset about it.

You can watch my interview with Ellen and Rachel Meeropol, a mother and daughter each seeking change, and my interview with Boots Riley, this week on The Laura Flanders Show at lauraflanders.com.

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