The Accidental President
The following is an excerpt from a column "I Can't Take It Anymore"
BY MAUREEN DOWD
September 9, 2001
From The New York Times
"W. continued to give away the store to Big Business last week, legally
unleashing Microsoft and signaling media conglomerates that they can
conglomerate away — accelerating the centralization of American power
into the hands of a very few very rich people.
W. never met a merger he didn't like, except stems and cells. His White
House has become a holding company for Big Money and the Media
Oligarchy — Murdoch, Gates, Case, Eisner, Redstone.
Mr. Gates is getting back his monopoly over the desktop computer and his
reign as the Czar of Broadband. And soon we'll have thousands of channels
but they'll all be controlled by the same few moguls.
At least before we had a diversity of trash in our media. Now we're zooming
toward a collective mentality, severely limiting the voices that may be heard
and muting opposing views. A quarter of American culture will be filtered
through Murdoch's sensibility, a quarter through AOL Time Warner, a
quarter through Mickey Mouse, a quarter through Viacom.
W., afraid he will be blamed, as Dad was, for the cratering economy, has
been going out the past few days echoing Poppy's "Message: I Care."
After the unemployment numbers rose sharply to 4.9 percent on Friday, the
president rushed out of the Oval Office to commiserate: "Any American out
of work is too many Americans out of work."
But the fanfare for the common man rings hollow, given that Bush Inc. is
refusing to turn over documents to Congress about the secret deliberations of
Dick Cheney and energy lobbyists cooking up their drill & spill energy plan
and is knocking down regulatory hurdles, further pleasing Big Energy, Big
Media, Big Oil, Big Tobacco, Big Telecom and Big Weapons
Manufacturers.
A majority of Americans did not elect W. A majority of voters didn't even
elect him. A new book about Florida and the Supreme Court decision,
featured on this week's Newsweek cover, is titled "The Accidental
President." His real constituents are the corporations that gave him $100
million, the biggest political haul in history."
nytimes.com |
