Does pastorbation lead to blindness?

Or is it the other way around?

Now that the corporate media has completed another week-long Pastorbation, the question remains: did the people see through it -- or fall for it? Will voters in North Carolina, Indiana, and the other remaining states read the reporters' game of pursuing trivial wedge issues and exacerbating cultural tensions for the sake of ratings? Or will they succumb to the base appeals of fear and prejudice?

We will sure enough get some answers on Tuesday. And so let's discuss ...

-- Why did our presstitutes pastorbate with such enthusiasm again?

Does our media see their children and the future of this country in the same way as the rest of us do, or do they divorce themselves from their patriotism in order to do their jobs (i.e. get paid handsomely)? Do they see the harm that their yellow journalism costs our nation, or do they just not care? Do they rationalize their actions and words to themselves, or do they simply shut their eyes to their handiwork?

We are all guilty of buying into what they sell us time and time again. Hillary supporters loved it when she was "inevitable" for a year, and Obama supporters likewise when the press cherished him during some of that same time. There were those of us who became fans of John Edwards in 2004 when he was held up as being able to talk owls out of a tree -- and encouraged to be selected as vice president to John Kerry. Kucinich, Richardson and Biden supporters, whose candidates never even saw the light of day, know this best of all, as they have rarely if ever been pleased about anything that the media had to report.

In other words, we have all been through "it" to varying degrees.

-- So what's the lesson (for those of us who haven't learned, or have forgotten it) ?

I had pretty much learned this in 2000, 2002, and in 2004, but it appears -- like many others -- that I fell prey again this year. Believe me, these world-class manipulators understand exactly how to push our buttons, line us up one against the other for their own purpose, which has nothing to do with information, fairness, reason-ability or patriotism or any of that.

How else can we explain eight years of George W. Bush?

Allow me a digression. The us v. them, good guys versus bad guys mentality pervades everything in our society. Case in point: last weekend I attended the San Jacinto Festival, where a re-enactment of Sam Houston's famous charge and capture of Gen. Santa Anna in the pivotal battle for Texas independence was reprised. As I stood near the line where the Mexican encampment was recreated -- in order, I correctly guessed -- to watch the charge of the Texicans to victory, I heard someone behind me say: " We're on the wrong side. Let's go stand on the Texas side." I turned and remarked, "If you wait a minute, this will BE the Texas side." A few people around me chuckled in low tones, but the woman and her children moved on down without looking back. I then turned back and said, "This isn't a football game, is it?" to more hearty laughter.

So what can we do? If one POV is always being played against the other, and the corporate media successfully retains the appearance of objectivity to at least enough of the viewers, aren't we really ALL being played?

I try not to watch a lot of cable news these days, because I simply cannot afford to be fooled time and time again. I see how they set off one faction against another, which is why they keep winning the battles and are indeed having a larger voice than they should as they wrestle for control of our democracy.

I believe that it is all of our jobs now to turn off the corporate news, particularly the Sunday Talking Heads. Whether they are on our side This Week versus being on the other side the next, we are enabling them to have power and influence over us when and how they want it. Today it is Barack Obama they are against, but tomorrow it will be Hillary once more. Once the Democratic nominee is finalized and the General Election Smackdown foes are established, it will be Republican v. Democrat with the TV talkers taking someone's message and presenting it as news, alternating weeks depending on the salaciousness it. In other words, we cannot support the traditional media and believe that we are being well-informed; indeed we are only being manipulated, and never for the greater good, but rather for their corporate good.

And as always, certainly at some later date, once it no longer matters, the media will re-examine itself, and matter-of-factly admit what it has done ... in hopes that we will believe that they recognize the error of their ways.

Problem is that they will not pay a price, and they will not stop doing what they are doing in the future.

And so I have decided that they will not again manipulate me. I have decided that I will no longer trust, watch or participate in encouraging the corporate media's "news" programs. They are a danger to our democracy, and to believe otherwise is to successfully be taken for a fool over and over and over again at our own collective detriment. I know, because it has happened to me. Over and over again.