Haters will always hate. These days, bashing politicians and journalists has become en vogue. Critics forget that our representatives uphold the world’s greatest democracy by toiling night and day to represent a helpless minority: corporate executives. Having a media subservient to the powerful is also vital to our prosperity.
Take Congress, for example.
When the health care debate began a few years ago, polls indicated anywhere fom 60 to 77 percent of Americans wanted a public health-care option. Private corporations weren’t too hot for Washington to implement policies that would threaten their profits, and we ended up with the Affordable Care Act — or Obamacare.
Don’t just credit Republicans for prioritizing insurance companies over the American public. In fact, it was a heroic Democratic senator who rose to the occasion when he blocked the public option. Thank God we have bipartisan representation for the voiceless Wall Street boardrooms.
I love it when both parties can become united. Take President Barack Obama, for example.
Neither Republican nor Democratic leaders have any serious qualms with the president’s drone strategy that literally, “terrorizes men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities,” as a Stanford/NYU study reported. How awesome is the bipartisan backing of Obama’s drone warfare that kills thousands of Pakistanis and Yemenis with no due process?
But let’s be honest: We’ve had a few hiccups in our nation’s past. For example, granting women “personhood” — i.e., the same legal rights as everyone else — was a bad idea.
Fortunately, federal courts don’t allow that craziness anymore. Nonresident aliens are “nonpersons” in today’s America — just like the good ole days when black people, akin to farm cattle, lacked personhood in the eyes of the law.
As for the Wall Street boys, don’t worry. The Supreme Court has conversely expanded personhood to include corporations, meaning they benefit, like actual human beings, from legal rights.
Another problem: freedom of the press. Some years ago came a close call, but what if we don’t get so lucky next time?
In the early 1970s, the FBI’s secret targeting of civil rights groups — culminating in the assassination of Fred Hampton, a black activist, while he was asleep in bed with his pregnant fiancee — was exposed. For years, U.S. presidents from both parties endorsed the FBI pranks.
Luckily, instead of informing the public of the criminal operations, journalists obsessed over the Watergate scandal. After all, the Nixon administration had pissed off half America’s powerful political establishment, the Democrats. It’s always safer to do TV segments on the bickering between the political parties than tell the public how the FBI — with bipartisan support — suppressed poor, black activists.
I am scared of a day when the media actually begins to serve the ordinary American public.
Instead of focusing on our enemies’ devious behavior, what if journalists highlighted our own government’s support for Israel and Saudi Arabia, two countries with sickening human rights records? Worse yet, what if the American public suddenly realizes we live in a democracy where the voters with actual influence are multinational corporations?
Can we — just in case journalists forget their role of being figureheads for the powerful — remove freedom of the press? Just to be safe, let’s also ban freedom of speech — except sarcasm, that is.
Zulkar Khan is a UF microbiology senior. His column runs on Wednesdays. A version of this column ran on page 6 on 10/9/2013 under the headline "Stop hating: America’s doing just great"
