A Light in the Dark

Three cheers for Julian Assange and Wikileaks!

To borrow some Lord of the Rings terminology, Wikileaks has become the Phial of Galadriel - bestowed upon Frodo Baggins in the latter chapters of Fellowship of the Ring and referred to in the film adaptation as "the light of Eärendil, our most beloved star. May it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out." Certainly that phrase applies well to our current media environment, saturated as it is by the somber (note: cynical) analysis of "official sources". Whether from the government, military or business, news in our era has been suffocated by the prevalence of trained media spokespersons, and it is their dominion over the airwaves that has rendered official discourse so disgustingly bland, homogenous and friendly to the powerful.

Glenn Greenwald, as you might expect, has already done a stellar job of analyzing the Wikileaks fallout in terms of the media's stunning degeneration into faithful courtiers to the elite. Any notion of the adversarial American press corps exists now only in the minds of those well-compensated pundits that saturate the airwaves. Unbelievably, the same talking heads, notable mainly for their sheer sycophancy, continue to visualize themselves as hard-boiled journalists asking the hard questions. I suppose it's the only way they can live with themselves when they join U.S. political officials in calling for the assassination of that "treasonous" Australian Julian Assange, now officially the new Osama bin Laden.

The fact is that if these media organizations were actually doing their jobs (in the old-fashioned concept of serving the public interest), we wouldn't need Wikileaks. But because of the abdication of responsibility by these traditional news sources in favour of serving as corporate propaganda outlets, the task of informing the public has fallen to this outside organization, now an international pariah. Julian Assange is hated by the political class because he tells the truth, but he is hated by the media because he exposes their power-worshiping nature. As Chris Hedges repeatedly emphasized in Death of the Liberal Class, what the political-media establishment - but especially those pundits who consider themselves "liberal" - fears most is being exposed as the handmaidens to power/corporate whores they have become.

Julian Assange deserves our respect for tossing a wrench into the imperial machinery. It's worth noting Sen. Mitch McConnell's description of Assange as a "high-tech terrorist". If there was ever any doubt, let Miss McConnell declare for the record: a terrorist is indeed defined merely as anyone who opposes U.S. government policy. But hey! Clearly they need these strict measures if we're ever going to spread Freedom and Democracy.

UPDATE: On a related note, another reminder of why I don't watch Jon Stewart anymore.