On The Armadillo Highway

(Okie Funk will be updated on a sporadic basis this week because I’m traveling and taking time off. I will get back to my regular schedule next week. Below are some excerpts from recent posts.—Kurt Hochenauer)

Sure, you might see the obligatory times-are-tough stories. But, really, who cares that you cannot afford to drive to work anymore? What is good for energy companies is good for Oklahoma, the mantra goes at The Oklahoman and Tulsa World. It has become a deeply entrenched Okie mythology that Oklahoma’s quality of life and the happiness of its people is dependent on the success of a handful of energy companies here and throughout the world.

When gasoline prices go up, well, then Okies should be dancing in the streets, right? After all, these wonderful energy companies contribute much to the state’s tax base and provide great jobs. Why, you are simply un-American and un-Oklahoman if you do not love those wonderful energy companies who make life so great here.

The only problem here is the mythology is not the least bit true. This is what energy company worship has wrought in this state: Oklahomans have relatively low average incomes when compared to other states. It does not provide adequate funding for education because its tax base is traditionally low and shrinking because of recent tax cuts that reward wealthy people. Its deteriorating roads and bridges are some of the worst in the nation. The state has high rates of hungry families, poverty and uninsured people. It ranks close to the lowest in the nation in most categories dealing with health issues.—”$7 Gasoline and Okie Mythology,”June 27, 2008

The GOP’s complicit enablers in the corporate media have finally solved all the country’s current problems and just in time for the November elections.

Here is the new message: Everything is actually okay. Americans complain too much. The media (gosh, darn us) make everything seem so bad when, in fact, all is well. Americans are doing great. We do not need to change a thing.

Rising energy, gasoline, college tuition and grocery costs, lack of health insurance or adequate medical care, the mortgage crisis, stagnant wages, well, apparently these are relatively minor issues that get exaggerated, according to the new spin. By historical standards, the numbers show everything is hunky-dory.
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These specious arguments about how things are not so bad are part of a political ruse in the Karl Rove tradition. The Post numbers, for example, lack context. Maybe the unemployment numbers are supposedly not as bad as in 1980, but how many people have left the work force under the President George Bush regime because they cannot find jobs? The article does not even mention the rise of hungry, broke families. The country’s food banks, for example, have been stretched thin in the current financial crisis. Even The Oklahoman has mentioned this issue on a local level. Who can even trust the government numbers this article cites?

Does anyone still believe any information or statistics released by the current presidential administration?—"But Everything Is Okay…Really," June 25, 2008.

The Oklahoman is the largest newspaper in the state. Many state news outlets, including television stations, follow its lead in covering local and even national stories. The owners of the newspaper, the Gaylord family, are influential state power brokers who influence political decisions here on a regular basis. Even the football stadium at the University of Oklahoma—Gaylord Family Stadium—is named after the family who has printed and supported lie after lie of the Imperial Bush, even adding their own lies about the worth of the Iraq occupation.

Now, remember, [Scott] McClellan is a right-winger exposing the so-called “liberal media” for how it helped the Imperial Bush deceive the American people. In essence, McClellan argues there is no such thing as a liberal corporate media, which is absolutely true. It has always been a silly myth promoted by right-wing radio hosts, think tanks and the Republican Party. So, then, how conservative does that make The Oklahoman? Can it even fit into a definition, given McClellan’s claims, of a “conservative newspaper”? I think not. The newspaper’s political coverage is truly and absolutely propaganda, not just in a name-calling sense, and Oklahomans have slogged through it for decades.

And, yes, there is an “art” to propaganda, and, in this sense, The Oklahoman is a great triumph. It has shifted the definition of political centrist so far to the right and has allowed its disingenuous Washington, D.C. “correspondents” to lie about the national political scene for so long that its deceptive rhetorical structure has become ingrained in the state’s psyche and history. The paper’s editorial page never allows full dissenting views to its constant stream of lies. McClellan’s book, on a local level, shows just how far out of the mainstream The Oklahoman remains despite its new look.--”McClellan and The Oklahoman,” June 2, 2008.