Media rant alert. Talk about wag the dog..

I never post the video or picture of the “Dean Scream.” Not even for fun although Howard Dean himself laughs about it today. Howard Dean was one of the early casualties of extreme disinformation in the media via the so-called scream. It was played over and over and over on TV after the Iowa caucuses during the run up to the 2004 election and it put a fork in the Dean presidential campaign. It was a distorted video that made it sound much louder than it actually sounded in the room where he could barely be heard above a cheering crowd.  But the worst part to me is that it is the only thing most people know about Howard Dean, which is just plain sad.  But I digress..

This episode of Iowa Press was really hard to watch even without Republican guests on the program for the panel to fawn over. Well at least the first five minutes was bad, which is all I could watch. Who knows, maybe the rest of it was quite good.  Here is my report of what I could sit through, which wasn’t much.

First name that comes up in the conversation as always, Donald Trump of course saying whatever he said in Iowa about the abortion issue – who really cares and what does it matter? Nothing he says can be trusted, don’t we know this by now? Move on, people. It’s not news. Must you all hang on his every word? You’re embarrassing yourselves.

And then the cynical media frame comes next. The topic that Iowa Press decided Iowans everywhere need to know about was this:  What will the Republicans say about their position on abortion so that they can still win elections?

For starters, it was distressing, infuriating and downright neurologically dysregulating to have to listen to the panel dispassionately discuss how “interesting” it is to watch the Republican presidentials figure out how to twist their anti-woman agenda into a positive (fake) political message that they hope to deceive voters with.

Dear Iowa Press panel, so glad you all are having a good time watching the “interesting”  national dumpster fire while women in America are reduced to second class citizens after fifty years of having the right to sovereignty over our bodies, just like men have always had and will always have. Really glad you all are enjoying yourselves but you appear to be uninterested in informing voters how the Republican stance on this issue and others will affect individual lives.

One must ask, what exactly do you feel  your job is as a member of the Iowa Press panel? It appears that you feel your job is limited to being nice to Republicans.

Back to my earlier point. How many times did the panel say “interesting” or make a cynical or otherwise irrelevant comment referring to the Rs’ attempts to find a fancy sounding lie to make voters not notice that they think women are lesser beings whose bodies and lives should be controlled by the Republican party?  A few times, but I stopped counting.

Murphy: “It’s kind of interesting to see that play out on this issue within the primary.”

Amanda Rooker: “And this, as Erin mentioned, has been an issue that Republicans have maybe struggled to find a winning message on.”

Because that’s the most important aspect of this conversation – for Rs to find that winning message while they are taking away our rights.

Somebody please get this program off the air before someone gets hurt. People are watching it – well, no one I know, but it is a statewide broadcast so a lot of innocent Iowans are probably watching it.

Brianne Pfannenstiel: “And it’s really interesting to see how they’re responding to these messages…. And so it’s really interesting to see the candidates kind of, you know, figure out how to talk about this….Another thing that that he [Trump] said was, again, you know, kind of doubling down on this idea that Republicans can’t win by talking about abortion in a general election…. essentially Trump’s comments bring into question his pro-life credentials, if you will.

Pro-Life Credentials if you will? Seriously, how cynical is that. Yes I’ve heard the phrase before.

This is the best you all could come up with? I get it, but where is the larger picture, the educating of viewers on what life will be like when America is turned into a third world shit-hole country where women have no rights and are forced to bear the children of their rapist?

Next we have to endure again the old classic – But will this move Republican voters away from Donald Trump? And the same answer that every member of the media has given over and over, more times than the Dean Scream – no nothing will ever move them!

Murphy finishes with this: “And we always talk about the people who support Trump are going to support him no matter what.” That’s true, Erin. You all always do talk about that.  You project the idea that the Trumpsters cannot and will never change, giving them perfect permission to never change and making everyone else feel beaten because it was said on TV so it must be true. Can not a single person in the media offer a more thoughtful idea beyond “Trump supporters will never change?” I have yet to hear one. It’s as if it is their secret wish.

What if members of the press started saying this true statement over and over:  Trump supporters need to learn what is really going on because if they knew, they wouldn’t agree. I didn’t make that up. It was Bill Clinton the master politician who said it – he said simply, if people knew what the Republicans were doing, they wouldn’t be for it. I happen to believe that.

I will only digress on this so far by saying, if you think people understand what Rs are really up to and still agree, I have only to point to the existence of the vast right wing media. If disinformation didn’t work, it wouldn’t be out there.

This is why Rs lie so much – they’ve got a lot to lie about. Iowa Press should stop helping them.  Iowa Press should make their focus the education – not politicization – of  voters. They should stop what basically amounts to weekly gossiping about the inner circle of Rs and they should stop framing and presenting every single issue according to how it affects Republicans’ electoral chances.

At least think of something new to say other than Trump supporters will never change. It’s been said a zillion times already. In Jon Stewart’s words, you’re hurting America. Well Iowa, anyway.

If we really believed as the media says, that they will never change then the logical thing to do would be to stop talking about them on TV and everywhere 24-7 and move on to giving the non-*Trumpworld voters some useful information that will offer them a reason to vote and work to get the traumatic Trump years behind us once and for all.

As for the rest of the program, I couldn’t watch but I wouldn’t recommend.

*According to Cassidy Hutchinson, the term “Trumpworld” was commonly used by the Trump inner circle, including White House Staff and members of congress to describe themselves.