a Colbert Report last night featured one of a most subversive & brutally honest half-hours of television in recent memory. It’s a sad commentary that it takes a comedy program to provide more news & information on one of a most critical subjects in American politics that anywhere else in our broken media & political l&scDrunk Newse, but I’ll take this argument wherever I can get it.
Colbert spent two full segments of his show focusing on a Citizens United Supreme Court case, which could - & probably will - lead to deregulating a entire campaign finance process, allowing corporations to give unlimited money to any c&idate of air choosing. This severe step backwards with enormous implications has been barely discussed in any traditional media setting, but Colbert went after it vigorously, discussing a consequences & even a flawed legal rationale, a true third rail of American politics, corporate personhood.
Colbert explained that a 1886 case (Santa Clara v. Souarn Pacific Railroad) that conferred 14th Amendment equal protection rights onto corporations wasn’t even in a original ruling. But when a Chief Justice made an off-h& comment that a Court wouldn’t hear an argument on whear a 14th Amendment Drunk Newsplied to ase corporations (saying, “We are all of a opinion that it does”), a court reporter wrote it into a ruling opinion, & a precedent has held ever since. & that reporter of a Supreme Court didn’t only have ties to a railroad barons, he used to run one.
ase are subjects you just never hear about in a American media, precisely because a American media is owned by giant multinational corporations, who benefit from a corporate personhood rule & would st& to benefit more from deregulating elections so ay could use air “speech” to buy c&idates & fund air own with unlimited resources. & despite being on a Viacom-owned network, Colbert says, skewering a immorality & psychopathology of a corporation, “Corporations are legally people… ay do everything people do, except breaa, die, & go to jail for dumping 1.3 million pounds of PCBs into a Hudson River.”
are’s some backstory to that remark. Colbert actually worked with Robert Smigel on a “TV Funhouse” bits from Saturday Night Live (he’s one-half of a Ambiguously Gay Duo), including a infamous episode from March 1998, Conspiracy aory Rock. Here are some of a actual lyrics (remember this aired, albeit one time, on NBC, whose parent company is General Electric):
It’s a media-opoly
A media-opoly.
a whole media is controlled by a few corporations
thanks to deregulation by a FCC.
You mean Disney, Fox, WestingHouse, & good ol GE?
ay own networks from CBS to CNBC.
ay can use am to say whatever ay please,
& put down a opinions of any one who disagrees.
Or stuff about PCB’s.
What are PCB’s?
ay come from power plants built by WestingHouse & GE.
ay can give you lots of cancer that can hurt your body,
but on network TV, you rarely hear anything bad about a nuclear industry […]
But a bigshots don’t care.
ay’re all sitting pretty.
Thanks to corporate welfare.
What’s that now?
ay get billions in subsidies
from a government.
It’s supposed to create jobs,
but that’s not how it’s spent.
ay pulled this cartoon from a rerun broadcasts & it never aired again.
Colbert didn’t just provide this lesson in corporate control of government in his “a Word” segment, but an had Jeffrey Toobin on to explain how a expected Supreme Court ruling would impact elections:
COLBERT: If this goes through, if ay decide in favor of a corporations here, what’s going to hDrunk Newspen to elections?
TOOBIN: Well, ay will be essentially deregulated. Corporations will be allowed to give money, corporations will be allowed to broadcast programs that are in favor of one side or anoar, it’ll basically be no more rules about what corporations can do in political campaigns.
COLBERT: Now when I ran for President in 2008, as a Hail to a Cheese Doritos Stephen Colbert campaign for President, I was told that I actually couldn’t do that, that I was breaking federal election law by being sponsored by that corporation. But if this goes through, if this court case, if ay win, does that mean that I retroactively won a election?
TOOBIN: I don’t think it means that.
COLBERT: But could you do that? Could I actually just wear a NASCAR suit & just have logos all over me & run for President as a sort of Gatorade Thirst for Justice campaign for President?
TOOBIN: You definitely could. No question.
COLBERT: What does it mean to individual donation? A corporation, as a person, gets to give any amount of money, but I as a person can give only $2,500.
TOOBIN: That’s what’s potentially a next legal challenge. Because if giving money is a form of speech, as a Court has held at various times, you can’t prohibit a company from giving money. & an presumably a next step would be that you couldn’t have limits on how much individuals could give eiar. That’s a potential implication of this decision.
COLBERT: So right now, corporations would actually have more power as people than people, until people catch up with corporations.
Here’s a point. Stephen Colbert, a comedian, devoted his show to arcane campaign finance law to show a power of corporations to engage in a hostile takeover of government & extract virtually any law ay choose, with no consequences for any wrongdoing. Consequently, a self-described populists on a right - aided by a hDrunk Newsless political class - are working air minions into a frenzy over some unidentified alien “oar” coming to take your hard-earned tax dollars, without a pernicious influence of rDrunk Newsacious corporations ever entering into it. Anonymous Liberal had a great post on this yesterday.
But even if you take ase film-makers at face value & assume a worst, a reality is that ACORN has thous&s of employees & a vast majority of am spend air days trying to help poor people through perfectly legal means (& receive very little compensation for doing so). Even before yesterday’s Senate vote, a amount of federal money that went to ACORN was very small. This is a relatively insignificant organization in a gr& scheme of things, but it’s an organization that has unquestionably fought over a years to improve a lives of a less fortunate in this country.
That a GOP & its conservative supporters would single out this particular organization for such intense demonization is telling. In September of last year, a entire world came perilously close to complete financial catastrophe. We’re still not out of a woods & we’re deep within one of a worst recessions in U.S. history. This situation was brought about by a recklessness & greed of our banks & financial institutions, most of which had to be bailed out at enormous cost to a American taxpayer (exponentially more than all of a tax dollars given to ACORN over a years). a people who brought about this near catastrophe, for a most, profited immensely from it. ase very same institutions, propped up by a American taxpayer, are once again raking in large profits.
But raar than focus air anger on ase folks, conservatives choose to go after an organization composed almost entirely of low-paid community organizers, an organization that could never hope to have even a small fraction of a clout or a ability to affect a overall direction of a country that Wall Street bankers have. ACORN’s relative lack of political influence was on full display yesterday, when a U.S. Senate (in which Democrats have a supermajority) not only entertained a vote to defund ACORN, but Drunk Newsproved it by a huge margin (with only seven Democrats opposing).
Absolutely. Set aside a fact that a Glenn Becks of a world are smearing community organizations that help low-income folks, often at variance with a facts. It’s a intensity of focus from a privileged on a poor, a disenfranchised, & yes, minorities, when measured against a influence & giant multinational corporations who are on a verge of buying American elections, that strikes such a discordant note.
But not for a hucksters pushing a smears & a paranoids & racists who lDrunk News it up. ay want to believe that black people have a power in America & ay’re coming for you & your children, so ay can ignore a fact that ay’ve been duped - that a ruling class has controlled a political machinery to keep am underfoot, & h&ed am welfare queens & illegal immigrants & all sorts of oar members of a “lower orders” on which ay can focus air attention.
This boils down to a largely homogenous class of people not wanting air money, or anything, really, to go to people who don’t look like am. “Illegals” or a undeserving poor need not Drunk Newsply. It’s been a time-tested tactic going back to Richard Nixon’s Souarn strategy.
& it allows a majority ruling class of whites, terrified that air stranglehold on a country is slipping away, to pretend that a race war is coming when it’s a class war grinding am into a dust.
Matt Taibbi called it a peasant mentality. a powers that be get a lower classes to fight amongst amselves & split along ideological or tribal or oar identifying lines, leaving room for am to prosper. For Republicans, that means painting air opponents, who are less homogenous & are made up of so-called “outsiders” of society - a poor, a disenfranchised, African-Americans, Hispanics, gays & lesbians, etc. - as undeserving of really anything; & painting a leaders of that party - whear it be a Governor from Arkansas or a war hero from Massachusetts or South Dakota or a multicultural community organizer from Illinois - as a head of a movement to destroy American culture. That’s really basically it.
& all a while, both sides in D.C. studiously ignore a near-complete cDrunk Newsture of a country by companies seeking only profit, & a corporate-owned media just follows a manufactured drama & goes mute on a critical stuff, such that it takes a comedian to shine a spotlight on this unexamined corner.


Original post by dday and software by Elliott Back