[Announce] Buying Brand Obama

[Robert Waldrop]

Below is an email from Fr. McCarthy of the Center for Christian Non-violence regarding the essay -- Buying Brand Obama -- which is available online at http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090503_buying_brand_obama/ .

I encourage everyone to read Fr. McCarthy's comments and then pass this email and the link to the Brand Obama commentary on to "everyone you know".

Bob Waldrop, Romero House, Oklahoma City

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Emmanuel Charles McCarthy 
Sent: Thursday, May 07, 2009 6:57 PM
Subject: What neither Notre Dame nor Bishop D'Arcy will not object to about President Obama



Friends,

Sound-bite critiques of the status quo are almost worthless, indeed, in the majority of cases they entrench and harden the status quo. Sound bite support of the status quo,regardless of how infantile,  usually enhances it, even if ever so little. The reason the sound-bite method for presenting information and opinions works so well on behalf of the status quo is that people's consciousnesses within a particular culture have been nurtured, cognitively and emotionally, into "self-evident," taken-for-granted presupposition about reality that the sound-bite plays to positively or negatively. Since by definition the sound-bite is a bite, a small portion of the whole, even a negative critique of a morsel, or a bite-size critique of the whole, leaves most of the attitudes, values and beliefs nurtured from the cradle in tact. "Sure we have more people in prison than any country except one, and sure we are the only country in the Western world still engaged in capital punishment, but on the whole we are pretty darn good," is an example of how the sound-bite consciousness works, even in the face of factual negativity crumbs. In short he or she who lives by the sound-bite, dies by the sound-bite. What is most unfortunate is that so many peace and justice movements, indeed, even nonviolent Christan peace and justice movements have exhaust themselves to impotency or death, living from one mass media sound-bite presented cause de jour to the next dumb-downed sound-bite cause de jour.

The attached Chris Hedges essay is far removed from a sound bite. It will take time to read, and even more time to integrate with prior knowledge, and still more time to creatively arrived at a response that is more than singing Que Sera, Sera, or screaming at the "system," or a demonizing the people manipulating it with state of the art lying. But, what we use our time for is de facto what we lay down our lives for.

However, the first question one should ask about this essay after reading it is the question Hedges himself says should be asked before others: Is it the truth?

Charlie


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www.centerforchristiannonviolence.org
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