Djelloul Marbrook

There you go again, Ronald Reagan would say when debating with someone whose views he wanted to dismiss as propagandistic. It was one of the Great Communicator’s most effective tools, and the American public needs to start using it on politicians, economists and reporters.

There you go again, we should say whenever some news anchor or reporter says, The American people just aren’t saving enough. There you go again, you corporate tools. Why aren’t you saying American employers just aren’t paying enough? Why aren’t you saying American employers aren’t providing enough benefits? Why aren’t you saying our politicians are helping the corpocracy squeeze the American Dream out of its beleaguered employees? Why aren’t you asking our society to define a decent, moral profit margin?

Whenever you hear that cliché, remember that you are listening to journalism in the service of its corporate masters. Remember that we don’t have a free press, we have a commercially censored press. There is no way on earth that it can be called good or even decent journalism to say we aren’t saving enough without providing the further context that we aren’t being paid enough, that the cost of living is relentlessly rising, and that our benefits are being savaged. Tell the corporate servants to put that in their pipes and smoke it.

—DM