Orwell Rolls in his Grave

I recently caught the film, Orwell Rolls in his Grave, on cable television here. I don’t normally watch much T.V. during the day, especially with Ben gone, and I just couldn’t watch SpongeBob anymore so I flipped through to FSTV, which stands for “Free Speech Television” and was airing on AccessTucson, a local channel. The film about Orwell compares the modern day political climate with George Orwell’s novel, 1984. The narrator in the novel, Winston Smith, works in the Department of Truth to create “spin” on all decisions made by “Big Brother,” a euphemism Orwell created for the ruling elite (sadly, I haven’t read the novel, only clips from it, so I plan to pick it up for this weekend). Anyway, Robert Kane Pappas, the director of the film, equates the tightly-controlled media in the U.S. to the “Department of Truth” and illustrates how “spin” can draw support from common people while the ruling elite gather the profit. The conservative right’s ability to incorporate religious belief reminded me of something that happened during the Clinton years: despite Clinton’s sex scandals, NOW and other feminist organizations supported Clinton because his stance on certain issues was favorable to their platform. I believed this caused a real loss of faith in feminism — it certainly did for me, and I decline to support NOW even to this day. Now, the conservative right has found that it works for them, too — all they have to do is put “spin” on a bill and make it seem that it is against “people of faith,” and suddenly they have grassroots support from churches all over the country, regardless of the immorality of the legislation itself. It’s ridiculous, and I see this kind of ludicrous spin all the time in propaganda pieces like “World” magazine (sent to me courtesy of my husband’s family), which actually protested election reform — election reform! — by saying it was “unGodly.” No reason attached, just that it was “unGodly.” What, do I have jello for brains? Thus I am working on a new book called,
Taking Back Christianity: Ten Reasons Republicans think they are “God’s Party” — but aren’t. I’m sick of this kind of conservative bias everywhere. But anyway, back to “Orwell Rolls in his Grave”… what I did enjoy about the movie was the consensus that anti-trust laws need to be rewritten. I have felt, for a long time, that this is key to reform in all areas of our society. Anti-trust legislation is now a hundred years old, which means that corporations and media giants have had a hundred years to figure out how to get around it — and they have. Look at the franchise system: this is a system of corporate control that allows monopolization without, ahem, monopolization under the law. Take any fast food chain: each is privately owned, but do we ever see any kind of customization or individuality? All are under tight corporate control — almost like, gee, a corporation — without falling under anti-trust legislation, even when they dominate a market. We also see buy-ups of competitors: for example, Microsoft now owns 49% of Macintosh/Apple. They cannot hold a “controlling” share, but they can certainly influence decisions with 49% of stock. In addition to this kind of economic monopolization is polarization in the media (either liberal or conservative — what really happened to “fair and balanced”?) and a kind of ideological monopoly. For example, the same media corporation owns both the Washington Post (liberal) and the Washington Times (conservative) — I had to read both when I lived there to get a decent idea of what was really happening. Now I read the internet — and not msn.com or cnn.com, but a host of news agencies from all over, as well as individual bloggers. I really believe that anti-trust legislation is key to allowing diversity of opinion and free speech to all people, not just speech in the corporate interest. When I was a child, we used to talk about communism and fascism arising “from within” the U.S. and threatening Democracy, but I never believed I would live to see it. And yet, I have.