DR. DEAN MAKES A CALL
NASHUA, NEW HAMPSHIRE –The doctor was in the house. A hoarse Howard Dean showed up in twelve degree weather at a noon hour packed house at Martha’s Exchange on Main St. in Nashua. As he suffered with his own case of bronchitis, he was passionately determined to keep making house calls. Although the wind outside was bitter and cold, the sentiment inside was toasty as patients waited for diagnosis and prescribed treatments on how to cure what ails them.
Like most Americans, voters of New Hampshire are afflicted. They are pained by the loss of jobs. They are weary from an inability to pay for healthcare insurance and prescription drugs. They are sickened by the escalating numbers of soldiers dying daily in Iraq. The most perilous affliction for voters, however is a condition called CMM. It’s very contagious and as a matter of fact, it has become an epidemic.
Dean began dispensing his dosages of ideas. The first, concerned the correction of “fiscal folly” practiced by” the Bush administration and the restoration of 2.9 million lost jobs. Addressing corporate love affair with job outsourcing, the governor called for tax penalties for those companies choosing to take jobs offshore. He recommended massive investments in infrastructure so that roads, bridges, and energy supply sources can be rehabilitated.
Next, he measured out his prescription for the country’s healthcare system and plans to overhaul it so that children in America, like those in other countries around the world, can have access to doctors when they are sick. He blasted the new drug benefits bill and explained that the pharmaceutical companies who will gain from this plan also wrote the bill and are giving money to the Republican Party for the Bush re-election campaign.
By now, Howard Dean’s opposition to the war in Iraq is well known. Voters in New Hampshire are familiar with his passionate feelings against the unilateral invasion. Therefore, he spoke briefly about Iraq and reiterated that we were lied to by the Bush administration about the reasons for going to war.
The time had come for questions. Unlike a typical office visit, where patients get four minutes of the doctor’s time, this physician spent lots of time explaining his cure.
Eventually, a lady asked the question that allowed Dr. Dean to elaborate on the worst infection sickening the body politic. She wanted to know what Governor Dean thought of the incessant television replay of his post Iowa Caucus rally and the systematic attempt by the corporate media to select the party’s nominee. He answered by explaining that he is not a shill for corporations, has not taken money from them, and is only beholden to the thousands of supporters who have given him small donations.
By all appearances, Americans have become grossly debilitated by CMM. We have become infected with a feverish inability to distinguish fact from reality because we are in the grips of manufactured fiction. The repeated footage of what the media dubbed “The Dean Scream” is a perfect case in point.
When Americans watched Howard Dean exuberantly rally his supporters last week, they were witnessing the pandemic known as Corporate Media Manipulation and its effects on politicians and the democratic process. Since the day of that event, pundits and commentators, like Svengalis, have manipulated viewers into believing the governor engaged in a maniacal rampage. But media networks, not Howard Dean, are on a rampage. They have given the event a title and engaged in pseudo post mortem analysis. In addition, they chant repeatedly of the public’s “outrage” by the rally. Although he has drawn standing room only adoring crowds in New Hampshire, televisions glow with manipulative distortions by commentators and media pundits. Ruminations by so called “professionals” such as Robert Novak, replete with yet another replay of accompanying footage, instruct voters that “Dean is dead”. Polls are flashed like terror alerts to further infect the collective American psyche.
Whether the voters in the Granite State suffer too badly from CMM remains to be seen. One gentleman at the Dean event told me he stopped watching television a long time ago because he could no longer stand the fabrications and unrestrained bias. Hopefully, others here are as healthy and robust of mind.
