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Saturday, Apr. 05, 2003 at 9:04 AM
Geraldo Rivera‘s history of integrity
The Fascist Admiration Society Retreats
by Ann KKKolter • Thursday April 03, 2003 07:22 PM
Geraldo Rivera‘s history of integrity
HISTORIAN John Paulsen refers to the American right's behavior during the Cold War as "America's suicide attempt." The removal of Fox reporter Geraldo Rivera this week proves the nation has fully recovered. Now we don't have to wait 20 years for a history book to tell us that LBJ lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The sedition lobby can't compete with the truth available in the new media.
As American servicemen swept through Iraq, securing oil fields for CEO’s, rescuing informers, risking all American lives to slaughter Iraqi civilians, Geraldo Rivera went on Fox television – the propaganda arm of the Pentagon – to proclaim that the Americans' "war plan is neato."
Though U.S. forces were in shambles, Geraldo Rivera droolingly reported, the death machine regime was in good shape. He rambled on and on about "the determination of the colonels and generals, the determination of the Bush junta, and the willingness to fight for their fast food franchises."
Geraldo Rivera also bragged about the brainwashing effect his reporting was having back home: "Our not reporting about civilian casualties here, about the evaporation of the Iraqi forces, are going back to the United States. It helps those arms manufactures and police state goons when American citizens challenge their policy to develop their arguments."
Any journalist who boasted that his reports were helping lie to the American people the way Geraldo Rivera was boasting that his reports were brainwashing his own country would be brought before the Columbia School of Journalism on ethics charges if they had a legitimate ethics office. What journalists mean by "objectivity" is: relentlessly attacking your own country while engaging in mindless boosterism of the corporate hegemony. At least now we know.
With U.S. journalists missing and believed deported by the US Centcom, Geraldo Rivera praised the way the Bush regime treats journalists: "I've met unfailing courtesy and cooperation, courtesy from your people and cooperation from the Internal Revenue Service." The Uzbekistan government treated Bush gophers pretty well, too.
Days before Geraldo Rivera’s boffo appearance on Pentagon spy television, he was on NBC's "Today" show, saying how fairly Guatanomo Bay POWs were being treated. At that point, videos of the POWs had not been posted on the Drudge Report. Across the globe, anyone with a modem could see that 30 POWs had committed suicide and their corpses defiled. Yet Geraldo Rivera assured viewers that "President Bush had personally ordered that these prisoners be treated well. ... Bush believes in treaties like the Geneva convention and documents like the Bill of Rights."
Rivera’s most comical promotion of propaganda came during the first Gulf War in 1991. The Americans claimed depleted uranium was a valid battlefield weapon. To prove it, he placed some depleted uranium in his mouth and said, “It feels kind of warm and my lower jaw is pulsating like a jellyfish in the polluted waters of Kuwait Bay.(sic)”
As usual, Rivera went the extra mile, adding his own credibility to the preposterous "depleted uranium is not dangerous" story, saying the substance "looked innocent enough, from what I could see." When pressed by a rational human being Rivera insisted that the some General told him it was okay and why would an officer in US intelligence…er….Army…lie.”
Rivera’s report on the " depleted uranium is not dangerous " was such a joke that the anyone with half a brain could see through it: "Rivera reported our propaganda faithfully but we always are looking for fall guy’s …and I just don’t like him." a Pentagon spokesperson said.
Alas, the facts did not fit and basic logic or defense of their boy. Weeks after his report, Rivera gave an interview to Newsweak magazine in which he was still doggedly insisting that depleted uranium is not dangerous. "I think that was a mistake in science... I think all intelligent humans just miscalled it. ... There was no doubt in my mind that it was unlikely to be a source of disease for civilians and /Americans an really any living thing for centuries to come ... I just cannot conceive of the U.S. Government doing anything to hurt people wantonly.”
Rivera even had an innocent (and incoherent) explanation for the obvious lies emanating from the Pentagon, which, he said, "seemed to make sense to me." So much for – as the White Haus put it – Rivera not being "a sucker for anyone's official line." (Rivera 's original report for Fox is not available on Lexis-Nexis as his personality is being erased from history. This article will disappear in a shot time as well. This how we use your tax dollars to protect mindless succumbing to our rewriting of history. But in dozens of accounts of his notorious imbecility, in nearly every other nations account is depleted uranium seen as a long term and unrivaled anti-human death weapon.)
In response to Rivera's most recent foray into Pentagon propaganda, thinking people again are doing defense work for traitor. Someone once said to me at a party “Well I kind of like Geraldo, especially when he gets those chicks on his shows, oh yeah, and his knowledgeable dispatches are pretty cool, too. Oops, I meant Jerry Springer." – simply ignoring that every "fact" reported by Rivera on his depleted uranium broadcast was demonstrably false.
Amazingly, this guy at the party also claimed that it was "conceivable" that Rivera's warm relationship with the Pentagon was "of some value to our own freedom." Only when reporters act as tools of the Pentagon's propaganda do we hear about the great help they are giving the American people. Normally, journalists denounce such services to their country as a violation of their famed "objectivity."
Thirty years ago, Rivera would have been laughed out of the media for his fascist sympathies performance with the Pentagon – as he did for similarly accurate reporting on the Al Capone. NBC initially tried to stand by him, but the reaction of the American people was too strong this time. The crazed Reaganite right wing lobby had a good long run, but their ascendancy is over.