Friday, November 12, 2004
Theories About Tom Zeller Jr.
A front page story in today's New York Times by Tom Zeller Jr. ("Vote Fraud Theories, Spread By Blogs, Are Quickly Buried"), of course, caught my eye this morning. As readers of this blog know, it's the countless acts of overt voter suppression, the uncounted votes (spoilage - undervotes, overvotes, nonvotes because of faulty, antiquated voting machines predominately in counties with large amounts of African Americans) and the fact that the election was called before all the votes were counted that has fueled my campaign to fix this electoral system. But, unfortunately, the mainstream press and the mainstream bloggers have chosen to either ignore these problems or belittle the movement (and you better believe it's a movement, a movement that is bringing together liberal democrats, third parties and many of the 527 groups that helped get the Kerry/Edwards ticket at least 56 million votes) instead of addressing America's most pressing crisis: there is no way for sure to know if our election results reflect the will of the people.
On the front page alone (without continuing to Page A20), Mr. Zeller does his best to marginalize the movement by using the following coded terms: "twitchy" and "faulty" and "rumors" and "debunk" and "wrong" and "rumor mill" and "theorized" and "disheartened" and - of course, of course - "conspiracy theories." He left out tin foil.
We can't let this stop us. They are going to do all they can to dissuade us from our mission; some are doing it to retain the status quo, some are doing it because they are blind, some are doing it because of fear.
I know that many of my readers think a little bit differently about this than I do. Many of you truly believe that it's still possible to prove that Kerry won. And, you're right, it is. It's a long shot. But it's still possible.
But The Times is sadly mistaken if they believe that "conspiracy theories" are so easily buried. They made the same claims about 9/11 and check out these poll results on CNN from just a few days ago: CNN Quick Vote. Almost 90% of the people who participated in the poll believe that there is a U.S. government cover-up surrounding 9/11 (and they're right...but it ain't just the government).
If the mainstream media did a better job investigating "conspiracy theories" instead of accepting everything the Bush Administration whispers to them while they lay in bed together, then perhaps the "theories" would dissipate, to be replaced with the fucking truth. But they don't. And they suck. So it's up to us to do the work.
(I'm working on it RIGHT NOW...but I felt it was important to post what I had so far...so that people don't get discouraged...the truth is that the majority of the news right now IS encouraging and I'll get to that tomorrow).
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