Media Illusions For Memorial Day

Memorial Day 2007 arrives at a time when the political system of the United States remains seriously broken — with no repair in sight. By lopsided margins, nationwide public-opinion polls show that a large majority of Americans support prompt and substantial withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. But national policy continues to move in the opposite direction.

The mechanisms of the government — and the press — are stuck in malfunction mode. Or perhaps that's the wrong way to say it. The government and the news media are working very well: for what Dwight Eisenhower, after eight years in the White House, called "the military-industrial complex."

That complex is economic and political, but it is also psychological and propagandistic. Endlessly, on Capitol Hill and in newsrooms, the eagerness to fend off certain accusations — of insufficient patriotism or failure to "support the troops" — is trumping any aversion to war.

Meanwhile — despite all the cynicism that the system has earned — most Americans want to believe that their country's political apparatus is responsive to the will of the people. And it is, sometimes, after a fashion. But the disconnects and delays are often terribly extended, and the fashion is often horrific when the issue is war.

The media fashion, almost invariably, is to present exculpatory storylines for the latest U.S. military actions. Even when the commander-in-chief is in disrepute, the execution of his commands is adulated. And, traditionally, Memorial Day has been a time to cloak the storylines in the glitzy fabric of red-white-and-blue. But what's covered up does not go away.

For more than four years now, in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. news media have gone through various stages of denial and abstracted grief. Triumph evolved into doubts, which turned into widespread criticism and then opposition. But that opposition has not been consistent or strong enough to overcome the pro-war full court press.

On Memorial Day weekend, a ritual is set in cold type and media stone: We directly honor Americans who have died in wars, and we pay indirect tribute to comrades and relatives they left behind.

Media rituals are supposed to reflect reality — but, all too often, they also distort.

"Perception is reality," one of the more cynical aphorisms in Washington, boosts the stature of deceptive officials. At the same time, imbalances of power are extreme within a country that reflexively and proudly calls itself democratic.

This has plenty to do with how media outlets report on Memorial Day every year. The meaning of wars — past, present and prospective — is spun in a warlock's brew of selective memory, evasions, patriotic imagery, sentimentality, genuine grief and irrefutable suffering. What rises to the media top is a thick layer of hype for the nobility of America at war, no matter how mendacious the president leading the way.

This time around, the run-up to Memorial Day has been filled with stories about Washington's legislative "benchmarks" to require that the Iraqi government indicate it's making progress. Those stories amount to a mix-merge of tragedy and farce.

One sign of such progress, we're told, will have to do with Iraq's oil revenues. But, as author Antonia Juhasz pointed out the other day, "A major 'benchmark' is for the Iraqi parliament to pass a new oil law. This is a major goal of Big Oil as it helps privatize Iraq's oil. The proposed Iraqi oil law would actually destabilize Iraq and lengthen the war."

But to cliche-spouting U.S. media, such concerns are just so much fine print. When politicians on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue define "progress" in ways so helpful to American-based oil companies, the coverage rarely probes very deeply into who really benefits.

Meanwhile, the war goes on, and so does the solemn coverage of Memorial Day.

Norman Solomon's latest book, "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death," is now available in paperback. To find out more about Norman Solomon and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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