Language doesn't just reflect your understanding of reality: it SHAPES it. The Pentagon (and its pet, the State Department) knows this and creates language to mislead us about what it is actually doing. First I and then MICHAEL PARENTI (in a fine talk from the 1990s) expore how it works. Of particular interest: Parenti's debunking of the "Gaddafi-is-a-menace" rhetoric, ca. 1990. (The government then forgot about Gaddafi for 20 years. Then he suddenly became a menace again.)
This is a rerun of NWN #10 (April 2008)
Thanks to Sally Soriano and Peoples Video-Audio for the Parenti recording.
Music added: John McCutcheon, "Let's Pretend"; David Rovics, "What If You Knew?"
For written commentary, photos & other graphics, videos, great links, and an archive of past installments, please see this show's Web site: http://newworldnotes.blogspot.com. Permanent link to the entry for this installment: http://newworldnotes.blogspot.com/2012/07/war-language-and-media.html.
SERIES OVERVIEW -- Political and social commentary in a variety of genres. Exploring the gap between what we want ... and what they're trying to make us settle for. "Date recorded," below, = date of first scheduled broadcast
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