Obama Zombies: How the Obama Machine Brainwashed My Generation (23 page)

"Today's generation of young people hold more power than any generation before them to make a positive impact on the world," President Clinton said about the MTV forum.
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"College students are a potent force for positive social change, and we're thrilled to join with the Clinton Global Initiative to stimulate even greater civic participation on campus and worldwide," said Christina Norman, president of MTV.

So, what are these "pressing problems" youth care about? To elaborate at the Apollo event, Sway "finds" a recent graduate in the audience to interview live. It's Erica Williams, that employee for Campus Progress, which is the "youth" arm of the left-wing Center for American Progress. Thousands of people there and Sway just "happens" to stumble across a leftist activist. What are the odds? To Erica's credit, she embraces her employer, saying how Campus Progress "empowers young people" to get involved in the issues that they care about, "like about global warming, and Iraq, and academic affordability."
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You see how this cycle works, don't you? Young people are bombarded with leftist propaganda from an array of celebrities, organized agitators in Washington, D.C., college professors, and networks including MTV, and then all these groups have the audacity to say that the liberal line is what young people care about. Funny how that works. Plant the propaganda seeds, water them constantly, weed out opposing views.

The always impartial Sway finishes with Erica by saying, "you're
motivating me." Nowhere is Erica identified with a partisan, left-wing group. Only if you knew what Campus Progress does would you be able to identify the bias. But MTV gives her a platform as though she's a mainstream voice looking out for young people.

Norman, the former president of MTV, probably has no problem with such blatant bias. After all, she did contribute $4,600 to Obama's presidential run and $28,000 to the Democratic National Committee Service Corporation in 2007 and 2008 alone.
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Norman is neck deep in liberalism, so duh, she's going to use her stature at perhaps the most important network dedicated to young people to shovel Obama's talking points on us all. The "potent force for positive social change" is nothing more than what the Democratic National Committee is planting in her ear. (Notice how the social change and the elimination of poverty are
always
via the hand of government bureaucrats, never through the power of the tried-and-true force of capitalism.)

So when MTV decided to highlight veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, it's no surprise it found those who suffered injuries. In July 2008, MTV put together a reality TV documentary called
Homecoming,
an hour-long special about veterans, hosted by Kanye West and Sway Calloway. Now, to other "nonpartisan" organizations, allowing Kanye "George Bush hates black people" West to be the center of attention may not jibe well with the nonpartisan moniker. But such rancorous partisan fools are exactly the type of persons MTV partners with.

As the
New York Times
reported, the premise of the show was Kanye and Sway's surprising a veteran named Lorenzo Zarate, who had returned from his deployment in Iraq. The MTV hosts come bearing gifts, giving Zarate six months' rent and setting him up with an internship at a local radio station. That's honorable of MTV. But that's
not the documentary's angle. "Once the surprise subsides and the two men settle down in the living room, the talk turns to 'before I went' and 'when I got back.' " You see, Zarate suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder. And there's the angle. As the
Times
notes,
Homecoming
was part of MTV's 2008 election coverage to spotlight a "few of the roughly 1.6 million Americans who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq." In the documentary, Zarate tells Sway and Kanye of his battles with adjusting back to life in Austin, Texas.

"The Army could teach you to kill, kill, kill, but they can't teach you to come back home and be a civilian," he recounts. Zarate even tried to attain a college degree but was relegated to the back of the class because he "had to be fully aware of his surroundings."

"I couldn't have anyone behind me. I was always alert." Zarate's level of trauma was acute enough that his doctor advised him not to work, a problematic diagnosis since his wife was pregnant and they were behind on mortgage payments.
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Tirann Laws of Oklahoma City is also featured in
Homecoming.
His symptoms also prevented him from holding down a steady job. The third veteran interviewed, Shameeka Gray of Charlotte, North Carolina, was in the same boat as the other two individuals.

Dave Sirulnick, an executive vice president at MTV, told the
Times
that
Homecoming
doesn't exaggerate the difficulties facing GIs. "These stories are emblematic of a lot of veterans, certainly not all veterans, but a lot."

Sirulnick observed that "over the last three years we [MTV] have found--this is not scientific--but we have found that well over 70 percent of the veterans we speak to have had some sort of" post-traumatic stress disorder. In reality, the number isn't nearly as high, and most servicemen returning home do not have those symptoms. Would it have killed MTV to highlight veterans who are proud of their time
in Iraq? Explaining the valuable leadership skills they gained? How about the heroism? Yes, war is hell. And that must never be diminished or overlooked; lives are, tragically, lost and disrupted. But to focus on just the negative is the ultimate antiwar propaganda machine. It discourages rather than cultivates interest in joining the United States military. Moreover, such documentaries foster antiwar sentiments.

Is it any surprise, then, that the Iraq War was the second most important issue for voters 18-29 surveyed on Election Day?
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Young people are thinking nearly 70 percent of veterans are coming home maimed and psychologically scrambled.

But it wasn't just biased forums and documentaries that MTV was promoting. As part of MTV's "Choose or Lose" election coverage, the "Street Team '08" covered the 2008 election supposedly from a "youth perspective." An MTV press release even boasted that some of the reporters were children of "once-illegal immigrants." Just an FYI, execs at MTV: most people don't boast about such things. According to the
Boston Globe
, MTV's Street Team '08 went through an "intensive three-day orientation" where they received "lessons on ethics and journalism" and "maintaining objectivity."
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So get this: To maintain objectivity and fulfill ethics in journalism, one of MTV's "reporters" was Jane Fleming Kleeb, who, as I noted earlier, is an outward lib. But don't take my word for it. Jane describes herself as "the Executive Director of the Young Voter PAC which helps Democratic candidates and State Parties win with the 18-35 year-old vote through endorsements, on-the-ground support, training, strategy and money."
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As I also pointed out, Jane's husband, Scott, was the Democrat Senate nominee.

Jaime McLeod, the Vermont "reporter," is a gay rights activist
who, in her MTV profile, gives props to Kobutsu Malone, a rabidly anticapitalist, anti-death penalty, and antiwar Buddhist priest.

Minnesota "reporter" Carissa Jackson covered the Republican convention by highlighting leftist protest groups. Because that's objective and all. This is how Carissa titles her article: "Students Saying No to War, Yes to Schools."
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Yep. As balanced as a teeter-totter with Michael Moore on one side. Carissa profiles a bunch of nitwits on the steps of the Minnesota State Capitol who were part of the group Youth Against War and Racism. Participants apparently staged a "theatrical arrest of 'Dick Cheney' and 'Big Oil Bob,' whom the group considers to be" war criminals.

Other reports featured the "Rise of the Christian Left."
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The Philadelphia correspondent, Cassidy Hartmann, profiled women to dismiss the selection of Sarah Palin as nothing more than "pandering" to women and evangelicals. One Zombie called her a "token," while others on the video report decried the pick as "demeaning" and insulting.
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MTV IS SERIOUS
about bringing young people to the polls.

"Now is the time to have your voice heard," Gideon Yago told the presidential forum audience. "Let's put to rest the notion that young people don't show up to the polls."

Granted, MTV's forums aren't as bad as Cameron Diaz saying "If you think rape should be legal, then don't vote," or Diddy's "Vote or Die Campaign." (Hyperbole, anyone?) Still, MTV may be more lethal, because it cloaks itself in the appearance of objectivity. MTV's decidedly pro-left-wing stance on every political issue acts as a constant electoral battering ram against young people.

Why Mediated Morons Matter

JON STEWART

It was a special homecoming weekend for Northeastern University. More than five thousand students packed the Matthews Arena on the Boston campus to hear the feature speaker in what one school official labeled the "single best event" in his time on campus. From a Zombie perspective, he was right. The event featured the left's best spokesman, and it was on the eve of the November election, on October 17, 2008. A perfect forum to juice up support for the One. The speaker wasn't Obama, Bill Clinton, or Oprah. No, it was Jon Leibowitz, more commonly known by his stage name, Jon Stewart, of Comedy Central's
The Daily Show.

Stewart stormed the Northeastern stage to a rock-star welcome as thousands of Zombies cheered liberalism's patron saint. Then the conservative bash-fest began. Sarah Palin? "She said that small towns she really likes going to because that's the pro-America part of the country. You know, I just want to say to her, just very quickly: Fuck you."
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Actually, what Palin had said on the campaign trail was "We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, D.C. We believe . . . that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hardworking very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation."

Stewart continued: "You know, NYC was good enough for fucking Osama bin Laden, it better be good enough for you. That's what I think."

"I can't take it anymore . . . after eight years of this divisiveness, we're back to this idea that only small-town America is the real America." Stewart groused that Palin was writing off "entire swaths of the country," saying that "cities are just a lot of towns piled on top of each other in one building." Meanwhile, Stewart took direct aim at the selection of Palin: "McCain made an interesting vice presidential choice. I like the woods . . . I just don't know if I would pull my vice president out of the woods randomly." Sounds a little like Stewart was doing his own version of "writing off a swath of the country."

The nearly hour-long "comedy" routine was little more than a liberal screed of talking points. Stewart "joked" about Palin's criticisms of Obama's cozy relationship with bomb-thrower Bill Ayers and even Obama's position on abortion. "I've never seen someone with a greater disparity between how cute they sound when they're saying something and how terrible what they're saying is," Stewart said while doing goofy impressions of the Alaska governor.
"Don'tcha know, Obama, by golly, he just a terrorist? . . . Oh, you know, he just, gosh, kills babies, you know."

No one deemed Stewart's "cute" comment as sexist.

Speaking about McCain, Stewart said that he had "never seen a dude just wander off in the middle of the debate,"
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looking for "Mr. Puddles," ascribing dementia to the Arizona senator. "I got sausages," the McCain impression went. Stewart, again in the faux comedy tone, painted McCain as irrational during the debates, flailing his arms around in disgust, pouting, throwing temper tantrums. "He looks like he's ready to fucking kill somebody," said Stewart. "Lasers are gonna come out of his eyes." But Obama? Well, he was calm, collected, and cool--going through his "plan," his "six-point plan," Stewart told the five-thousand-plus crowd.

And there you have the left's secret weapon, folks: a forty-something self-loathing New Yorker is liberalism's greatest spokesman today. Young people are drawn to Jon Stewart's nightly dose of zany facial expressions, liberal drivel, and F-bomb-laced commentary. Believe it or not, his program is where many young people get their daily news of what's going on in the real world. Sad? Yes. Surprising? Hardly. As we have seen throughout this book, Zombies don't think, they feel.

But it's all just comedy, right? We shouldn't take Jon "little man" Stewart seriously. I mean, he doesn't even take himself seriously. That's certainly the skirt he hides behind when his partisanship is called into question. This is hardly surprising given that Stewart's television program takes cues from the partisan, leftist smear group Media Matters.
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But Stewart is often mean and downright nasty. Sarah Palin is not just politically flawed, in his estimation. Nope. According to Stewart, former governor Palin is comparable to the devastation in Germany that led to Hitler's rise to power. "Have you noticed how [Palin's] rallies have begun to take on the characteristics of the
last days of the Weimar Republic?" he said to a crowd at the stuffy Waldorf-Astoria. " 'Who is Barack Obama?' Hey, lady, we just met you five fucking weeks ago."
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