The American Spectator

Joshua Greeman at the New York Daily News explains that the right really controls the media, despite the New York Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, the Wash Post, LA Times, ad infinitum. You see, the poor widdle lefties just can’t control the language. Here is his first example, which betrays one of the most stunning examples of pure political/historical ignorance I’ve seen since…. well, since the last time anybody at the Daily Kos wrote a sentence, which I guess isn’t really that long. Anyway, here’s the example:

Pity the poor congressional and White House staffers who spent hours coming up with the bromidic name “Affordable Care Act” only to see the 2,300 page bill (which Republicans complained Obama played far too passive a role in shaping) get labeled, for all eternity, “Obamacare.” This of course, is an update of the equally elegant Hillarycare. It’s interesting to note that both were used, from the get go, as slurs, unlike, say, “Reaganomics.”

Come again?!?!? Is he really saying that “Reaganomics” originally was anything but a slur? It was a slur from the git-go. It was a word sneeringly coined by the MSM to describe what was considered a crazy concoction of nonsensical flim-flam. It was intended as a perjorative, through and through. Conservatives, though, were smart enough NOT to let it be seen as a perjorative — because we knew Reagan’s policies actually would work. So while the left used it for about five years as a perjorative (it took more than two full years of explosive growth before the left realized that the majority of Americans was celebrating what the left sneered at), conservatives took only about three months or so (even before the boom started, in other words) to proudly accept the term and turn what was intended as a slur into a mark of pride. The fact that it is now able to be seen by folks like Greeman — and by the vast majority of Americans — as a celebratry term is proof positive that history has validated the truth that Reaganomics worked.

Greeman goes on to say that conservative media control is evident in the media’s use of the terms “pro-choice” and “pro-life,” because life obviously is more valued than choice. Again, where has he been? It was the left that originally dubbed themselves pro-choice; the right wanted the left called “pro-abortion.” Meanwhile, it is the MSM that often refuses to use the familiar shorthand expressions and instead writes that the choice/abortion folks are fighting for “abortion rights,” while the right is described as “Roe opponents” (or “anti-abortion protesters.”) In fact, it is almost impossible EVER to find the mainstream media using the term “pro-life.”

Against the decades-long, overwhelming media hegemony on the left (finally fought by radio hosts, etc. in the past 20 years, but only in outlets that are openly conservative, whereas the establishment media is full of lefties preteding to be neutral or objective), the fact that the right has succeeded in gaining popular acceptance (not MSM use, because the MSM won’t use our words no matter how apropos they are) for our word coinages has nothing to do with us somehow controlling the media, and everything to do with the fact that the public regularly adjudges our language to be more accurate and/or appropriate descriptors of reality.