The latest TomDispatch (9/30/08) features historian Ira Chernus ruminating on "How Forgotten Iraq May Elect the Next President":

Even before the present financial meltdown hit the news, the Iraq War had slipped out of the headlines and off the political stage. Now, as investment houses totter and bailout plans fill the headlines, it will be even harder for Iraq to get major media attention....

In one of its few triumphs of the last year, the administration has managed to preside over the tamping down of violence in Iraq just enough to push the whole ongoing story of the war out of the media spotlight....

There seems to be no need to dwell on Iraq any more because "the surge worked." In other words -- the war is over…. We won (sorta)! Even Sarah Palin says so.

Of course, the administration and the media designers of war symbolism don't put it that bluntly. They know that they don't need to. The simple disappearance of scenes of Iraqi carnage from front pages and the TV news does the trick just as well. The public, getting no news and assuming that means good news, hears what it wants to hear.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 at 3:34 pm and is filed under Election, Iraq, Media Criticism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.