We live in a world today of \u201cintimate\u201d mass communication. In the \u201cold days\u201d, communication was by reading; newspapers, tracts or books. We had a \u201cchoice to know\u201d, short of the street corner cry of the newsboys: \u201cExtra, Extra, Read All About It, Spanish sink US Battleship!!!\u201d Want to know more \u2013 buy the paper. And from the beginning, newspapers had their biases. Some of the great newspapers of the mid-1800\u2019s fought for abolition of slavery, like William Lloyd Garrison\u2019s Liberator<\/em> and Frederick Douglass\u2019s North Star. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n But the bias of the newspapers of the late 1800\u2019s was more about selling papers and making money. The great newspaper \u201cwar\u201d between William Randolph Hearst\u2019s New York Journal <\/em>and Joseph Pulitzer\u2019s New York World <\/em>wasn\u2019t about ideology. It <\/em>became a national battle of sensationalism to sell papers. Which paper could tell the \u201cbiggest\u201d story, true or not? We categorize that as the era of \u201cYellow Journalism\u201d. It was when the United States actually fought a war driven not by necessity, but by public opinion stoked with outrage by the lurid stories of Spanish atrocities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Fredric Remington, the famous artist of the American west, was sent to Cuba by Hearst, to draw images of the war atrocities for the Journal. <\/em> The story goes that when Remington cabled Hearst that nothing was happening, Hearst replied: \u201cYou furnish the pictures, I\u2019ll furnish the war\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Today we are far beyond newsboys crying out in the city streets. In fact we have surpassed the time of the television \u201cevening news\u201d (though it\u2019s still available). Today our news is delivered individually, to our handheld devices. We get our news in bed or the bathroom, as we drive or as we idle away time at work. The newsboy is no longer crying out from the street \u2013 he is \u201cpinging\u201d on the bedstand or vibrating in our pocket. But he still demands the same attention \u2013 \u201cExtra, Extra, read all about it\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Just as the yellow journalists one hundred and twenty years ago used stories and pictures to drive our emotions, today\u2019s \u201ccommentators\u201d (such a neutral word, as if they were ancient Greek scholars) find key words to impress our views. And that\u2019s what today\u2019s essay is about, the new \u201cyellow journalism\u201d of the Twenty-First Century. I call it \u201ccritical word theory\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s start with the \u201cnewest\u201d, coined by Fox <\/em>commentator Tucker Carlson: Legacy Americans. This term is part of an entire \u201cschool\u201d of thought, based around the changing demographics of the United States. The facts are that sometime in the next twenty years, white people will no longer be the majority of Americans. For the first time since the colonization of North America, the country will be a \u201cmajority-minority\u201d nation. That means that no one group; not whites or blacks, Latinos or Asians or Native Americans or \u201cothers\u201d, will be a majority of America. We will be a nation of varying minorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s a fact. But what Carlson means is what happens to the \u201clegacy\u201d Americans when they stop being the majority? \u201cLegacy Americans\u201d are the white people who were here \u2013 before. Before what? Before the migrations of the twentieth century, before \u201cbrown people\u201d became more populous throughout our nation, rather than just the Southwest. Carlson uses the term like a crowbar to divide the interest of the soon to be minority whites from what will be the majority of the nation, non-whites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so the machinations of many states to reduce the voting power of non-white peoples and enhance those of whites is to protect \u201clegacy Americans\u201d. It sounds so \u201cproper\u201d, like the inheritance left by some old aunt to keep the family fortune going. But of course, the definition of \u201clegacy American\u201d is anti-democratic, as anti-American as it comes. It calls for the preservation of power regardless of electoral strength. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Which brings us to Carlson\u2019s greater thesis of \u201cWhite Replacement Theory\u201d. This is the over-arching theme of his philosophy. The theory states that, like the villainous organization in a James Bond movie, the Democratic Party is in favor of allowing \u201copen borders\u201d, because they want more brown people to come to the United States and vote for them. They will \u201creplace\u201d the white voter, (and employee), to reshape the nation into something else \u2013 in Carlson\u2019s mind maybe Venezuela. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Which fits into the real propaganda, the \u201cBig Lie\u201d of \u201cStop the Steal\u201d. Because when Democrats respond that they don\u2019t want open borders but legal immigration, and besides immigrants aren\u2019t citizens and can\u2019t vote \u2013 the Carlson thesis is that they already do vote. His claim is that voting is already so corrupted in this nation that millions of illegal votes have reshaped our election results, particularly one. The fact that this isn\u2019t true, doesn\u2019t seem to matter to Carlson: He\u2019s \u201cfurnishing the pictures and the war\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLegacy Americans\u201d, Carlson would say, should embrace their \u201cHeritage\u201d. Heritage is another misappropriated term in our modern Yellow Journalism. It stands for the literally white-washed history taught in the public schools of the 1940\u2019s, 50\u2019s and 60\u2019s. \u201cHeritage\u201d means that the Southern \u201cLost Cause\u201d of the Civil War was righteous, and that the villainous North (just like the Democratic Party) is trying to erase history by removing Confederate relics from town squares and flag poles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But the real erasing of history took place at the end of Reconstruction in 1876, when the white votes of the South were more important than securing the victory of civil rights in the war. Robert E. Lee didn\u2019t even want monuments. He wanted the nation to move on from the disaster that he prolonged (though he certainly didn\u2019t put it that way). But it was in the \u201cinterest\u201d of the white South to re-write the history of America. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s what we (I\u2019m sixty-five) were taught in school, the \u201cLost Cause\u201d history that somehow put the \u201cromantic\u201d Confederates on an equal footing with the \u201cindustrialized\u201d Union. Sure we learned about the heroic Irish Brigades who fought in the War on both sides. But we were taught about the brilliant \u201cstrategery\u201d of the Confederate Generals, and the life wasting butchery of the Union Generals. And we learned very little about the 179,000 African Americans of the Union Army who battled to free their brothers from slavery. Where are their statues?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHeritage\u201d is used to define what I would call the \u201cLeave it to Beaver\u201d time, of the 1950\u2019s. It all seemed so peaceful, before the upheavals of Americans of color demanding equal rights. The good old days when everyone \u201cknew their place\u201d: women stayed at home, gays stayed in the closet, and people with disabilities stayed in the upstairs bedroom with the shades down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Which leads us to the final \u201cbugaboo\u201d term: “Critical Race Theory”. No matter that critical race theory was a specific term used to define a study of legal processes at the post-graduate level, today it is now misused as the over-arching term for the \u201cevil\u201d of teaching that discrimination is wrong; that it benefitted and still benefits one race over another. Because, as Mr. Carlson would have it, we are to roll back the changes to \u201cLeave it to Beaver\u201d times. That way, we would make sure that \u201cLegacy Americans\u201d are protected, that their \u201cHeritage\u201d is saved, and that they aren\u2019t \u201creplaced\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The end of the Reconstruction marked the end of the dream of an America where color didn\u2019t matter. Yellow Journalism brought us an \u201cimperialistic war\u201d. And the Critical Word Theory of today is trying to divide our nation, and make it one of minority rule. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If that\u2019s not Un-American, I don\u2019t know what is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Intimate Communication<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Legacy Americans<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Fix the Vote<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
White-washed History<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Leave it to Beaver<\/h3>\n\n\n\n