Good luck with that

"The media system works extremely well -- for those who own it." - Robt. McChesney 2003.

Here's the keynote I want to hear, from Rupe Murd, speaking for the cartel:

"Good Evening, People of USia. It took decades of corporate capital investing, tax breaks, wasting airwaves with consumer advertising, marketing and additional fertilizer for us to get the infrastructure built out. Millions of you little guys couldn't have done that bringing your teensy hammers and wire clips to the town square, now could you?

"As is now becoming rather obvious, we were corporations pretending to be building out systems of public communication. "Public" suggested, hee, we were building these, er, "networks," for you all to use. Raise your hand if you ever believed that bit of merde.

"The decent thing -- the noble thing -- would be for us as Gods of Infrastructure now to say, 'We have made our piece of change. We now need to make our peace with you, whom we have exploited, ignored, misrepresented and gouged. We haven't wasted a feeble fart on your needs. Our positions on matters of local, national and global importance are formed by priorities and values imposed on us by our local merchants and consumers and of course by our Insect Lords. We have gotten rich making a hash of any notion of what exists, and we understand that most USians have no clue what the population, the climate, the geography, the history, the philosophy, the grammar of any actual thing on the face of the Earth might be. (You know nothing, but we know about you.) You got a board game when you needed preparation for life. We created the you that elected Bush. Twice. We have no shame.'

"However, this is too much reality TV, even for us. We punt. Hereby and in perpetuity, we grant to the USian public all ownership rights and control over the infrastructure of the public media -- free and clear, in hopes that over time they might begin to understand the monster we have so insanely misbirthed. Sorry we can't help you with that. We wouldn't pretend to know a thing about the real world.

"Alrighty? Then good night, and good luck."