[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] State of Denial

[Bill Totten]

Clear Channel foams our intellectual runway

by Robert C Koehler

Tribune Media Services (August 28 2008)


Talk about naive. The Union of Concerned Scientists apparently thought
the Democratic and Republican national conventions would be appropriate
events at which to bring up the awkwardly substantive topic of US
nuclear weapons stockpiles (6,000 or so) and policy (insane).

So, as part of a larger campaign of informative ads in the two
convention cities, Denver and Minneapolis-Saint Paul, they rented
billboard space at the two airports and greeted travelers with ads
depicting an aerial view of that city, with one of those ground zero
bull's-eyes superimposed on the downtown area, and the words: "When only
one nuclear bomb could destroy a city like (Minneapolis, Denver) ... We
don't need 6,000". Below the picture, the party's presidential nominee -
one per city - was urged "to get serious about reducing the nuclear threat".

Well, OK. Perhaps you will not be surprised to hear what happened next:
In Minneapolis, some people found the ad "scary", which it was supposed
to be, and "anti-McCain", which it wasn't, but airports are the
sovereign turf of Corporate America, which has quite a few values higher
than free speech. Chief among them, I think, is "happy, happy".

And Northwest Airlines, the official airline of the Republican National
Convention, which also controls the advertising space in Concourse G of
the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, found the ad to be in
clear violation of this value. So it requested Clear Channel Outdoor, a
branch of the media conglomerate that originally sold the billboard
space to Union of Concerned Scientists, to remove the ad.

Clear Channel, best known for homogenizing the nation's airwaves (it
owns more than 1,200 radio stations, and pushes a lineup of right-wing
talk show hosts), did Northwest one better. It yanked the ad in
Minneapolis, then preemptively yanked it again in Denver, where no one
had complained.

Phew - threat averted! Let the conventions proceed with all due hoopla
and empty intrigue.

"By maintaining thousands of highly accurate nuclear weapons on alert,
the United States perpetuates the only threat that could destroy it as a
functioning society: a large-scale attack by Russia launched either
without authorization, by accident, or by mistake because of a false
warning of an incoming US attack".

So UCS points out, in a statement on its Web site called "Toward True
Security". America's security establishment remains calcified in Cold
War paranoia and, incredibly, hair-trigger nuclear alert - and no one
talks about it. What threat do we really face? By any rational
assessment, the greatest danger to our survival is from nuclear weapons
themselves. But we don't have the mechanism for such a discussion, at
least not in the common spheres of national life: politics and popular
culture. We continue to maintain and upgrade our nuclear arsenal and
national life simply moves on around it. Yet:

"By giving nuclear weapons so large and visible a role in US policy",
the UCS statement goes on, "... the United States has increased the
incentive for other nations to acquire nuclear weapons, and reduced the
political costs to them of doing so".

Nuclear technology is more accessible than ever, and more and more
countries feel the need to join "the club", fueling the arrival of what
many observers consider a second nuclear age - far more "egalitarian"
than the first. At least forty non-nuclear states currently possess
large quantities of highly enriched uranium, and the risk of terrorists
possessing "suitcase nukes" is greater than ever. The Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists, which has been monitoring the state of global nuclear
risk since 1947, recently reset its doomsday clock to five minutes to
midnight.

No, this is not an easy discussion to have, but what is the cost of not
having it? What is the cost of remaining in a state of suppressed
disquiet, fearing some vague "threat level orange" and watching
increasingly bizarre security measures - especially at the airport -
tighten around us? What is the cost of not making a nuke-free world a
political priority in the United States?

"By contributing to a climate in which possessing nuclear weapons is
legitimate", the statement continues, "the United States has also
undermined the ability of the international community to prevent more
states from acquiring them ... The United States can, and should, take
the lead in promoting an effort to clear the path to a world free of
nuclear weapons".

Like I say, what was the Union of Concerned Scientists thinking - trying
to put this matter on the agenda of America's major political parties as
they meet to choose new leaders and determine our national direction?

"Eventually we want to live in a world free of nuclear weapons", UCS
spokesman Aaron Huertas told me. But here's the thing. As Clear Channel
and Northwest Airlines understood, we can live in that world right now
just by taking that unpleasant ad down - no politics in the airport,
please - and maintaining a state of impenetrable denial.

_____

Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor
at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can
respond to this column at bkoehler at tribune.com.

http://www.commonwonders.com/archives/col461.htm


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