Noam Lerner was voted the world's leading public intellectual in The 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll jointly conducted by American magazine Foreign Policy and British magazine Prospect. He has been cited in Arts and Humanities Citation Index more often than any other living scholar. It almost seems that there isn't an award in academia that he hasn't won. His numerous books have repeatedly been on the New York Times Best Seller's list.
Although he is a political activist and is noted for his commentaries on world affairs he is not allowed on Television in America and U.S. newspapers do not report his comments. In part this is because he argues that the truth about political realities is systematically distorted or suppressed through elite corporate interests who control the media.
Mass media by its very nature can only be produced by huge concentrations of money and corporate sponsors who advertise on it determine what is allowed to appear on it. The American media only presents capitalist ideology and mostly advocates state policy," said America's leading intellectual.
Lerner has written of the media as being "cheerleaders for war." "It's hilarious when you watch a news program where the participants are seriously discussing when the U.S. should bomb some Middle Eastern country or the another. Then the announcer says, 'we'll take a break for a commercial.' Next, comes a commercial for Boeing, Lockheed-Martin or Northrop Grumman."
An exception to disallowing Lerner on TV was his appearance on the Charlie Rose Show, where many of his remarks were censored due to their supposedly obscene nature.
Learner, in commenting about the presidential election of 2016 and its coverage in the mass media said it "was all a manifestation of flatulence." "Presenting Trump's recent views on deportation, where he seems to have taken every stance imaginable, as a "softening" is nothing but a fart."
"If Trump manages to read from a teleprompter without stumbling, when TV hacks say he's moving into the mainstream," they're just passing wind."
If you look at the press's handling of the Clinton foundation issue what they print is just burping out the wrong end. Actually, the foundation does enormous good around the world. What the media wants to know is whether the Clintons pocket money from the millions of dollars involved. To their chagrin they can't find any evidence. But then TV commentators, manifesting a displacement upward from functions associated with the lower colon say "questions might still remain."
Then they want to know whether foundation donors got a quid pro quo from Hillary when she was Secretary of State. The best they could come up with was that Mrs. Clinton met with Muhammad Yunus, a winner of the Nobel Peace Price and a longtime friend of the Clintons.
Yunus is committed to fighting global poverty. So the media couldn't come up with anything about people asking and receiving favors from Hillary. But there was plenty of innuendo that probably sticks in many people's minds. But, once again, all the TV did was emanate foul vapors to pollute the public discourse. As usual their reporting is nothing but flatulence.
When Charlie Rose asked Lerner what is lacking on coverage on TV he responded, "Climate Change nuclear proliferation pose the worst threat ever faced by humans, and then nuclear war itself as the U.S. and Russia are in a pissing contest on the Russian border. There are constant near collisions, jets coming close to colliding with one another. A Russian jet virtually hit a Danish commercial airliner. Russian jets are flying far from home as Putin flexes his muscles."
Noam Learner continued, "Unbelievably Martha Raddatz, chief global correspondent for ABC news, said on TV last week that U.S. military aircraft carrying out war exercises on Russia 'is a necessary display of U.S. might to keep Russia in check." She presented this as a fact. That it could be construed as a provocation and lead to a nuclear holocaust was not mentioned. I just wish Americans could see she was just cutting the cheese.
"As for climate change, it looks like the extinction of the human species is a real possibility if humankind doesn't do more to stop carbon and methane pollution. It isn't covered on TV news which, of course, comes from studios that emit their own kind of pollution in the form of a big brown cloud," stated Lerner.
Rose wanted to know if Learner would elaborate on what thought about the campaign for president.
"Keeping to these 2 issues, it's remarkable that they have little or no discussion. Of course Trump, who doesn't know his ass from a hot rock, says climate change is a hoax. By the way, when you hear those mobs at rallies roar approval for Donald, just think of it as anus applause.
Rose then asked the obvious question: "Why is it that you see news reporting in terms of noxious bodily functions?"
"Because it is. Look, the Greek comic dramatist Aristophanes wrote a play called 'The Clouds.' The background is that Greek philosophers, probably beginning with Plato, knew that it is possible, under certain circumstances, that language and speech can have no meaning, that is won't correspond to reality.
The problem is that ordinary people are fascinated by lies, rumors, gossip, conspiracy theories and have all sorts of false opinions."
"So, in the hands of one skilled in the arts of persuasion, rhetoric, the incredible will be rendered credible, the fantastic quite imaginable, the unimaginably complex, simple. But since people who are mostly ruled by their emotions and are ignorant, they are not constrained by the truthful or the real. Because they have no idea what it is, people will be helpless when they are under the spell of the rhetoric of the manipulator. That can't resist his mind manipulation anymore than the body can resist drugs," he explained.
" You know what comes next: if a demagogue appeals to emotions like fear, base desires, hatred of people not like themselves, prejudices of all sorts, and ignorance they have the power to control government and the people can led to mindless violence, stupid wars where their children die, their homes are destroyed and the like."
"But what the rhetoricians say is like a man passing gas. It is just stupid sh*t. So, in Sophocles' "The Clouds," the question is raised as to the sound emitted by a gnat, as to whether it sings through its mouth or its bottom. It turns out that the sound is propelled from the gnat's ass. So what comes out isn't really a song because it is a product of the guts it just an unintelligible noise," Lerner went on.
"What I believe is that the fake confrontations on the cable news channels between people of differing political beliefs, which turn into abrasive noise, where you can't hear anyone because they are all interrupting one another, is equivalent to a gnat's fart. And mostly what they are discussing is the equivalent of whether a political gnat is propelled by air coming from its mouth or behind."
"Too, when the election is treated like it's a contest between horses racing one another, with no serious policy discussion, it's just a gnat emitting gas," said the noted linguist.
"Let me say that Trump is quite good at the rhetoric he aims at his mostly uneducated followers. So you have this situation where Trump controls his followers basically though appeals to fear, and they seem helpless in his hands because they don't even car if he lies and lies. Secondly, there is this non-existent coverage of the threat of war and climate change and other real issues. Therefore, TV news is like one big reality show where nothing is really real. Speech and language have no real meaning."
"Look at the coverage of massive demonstrations in connection with police shootings of unarmed blacks, or people dying in police custody. What does the so-called TV news do? They put a reporter in the midst of people marching on the streets of, say, New York City. And he or she then says, " Now we're going to march from Times Square to Union Square."
The camera then follows the reporter and they go from one street to another, the reporter naming the streets as they walk. But the protesters aren't interviewed. They aren't asked to give reasons why they're demonstrating. It's like a traffic report on the streets where the protesters traverse. The reporters are giving a traffic report, not reporting on an event of enormous political significance!"
"The TV news, as usual, is just giving an anal salute to America," Noam Lerner concluded.
Rose thanked Lerner for his appearing on the show. After Lerner left, a crew put antiseptic on Rose's famous table and carefully scrubbed the chair where his guest set as well as the floor beneath.
