DEC 15 - 31, 2004

VOL. 2 ISSUE 24

DECEMBER 28, 2004 –  When The Moderate Independent launched almost two years ago, the mission was clear and simple:  to provide the nation with the missing voice from the media conversation, one that cares only about truth and what is best for America, not party or labels of any sort.

M/I began as a heavily satirical news source.  Our articles were drenched in irony and tongue-in-cheek commentaries, like The History Of The 1^st Amendment, Bush Thanks Saddam/Osama For Salvaging Republican Party and Schwarzenegger:  I’ll Make Bush Look Like Mother Theresa.  Yes, M/I was satire, but a satire of a different kind.  Unlike toothless, spineless satirical send-ups like The Onion or The Borowitz Report, M/I’s articles actually had a point.

Part of that point was to fill in the void where the non-Moderate Independent media was failing.  The other part was to take the cowardly, un-American, lying right-wing propagandist bullies and give them a taste of their own medicine.  As laid out in the editorial in our first issue The Idea Of A Moderate Independent News Source:

We at The Moderate Independent have taken the mantle from Fox News in choosing to simply present the facts without the spin. By removing our paper from all party affiliations, we are able to present clear, unbiased news – information without the agenda. You know, just like Fox News.

 

At The Moderate Independent, we won’t be slanted in our reporting like all those other news sources – the, as we have been told, “liberal” press. We did in-depth research into where all those other news sources go wrong, falling off the cliff of fairness, so as to avoid making the same mistakes in our role as vital media outlet.

 

Frankly, though, to be honest, we are a bit confused. When we were told that the media was “liberal,” we expected to find a bunch of long-haired hippie-boy anchors, tie-die or hard rock t-shirts, nose-rings. We figured when we found out who was behind this whole conspiracy we would find that Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and the Sierra Club owned and operated the TV and print media.

 

Oddly enough, all of the reporters and anchors had short, corporate haircuts and were wearing formal business attire. Even more bizarre was the fact that most of the media turned out to be owned by rich right-wingers, like Rupert Murdoch, and massive, multi-national corporate conglomerates. In fact, we had virtually no luck in finding a single major news source that was owned and operated by liberals.

Immediately M/I started pulling the sheets on the biggest enemy of America, the right-wing propagandists, with satirical articles like Media Watch - AM Radio Host Debate A Disaster. Moderator Baffled About How To Proceed As All 4,293 Participants Give Exact Same Answers To All Questions.

Instantly, the clone-like followers of the right-wing bully machine, the Bush/Limbaughians as they are called here, boldly strutted into M/I-land expecting to be able to use their typical grade school-level bullying games and walk away unscathed.  The angry, infantile e-mails poured in from the brazen but cowardly Bush/Limbaughians, and they almost without exception were identical.  As trained, they started with some juvenile name calling, calling us wusses, pussies, etc., swearing at us, and then, as programmed, labeled us “biased,” “liberal,” “ultra-liberal,” “fringe lunatic lefty.”  They counted on getting, as they were accustomed to, either no response or a polite request to keep the conversation more “civil” or “intelligent.”

They counted wrong.

What they found was a news source that not only dished back, but dished front.  M/I gave our readers the Texas Three-Step method for dealing with the mess created by Limbaugh and clones, began to straighten out the absurd, dishonest misuse of the terms “liberal” and “lefty” with articles like Getting The Left And Middle Right, and then, plainly and frankly, told them in articles like Does Constantly Attacking Bush/Limbaugh Republicans Make Us Liberal Or Biased? to take their lying claims that we are “liberal” or “biased” and… well, from that article:

…what do you do if a group on one side of the political spectrum makes a conscious decision to lie constantly and use argument tactics to squelch any possibility of useful debate? Let me add something to this before you answer. What if the same side that is doing the lying and bullying also, at the same time, is accusing you in the media of being biased in favor of the other side?  I can tell you what we at the Moderate Independent do. We call the liars liars every time they lie, and tell them to take their claims of bias and stick them up their lying asses…

 

…they will be attacked here for every fault they have without relent, for every lie they tell without exception, and if our news source begins to sound like nothing but attacks on Bush Republicans, the message is that the Bush Republicans are unrelentingly scummy and requiring of constant attacks. Liars are to blame, not the people who point out they are lying. The choice by Bush Republicans to lie constantly is the problem., no that we assail them for doing so. And, furthermore, anyone who backs down from assailing them every single time they are deserving is a coward, unprofessional, and has clearly just become a submissive pawn in the Bush/Limbaugh Republican game.  If the rest of the media wants to take that route, that is their choice. But The Moderate Independent exists exactly because there is no news source out there that is brave enough to simply report reality in a straight forward, unbiased manner.

They whined, they cried, they complained that the responses to their e-mails were unfair or too vicious, and then they quickly and cowardly ran for cover – just as poor MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough did this month.  You see, the rule about bullies is that they try to intimidate because they are weak and wimpy.  That is why they jump at going to war against unarmed sandboxes like Iraq while being utterly impotent to do anything that takes actual courage, like standing up to what Putin is doing is Russia.

So as that first editorial laid out, M/I borrowed the format from the lying right but added a twist – using the same layout and tactics but substituting a vicious defense of truth and actual moderation and independence in place of the FOX/Limbaugh-brand lying propaganda and partisan nonsense.  M/I gladly took on the left when deserved, calling Moveon.org out for acting as lying propagandists themselves, taking on Michael Moore’s 9/11 for setting a dangerously problematic precedent, laying out what policies the Democrats are misguided about, and calling out the Democratic Party for being the abysmal failure that it is.

As M/I evolved, our base of grateful fans flooded in as quickly as the Bush/Bimbo hate mail.  Again and again M/I was thanked for finally providing an actual unbiased voice that only cares about truth and what is best for America.  Letters came in from soldiers, from businessmen and women, from conservatives, liberals, and moderates thanking M/I for finally giving air to America’s True Voice.

As fortune would have it, The Moderate Independent began to take off at the true dawning of the internet news age.  And so as M/I's coverage moved into things like the California recall election,  our stories began popping up in the non-M/I media.  The San Francisco Chronicle borrowed our scoop about an old Schwarzenegger video, and a producer from CNN gave us a ring about another story we were running on the recall.

As M/I’s stories began to get wider and wider notice, the questions started coming in about where the satire ended and the straight reporting began.  And while even the satires we presented were entirely fact-based, it was clearly time to set the satire aside and change the tone a bit.

So volume 2 included far fewer hard core satirical articles.  And yet rather than ditching the tone for a more “serious” sound, M/I stuck with the no-holds-barred, call-it-as-it-is, humor-laced reporting style it began with.  The stories were more direct, less tongue-in-cheek, but the fun remained.  More and more M/I began leading the non-Moderate Independent media conversation, offering stories and analysis that would show up on the other side a few weeks or months down the road.

While national and world affairs, politics and the media have been a heavy focus of M/I, issues that the non-M/I media or partisan politicians aren’t addressing get taken up as well.  Articles like Sucker Generation – 10 Simple Rules Every American Must Read And Follow Right Now To Save Our Nation From Disaster, Wouldn't You Think It's Time To Take Action? and M/I Platform, PT. 2 - Fixing Our Schools Is Not About More Money.

Now, after a year and a half, M/I has been hosted on radio programs, interviewed by non-Moderate Independent media sources, used as a source for countless articles and at least one upcoming book, and has become a regular staple for Americans who are sick and tired of boring, off-the-mark reporting or lying partisan nonsense.

But as M/I moves into the new year, volume 3 will take it in another new direction.

It was I who founded The Moderate Independent, I who have been responsible for guiding its content.  And now it will be I who take The Moderate Independent to the next level.

The mission to take “the mantle from Fox News in choosing to simply present the facts without the spin,” lampooning FOX’s absurd claim to independence and to actually be a news source - as opposed to the actual propaganda outlet it is - has been enjoyable.  And it has been very effective.  The right-wing losers know better than to try to run their games here, and they sit in cowering, pansy-like fear of our next sheet-pulling.  Just look at poor Joe Scarborough, a tough-guy former Congressman and MSNBC-TV host who began by threatening to sue us for calling him a fraud but quickly realized he better sit by and do nothing as we backed up in indisputable detail the clear reality that he is a lying fraud in another article just days later.  He learned quickly that he better not even attempt to counter our facts, instead admitting that M/I is his Daddy and he better run off and find weaker news sources to challenge.

It has all been great fun, but the reality is that criticizing and mocking – while useful tools – are not an end.  Only the small-minded and the cowardly, like Limbaugh, Scarborough, and those at FOX make this sort of nonsense their sole trade.  It is what drives the Limbaughs of the world into self-hating, drug-popping desperation and serves the nation in no useful way.

And while it has been nice to see some on the left finally stand up and attempt to defend themselves, their response has been a similarly shrill and partisan – and often skewed – imitating of those they claim to despise.

At some point, one has to stop the mimicry and criticism and answer the question:  Exactly how should things be?  Rather than following the lead of the inferior, if you think you can do something better, if you think the media conversation should and can exist at a higher level that is entirely missing in what currently exists, than it comes time to show everyone how it should be done.

It is now that time.

The most frequently asked question received by The Moderate Independent has been, “Who are you?”  To trust a news source is to put your future and the future of your country in that news source’s hands.  And so wanting to know more about The Moderate Independent and who is writing the articles is a valid question.  And in the coming year, that question will begin to be answered for you.  And with the answer, you will come to better understand what it truly means to be a Moderate Independent.

The format will be markedly changing.  Things will be much more streamlined.  Some names will be coming, some names will be going.

But most importantly, the nature of the content will be unlike what you will find anywhere else.

The Moderate Independent has existed to give voice to Americans who put country before party, truth before personal ambition, and to put the proper focus on what is actually the news and what is truly important to the people of our nation.

Now, The Moderate Independent will show the nation what it really means to address issues, what comprehensiveness is, and what must be done to honestly, usefully begin to cover our world, the people in it, and the events that occur around us.  The current must be combined with the spiritual, the human with the universal, and elements dealt with unitarily, not as if each element exists in isolation among itself.

Sound a bit confusing?

Don’t worry.  Sit back, enjoy your New Year, and stay tuned to The Moderate Independent.