We all know about Jessica Lynch, the Pentagon’s cardboard heroine, captured on 23 Mar 2003 and her supposed trials and tribulations in Iraq. But what about a real American hero, Rachel Corrie, a woman who was slightly older than Jessica when she was intentionally crushed by an Israeli Army bulldozer on 16 Mar 2003 as she tried to block the destruction of a Palestinian home with her body. Rachel’s death was reported in no less than the New York Times, but few have heard of her.
The difference is amplification: in an environment where we are bombarded by 3,000 advertising message a day, it takes repeated exposure to rise to a level of recognition such as happened recently with Michael Jackson and Terri Schavio. And of course, what is amplified today by the major media outlets is what breaks through, creating as Bill Moyers said so eloquently, “an unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only partisan information and opinion that confirm their own bias, a people made morbidly obese in mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda is less inclined to put up a fight, ask questions and be skeptical. And just as a democracy can die of too many lies, that kind of orthodoxy can kill us, too."
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