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Please click this and help my rating:

October 30, 2002

Michael Cloud's Hunger Strike

LP Candidate for Senate in Massachusetts Michael Cloud has been ignored, in typical status quo fashion, by most of the MA media, for most of his campaign. He's the only opposition to Democrat John Kerry, and yet papers have reported that Kerry is running unopposed.

It really blows my mind, this view. I mean it's not like reporters don't have the resources to discover that Cloud is running. He's on the ballot, in the voter's package that's mailed out to everyone. These reporters are seeing that he's running, and simply blanking it out-- apparently believing in some way that Michael Cloud does not exist, or is not a candidate, or does not oppose John Kerry. This mentality boggles my mind-- I find it to be really unhealthy. And that mentality is the biggest reason why third parties have a hard time breaking through.

It's basically the same mentality that kept black people down for so long. After slavery, blacks were still relegated to second-class citizenry, if that. Their educational options, their economic options, their mobility, and their voting rights were all restricted-- not to mention their safety. And then people would come along and complain blacks were less educated, or poor, or whatever else.

It's ridiculous logic-- just as ridiculous as the logic that says that third parties don't matter to voters, while intentionally hiding third party candidates from those very voters. The media makes conscious decisions that have the effect of reducing the vote total of third party candidates-- and they justify their choices by the small vote totals of those candidates. They take polls which exclude third party candidates-- and justify their approach by saying third party candidates don't matter to the people. Then they take it a step further and say the candidates can't be in debates because they don't register high enough in the polls.

Insanity. Putting an end to the two-party mentality is high on my list of things to do in my lifetime. I'd like to see a campaign next election cycle of a couple million people ready to put extreme pressure on the debate holders and media outlets. It would be so refreshing to see an election where all the candidates on the ballot were given an equitable amount of exposure.

(NOTE: I don't generally support codifying that premise into law. I think the effort to have an informed democracy can take place through voluntary means. We don't need to make laws telling people what they can say about who, when, how, and how often. Not to mention a little thing called the First Amendment, which could certainly be read to say that telling people what they can or cannot say is a no-no. I don't buy the theory that "political speech" is somehow excepted from the First Amendment-- it seems to me that political speech is the primary type of speech that amendment was made to protect.)

So anyway, Michael Cloud's not taking it sitting down. He went on a hunger strike against the media's blackout of him, and it's starting to work. I don't know if it raises my hope, or my cynicism, or both. On the one hand, it shows that where there's a will, there's a way-- if you try hard enough, you can get attention. On the other hand, it shows that the media is willing to ignore a candidate if he's merely a well-spoken, intelligent candidate who's raised $200,000-- but if he goes on a hunger strike, they'll jump right on that. Pretty twisted.

(FWIW, that FoxNews story about Cloud falsely states that he was Harry Browne's running mate in 1996. It was actually Jo Jorgenson who was Harry's VP candidate.)

Posted by Lance Brown at October 30, 2002 08:25 PM | TrackBack
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