The new venality

Those who believe that "Money is Power" live in the last cen-tury. The billions owned by the big corporations would not make them powerful now even if their managements were not infected by buzz words like "corporate social responsibility."

The nuclear, oil, asbestos or pesticide industries do not lack money, yet they are powerless to stop the witch hunt against their alleged threats to safety and the environment. To combat this persecution they are free to present their case by any means they wish, except in a news medium with mass circulation or audience. Money will buy them only advertising that few people read and that only reinforces the money-power myth. The real power is wielded by those who can make themselves heard massively for free. In Orwellian fashion, American freedom of the press has degenerated into the right to speak provided that not very many are listening.

The myth that money is power is close to the Marxist myth that power is wielded by the owners of the means of production; in re-ality, it is wielded by those who control (not necessarily own) the means of information. Nobody knows this better than the Marx-ists themselves: when they make a revolution, do they go for the farms and factories, or for the radio stations and the newspapers?

The money-myth is kept alive by the real power wielders: it is used, and falsely at that, against political opponents such as Meese, Meecham or Nofzinger, who are vulnerable by their lack of 20^th-century power.

The obsolete 19^th-century politicians like Biaggio or Wright who take mere money for their favors are labeled "corrupt" in the 19^th-century meaning of the word. Yet they were corrupted by an inferior bribe. The 20^th century bribe is favorable media cover-age, and in that sense almost all politicians are corrupt. Sen. Wal-lop (R-Wy) is not, and until he changes his views on national security, he is being punished by worse than bad coverage: by no coverage at all. But in the genuine sense of the words corrupt and venal, Kennedy or Schroeder are on the take and thriving on pay-ola, even as they masquerade as "incorruptible" for spurning the lesser bribe of cold cash.

As an elected official, Wallop has some protection, for the game demands decorum. Donald Regan lacked such a shield, and when he unwisely refused to play ball, the Media Mafia not only had him fired, but drowned the real story of his book in the irrelevant (though probably true) story of Nancy's astrology.(1)

But then, few expect any better from politicians. What is new to our time is the venality of scientists, whose very profession is the search for truth. With negligible exceptions, they are indeed incor-ruptible by money. But when it comes to media coverage and as-sociated shortcuts to glory, Paul Ehrlich or Ernest Sternglass appear to know no limits when paid off in 20^th century currency.

Take an article like the Los Angeles Times' "The Greenhouse down to earth" (7/31/88), which repeats the time-worn antinuclear falsehoods manufactured by the Lovins crowd. It was written by Donella H. Meadows, who with her husband in the early 1970s supervised a computer simulation of a concocted world. Com-missioned by the Club of Rome, a modern-age patronizing aristocracy, the report was close to fraudulent. (Genuine fraudulence needs a minimum of competence, which the Meadows' "work" fails to show.) By manipulated and untrue interdependencies, the computerized soothsayers produced a program with suicide at all exits. They never even answered the obvious question: if the world was going to die of pollution, over-population, and lack of resources anyway, why slow and prolong the agony (as they recommended)? Why not use up resources and "eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die"?

But on the theory that marriages arranged by Computerized Matrimonics must be perfect, the media plugged this worthless ab-surdity for years, and Donella Meadows is now professor of "Envi-ronmental and Policy Studies," at an ex-university (Dartmouth), where such scholars are evidently welcome: six students were sus-pended last spring for publishing a tenured professor's lectures on what was billed as American music, but dealt with nuclear wastes, sexism, racism, etc., richly spiced with obscenities. (2)

This erstwhile honorable university, as are most others, is also on the take and thriving on 20^th century payola. And what do you know? It still brings in oodles of old-fash-ioned 19^th-century payoff in green cash.