Bill Cosby, Woody Allen and Israel Have Alot in Common These Days

Bill Cosby, Woody Allen and Israel seem to be suffering from the same problem.  They can no longer control and manipulate the news that the American public is receiving about them.  The emergence of the Internet and social media have devastated the reputations of all three. But in the meantime, it may have saved the freedom of the press provision in the 1st Amendment to the Constitution.

Until now, freedom of the press all too often translated into the liberties taken by those who owned and controlled the media to manipulate public opinion at will.  Why are we just now hearing the  news that America's Dad, Bill Cosby, is a sexual predator, who for years was drugging and raping women?  Or how about the revelations about Woody Allen having sexually abused one of Mia Farrow's daughters, then taken nude photos of the other, whom he subsequently married?

Scandals involving "well-loved celebrities" who preyed on innocent victims, while paying public relations firms, lawyers and a well-honed network of friendships in the corporate media to overlook their peccadillos is bad enough.  But our non-freedom of the press had explosive political ramifications as well.  Is it pure coincidence that American public opinion is turning against Israeli oppression of the Palestinians only now when the social media, Youtube videos and twitter feeds can bypass the pre-packaged presentations of the Arab-Israeli conflict?  Israel was at the top of their game when all the public knew came from a popular novel -- Exodus by Leon Uris.  It was the narrative of suffering, heroism and triumph.  The dropping of smart bombs on Gaza at the cost of 2200 civilian lives this year alone,  Jewish settlements consuming what was supposed to be a Palestinian state, and crazed religious fanatics threatening to blow up Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Islam would never even have made on the back pages of yesteryear's newspapers.  Israelis are simply not accustomed to hearing more moral outrage coming from the global community at their murder of thousands of civilians in Gaza, than an admittedly tragic incident in which six Israelis were killed in a Jerusalem synagogue.

Nowadays the corporate media plays catch-up.  The real, tough news comes out first on social media channels.  The press and news stations then have no choice but to cover issues that they wold have remained silent about, while accumulating shelves full of Pulitzer prizes, on the kinds of investigative journalism that didn't rock the owners social lives nor their bottom lines.