The revolution is not being televised

By Ralph Alter

Back in the glory days of the boomer generation, after it discovered its mutual affinity with the leftist American media, political demonstrations and protests ran rampant and became the hip scene. Aligning with the Chicago Seven and other useful idiots being carefully nurtured by America's abundant supply of anarcho-leftist-trade union types, young Americans hit the streets to demonstrate their rejection of traditional American values.

In their naiveté, the hippies and peaceniks naturally supported the angrier, more aggressive politics of the burgeoning Black Power movement. While San Francisco loonies like Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane espoused an alternately druggy and pulingly angry form of revolution, the Black Power advocates including Angela Davis, Stokely Carmicheal and H. Rap Brown raucously promoted a violent revolution. In fact, while Justice Minister of the Black Panther Party, Brown became famous for his proclamation that "Violence is as American as apple pie."

Fortunately for America, so is a life sentence for homicide, under which Brown currently remains imprisoned.

In 1970, poet/songwriter Gil Scott Heron created a spoken word poem celebrating the violent revolution anticipated by the Black Panthers, SNCC and associated Black Power groups. On an album titled "Small Talk at 125^th and Lenox," accompanied only by congas and bongo drums, Heron riffed on the post-revolutionary landscape he foresaw in a poem titled "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised."

Heron's grim choleric is actually the "B" side of a 45 rpm single with the flip-side title purely expressing the dominant emotion driving the Black Power movement: "Home is Where the Hatred is." The revolution as envisioned by Gil Scott Heron essentially erases the evidence of traditional "white" American culture:

Green Acres, the Beverly Hillbillies and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
Women will no longer care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
Will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back after a message
about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
Bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.

Paradoxically, over the last two generations, the aging leftists have been quite successful in establishing their agenda without violence, by infiltrating and dominating the education, legal, and media establishments in our country. Teaming with the trade unions whose movement has been a tool of the International Communists for over a century, this coalition has succeeded in radically altering the American economic, political and moral landscapes. Their foothold has been so firmly established, especially in the media, that those promoting traditional American values can scarcely get their voices heard through what now amounts to the Pravda media. The formerly mainstream media is nothing more than the unofficial organ of the Democratic Party, just as the original Pravda was the official house organ for the Russian Communist Party

Thank God for the rise of the alternative media and talk radio! Through the thoughtful nurturing of traditional American idealism and a determined effort to disseminate information that the mainstream media would rather keep suppressed, a genuine peaceful revolution continues to sprout from the efforts of the conservative, alternative media. Most evident in the courage and patriotism of the Tea Party movement, the corrective right-ward swing of the pendulum indicates a genuine revolution in American values is underway. Conservatives are taking back their country, albeit peacefully. There couldn't be more important news to disseminate.

But lo and behold, just as Gil Scott Heron predicted, The Revolution is not being televised:

The Revolution is not being televised.
You will not find the smiling faces of your friends and
Neighbors marching in the streets, protesting
The arrogant contempt of the temporarily ruling regime..

Like slaves were counted in pre-Civil War
Voting rolls, government media will count
Each tea partier as three fifths of person,
Reducing its estimate of Tea Party crowds
To allay their own fears.

The Revolution will not be found on CBS,
CNN or MSNBC.
There will be no film at eleven
Showing joyous Tea Partiers in the streets
Celebrating the return to American sanity.

You will not find the video of Sarah Palin
And Marco Rubio linking arms and singing
"We have Overcome" after election night
In November signaling the triumph of excellence
In America after the pernicious cancers
Of multiculturalism and diversity
For diversity's sake are sent whining
Into the dust-bin of history.

There will be no photos of Al Sharpton
Being run out of Harlem on a rail
With a brand new buzz-cut
Nor video of looters in Los Angeles
And New York City or the other
Havens of amnesty for the undocumented Democrats
loading up their green buses
To get out of Dodge before the new Sheriffs arrive.

You will find no High Definition
Profiles in Conservative American Courage
But you will continue to find the Housewives of Oakland,
Undocumented Apprentice, and
President-for-A-Day
On a continuous loop
Drowning out the hysterical whimpering
Of Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow
And the women of The View
Blithering on about the diminished glory of
Affirmative action, Jane Fonda and Barney Frank.

No the revolution is not being televised.
It does not need Viagra, Cialis, or Flo-max.
The revolution can do without a Snuggie,
A Sham-Wow or any trinkets from the Home Shopping Network.
The revolution will go better with Coke,
And the revolution will put you
In the driver's seat.

The revolution has no need for video replay
Satellite photos or any commentary
From Chris Mathews, Katie Couric
Or any petty bureaucrats from the Clinton
Or Carter administrations.

The revolution is real
And it's coming to an election booth near you
On November 2, 2010.
Be there.

Ralph Alter blogs at Right on Target