When I saw this Livestream speech at the 2013 NCMR (National Conference for Media Reform) via Jay Rosen’s twitter link to the transcript,  I began thinking about how Church “Social Media” seems oblivious to the social issues;  to the opportunities to be advocates for “the people” and what’s really best for the “Common Good” .  Rather,  they tend to be cheerleaders for the technology while blissfully unaware of the efforts of the monied interests in this country to bilk the larger society to benefit the wealthiest.  It’s the same syndrome the churches suffered re: the Occupy movement.  These “blinders” that the churches submissively adopt are ,  in part,  out of an adoption of the status quo,  which today seems to require a dissmissive attitude toward the efforts of people to call attention to the disturbing trends of the oligarchic excesses of our government and its corporate benefactors.  The Obama administration seems to have made no effort to curb these excesses, in direct contradiction to the talk of “changing the way Washington works”,  while all the while succumbing to those very “workings”.  Nowhere is this more apparent than in the telecom industry monopolies.

Obama succumbed to the pressures against his prior desire to appoint Elizabeth Warren to  head a “Consumer Advocate Agency”.  NOw he has the opportunity to appoint another strong consumer advocate to head the FCC,  but it seems that too will succumb (already is)  to the pressures of the telecom lobby,  who hold a literal stranglehold on the efforts within the technology and infrastructure of communities to battle the economic “blocking power” of the big telecom Internet providers.  Just as Obama passed up momentous opportunities to impose strong medicine on the Big Banks at a time when they themselves were expecting strong medicine and acquiescing to the inevitability of it,  Obama let them off practically scot-free.  It seems that this tendency has been a long standing stance of the administration in regards to the blatant abuse of lobbying power to practically kill innovation in providing economy boosting, job creating infrastructure technology building projects to provide what many of the other advanced countries are providing for their citizens.  But our “free market” is an Orwellian jest at this notion.  It is the exact opposite.  Telelcoms pressure governments with money power to squelch the abilities of communities to demand their own municipalities the ability and freedom to innovate,  build,  and grow.  Disgusting.  And what really frustrates me is that the church doesn’t use it’s “LITERAL PULPIT”  or much of any effort to hlep make these atrocities known for the usurpation of rights they represent.