ABSTRACT
The period since 11 September 2001 has seen both continuity and change in the way the US media and state have combined to produce realities for their audience and citizenry. This Chapter lays out how the mainstream US media, notably network and cable television, have worked as effective spokespeople for nationalism, in ways that coincide with the enunciation of national interest by the state. I will show it is no surprise that almost three quarters of the US public supported the invasion of Iraq (Pew Research Center for the People and the Press 2003a). It would have taken immense initiative, knowledge, and drive to think otherwise, especially given the shock of September 11 (Taylor 2003: B2) and the way that it heightened a sense of risk and hence self-protectiveness in the population of a world power capable of supreme destruction. The White House’s 2002 National Security Strategy was correct in identifying the nation’s gravest peril as located ‘at the crossroads of radicalism and technology’. But was that taken to signify the logocentric interdependence of US Zionism, militarism, transportation, construction, and high-octane fuel, which, together with Middle Eastern authoritarianism, economic inequality, and Islamic hyper-masculinity and religiosity produced the conditions of possibility for September 11?
