The villainy of Merval and Sardenberg
The two, as if performing a slapstick comedy, amused themselves with the tragedy of others, with the pain of those defending themselves from punishments that will surely land them in jail.
Villainy is present in humanity. Without a doubt. In some people, wickedness is etched into their souls like a tattoo marks the skin. To behave like a scoundrel in public is a sign that such a person has completely abandoned composure, and, in turn, the feeling of modesty has ceased to be important to the values and principles of the living being who has replaced prudence with recklessness and respect with mockery.
For a long time, journalists Merval Pereira and Carlos Alberto Sardenberg have been active as politicians in various private media outlets. They belong to a market-driven press system that systematically and uncompromisingly combats the politicians, parties, and governments that their bosses, in this case the Marinho brothers, are unquestionably enemies of, and who, if they could, would overthrow, without hesitation, the labor-oriented government that has held power in the Republic since 2003.
Merval Pereira, together with o Ali Kamel, the Director-General of Journalism and Sports at TV Globo, gave up being a political analyst or commentator and began to engage in politics, with the authorization of his employers, during these 11 years in which former President Lula and President Dilma Rousseff have governed Brazil and gradually attempted to change the landscape of material misery and social violence that has afflicted a huge portion of the Brazilian population for centuries.
With open channels to Supreme Court justices, Merval Pereira has become a messenger for some magistrates, retired or not, who pass him inside information and, through it, he demands, without having the authority or knowledge to do so, the imprisonment of people he purposefully calls "mensaleiros" (those involved in the Mensalão scandal), in order to discredit them in the eyes of society and, consequently, try to make the public blindly believe his opinion published or broadcast by CBN and Globo News.
Merval must consider himself the 12th judge of the Supreme Federal Court. With connections to conservative judges and former judges, such as Gilmar Mendes, Cézar Peluso, Ayres Britto, Luiz Fux, Ellen Grace, Joaquim Barbosa, and Marco Aurélio de Mello, the columnist for O Globo has a field day, sending messages and irresponsibly demanding the imprisonment of PT politicians, as well as celebrating the possible incarceration of those whom he and his bosses consider political enemies, to be defeated, humiliated, and imprisoned, if possible in Guantanamo, with their heads hooded and their wrists and ankles shackled with thick chains.
This is Merval Pereira, the one who makes live bets with the far-right CBN journalist, Carlos Alberto Sardenberg. The two, as if performing a slapstick comedy, amused themselves with the tragedy of others, with the pain of those defending themselves from punishments that will certainly land them in jail. Historical politicians who, for 40 years, have confronted one of the worst and most cruel economic and political elites on the planet.
The violent, privatizing, and individualistic bourgeoisie, rent-seeking and consumerist, with a slave-owning past and which has always been complicit, sabotaging, and criminally coup-plotting, as exemplified in 1932, 1938, 1945, 1955, 1964, and 2005, has judicialized politics and criminalized the PT, a party forged in popular struggles, of socialist and labor essence, and which changed the living conditions of the Brazilian people for the better in just ten years, as irrefutably demonstrated by governmental and academic figures and indices.
For this reason, and because of this, morally grotesque and politically ragged figures emerge, such as Carlos Alberto Sardenberg, spokesperson for the interests of bankers in the Globo Organizations(?) and brother of Rubens Sardenberg, chief economist of the Brazilian Federation of Banks (Febraban), an institution that has a great interest in maintaining high interest rates in Brazil and which currently, through Itaú-Unibanco, is trying to win a power struggle with the Workers' Party government of Dilma Rousseff, which has already made it clear to the bankers that raising or lowering interest rates is a state policy and not, as in the past, a merely monetary and financial action to serve the interests of a stateless, alien banking class that has no commitment to the social development of any people or country.
The neoliberal journalist and opponent of developmentalist public policies actually criticizes the stability of the purchasing power of the real and, consequently, of Brazilian citizens and consumers, because he does not want a solid and efficient financial system and has rejected for 11 years the gambling of the banking and financial market that led Brazil and all Latin American countries to insolvency and total dependence on financial resources from international banks charged with exorbitant interest rates.
Sardenberg is the brother of a banker. As such, his family relationship denotes a conflict of interest in his position as an economics journalist, which is proven through his interventions as a commentator and columnist who recurrently calls for (almost demands) an increase in interest rates, in addition to defending the indefensible, justifying the unjustifiable, which is to advocate for the implementation of a minimal state, the regulation of the market by the market without government intervention when necessary, and cutting social and structural investments.
This is the mindset of Sardenberg and the party he and Merval Pereira support, the PSDB, a conservative group that sold off Brazil's public assets and even then had to beg from the IMF three times, on its knees with a begging bowl. Sardenberg and Merval defend, day in and day out, a Brazil tied to and subservient to the interests of the United States, because they are colonized and lamentably proud bearers of an unspeakable, unbelievable inferiority complex.
Shortly before the global crisis exploded in 2008 and melted the economies of the countries these colonized journalists admire so much like acrobats, one of them, Sardenberg, said: “The world economy continues on a path of solid growth. Solid because it's not a financial bubble.” Months later came the tsunami that bankrupted Sardenberg's “solid” economies and caused citizens and businesspeople of countless nationalities to commit suicide. Is that enough, or do you want more?
This is the gutter journalism crafted and calculated by journalists like Carlos Alberto Sardenberg and Merval Pereira, the latter being the 12th judge of the Supreme Federal Court, who mockingly wagered, live on CBN radio, on when the "mensaleiros" (those involved in the Mensalão scandal) would be arrested and how many would go to jail. The conversation between the two is so brazen that it would leave even the most senseless or clueless person negatively astonished by so much recklessness and infamy being spewed all at once. This happens because they don't do journalism, they do politics.
The two henchmen of the Workers' Party politicians, judged and convicted in the "mensalão" scandal—which is a big lie, as time will reveal the truth about this biased and selective trial—behaved like fans in a stadium and, once again, arrogantly and treacherously, wagered dinner and wine, even considering conducting a poll for CBN listeners to choose the brand of wine to be paid for by the loser of the bet.
The dynamic duo of bad journalism treats the lives of people defending themselves politically with an insanity that would leave a citizen with serious psychological problems stunned and truly surprised by the mediocrity of journalists considered important by the establishment, but who are actually two henchmen serving the capitalist system, their bosses, and everything that is inconsistent with journalism, which is to seek the truth, defend society, and fight for the less fortunate. Merval Pereira and Carlos Alberto Sardenberg are the antithesis of what it means to be reasonable, prudent, and judicious. They possess a gift for mockery and villainy. That's it.