Lou's Picture

This is a follow-up to the last post. Lou brought up that my post may have been a little hard to follow and re-reading it I think she may have a point. Her question: "Are you saying television makes people stupid?" What follows is a response I was going to put in the 'comments' - but thought maybe it was a little long for a comment and more importantly, should stand on its own to expand the argument.

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Does TV make people stupid? This isn't the question I was answering, in a sense. The point I'm trying to make is that television is viciously fought over by people who never intend to be on it, and who make only some of their money in advertising. Fought over by people, to own it outright.

I recently read an article by Amy Goodman, investigative journalist for Democracy Now! Her story, of trying to get heard, of trying to get seen, of trying to make any kind of dent at all in the White House press room, sounds a lot like what Turner describes briefly here. According to Goodman, you end up climbing ladders, hanging off light poles, waving your arms and in short looking like a complete nut (basically what the establishment was trying to do by keeping her back in the fringe in the first place).

She's on a national show, she's deadly serious and smarter than any 20 mainstream reporters. Certainly she should be able to ask at least a single important question about the United States' policies - it's not like she's part of a tidal wave of intelligent reporters hounding the President. A lot of the time she's trying to bust in between a reporter's 6 questions about the President's ties or pets.

Television is controlled tightly to the point that it isn't just lacking in any intelligence building, educational material - it goes one step further by in fact filling the listener with misinformation.

With all the debate raging about healthcare and its funding, you are least likely to be informed by television. Most people have not read the important reports released by government agencies and watchdog groups that in fact mathematically detail that only single-payer national insurance will cut costs and cover 100% of people. They know there's "two sides" to the story and that's about it. Maybe they think one side is communism. I don't know.

But when I correspond with these people on boards and newsgroups and in person, some pretty shocking misinformation is out there - the same phrases and words almost memorized and parroted by each person - and it goes on down the line, issue by issue.

It isn't that television makes one stupid: it's that it can be a powerful tool for education. It is brightly lit and a lot of preparation goes into just about everything you see. From the writing and creation and production, to the post-production, sale, scheduling and promotion, a lot of time and capital goes into that box.

And what is coming out? More and more people, bless 'em, are saying it: we're in a class war.

The Pope released his ecumenical, a diatribe against the growing divide between classes.

And the fact is that this box that people worship - according to Nielsen - for about five hours a day doesn't just put stupid ideas into people's heads; what time are people going to use to find out what is really happening in the world?

Many, many people are still in la la land for example about Palestine, believing the issue is Israel's right to protect itself. Meanwhile what is happening in Palestine is an ethnic cleansing, with the US footing the bill. Israel's killing Palestinians at the rate of 30-1 (30 Palestinians, one Israeli) during peaceful times, 50-1 during most of the rest of the time, and 100 - 1 when they go on those brutal offensives where they use internationally illegal weaponry to kill civilians and demolish homes- and the idea is that we are supposed to keep paying for it and applauding it because Israel supposedly has the right to defend itself.

Only it doesn't.

International law, which the US never follows, states clearly that you do not have the right to always defend yourself any way you want. Certainly not until you have exhausted peaceful means.

For example: if I enter your home and refuse to leave, and you start pushing me out forcefully, I DO NOT have the right to defend myself. I have to try the act of leaving your home, and see if that stops the problem.

If I instead "defend myself" by shooting you, we've got a big problem. We've got the kind of problem that lately has made more than a few high-level IDF (Israeli Defense) soldiers break down and tell-all about atrocities they have committed on the Palestinian people.

Where is any of this going to appear on television? You going to tell me there's no money in news coverage of Israel-Palestine? I mean ok you might not like the argument, but it happens to be international law and it should at least get brought up once in a while. People will watch that, of course they will. Doesn't come up. Why?

Is there a mainstream news outlet that will ever, ever say that Palestine is involved in a resistance to a brutal occupation? It's the truth, of course. There's not a single reason it has to be classified the way it is 100% of the time. Some of the time, it could maybe be called a resistance, instead of terrorism.

I believe strongly in the right of existence, and legitimacy of, Israel. I'm aware that racism abounds in the Middle East against Israel. But in practical, real, blood terms, Israel is going to wipe a people off the face of the Earth, and we'll have paid for it all. And we pay for it because we love for Israel to do it.

I know about all this because of good, moral, wonderful Israelis who, we don't all know, are fighting their hardline political right (Israel is sometimes described as being on the verge of a civil war over this) and trying to stop the senseless slaughter of children in Palestine - the illegal, immoral and heinous slaughter of these people. So, there are even Israelis who think it is shockingly bad form to arrest Hamas the same day that Palestinians legally elected them to office. But you won't hear about it on American news. A lot of Israelis buy into the hardline right's bullshit for the same reason we do, because their wealthy elite pays for their television.

"But what about what the Palestinians did?!?" is a question a lot of people ask in some form or another. Whatever it is they did has been covered ad nauseum. There is 0% coverage of the other side. Why is that? In the fictional "marketplace of ideas" this should come up. It doesn't.

It's pretty regular among media watchdogs and resistance movements to point out that in almost every issue that is important to us, you will get one of only three outcomes: either people never hear of the issue; they hear about it vaguely in the background; and they hear about it in such a hacked and slashed version that the "two sides" to the official story won't even touch what is actually going on.

Ineptitude? 100% of the time?

When the US was invading Panama on a regular basis, the New York Times printed that the UN had severely rebuked the USSR for their invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. This is the New York Times now, the so-called liberal media.

Well the UN did rebuke the USSR - along with the US. It said quite clearly that the USSR AND THE US must immediately stop doing exactly the same thing to two different places: USSR, get out of Afghanistan, US, get out of Panama. The UN didn't buy either the US' or the USSR's stories about security or any of that nonsense.

The US and the USSR went on to do exactly as they pleased, of course, and the article was just a big waste of space, as was the UN decree. But why did such a crucial half of the statement get lopped off?

The point I was trying to make through Ted Turner, Warren Buffet, and Nielsen, is that television is specifically a corrupting influence because of the specific 5 or 6 people who are fighting to control all of it.

When reading Ted's essay, it amazed me. I hate to say this because television makes me sick now - but television is just too damn important and powerful to let it go unregulated, and to let it be run and owned by just anyone.

Hypnosis doesn't work 100% of the time. It works on the susceptible, those who enjoy it and help the hypnotist just a little. But it's never 100%.

Neither is television. But imagine the power to simultaneously give it a shot in every home in the country - 24 hours a day.

I remember as a child literally being in a hypnotic state while watching television - no memory of the program I'd just watched, no memory of people calling me, no memory of people walking in front of me and leaving the room. Just blank.

There's a reason a few very powerful people fight over control of the television, and the camera-access. And it isn't just that television advertising is profitable. It is that advertisement -whether it be actual commercials, the news which tells us how to think about issues, or television shows which tell us what is "normal" for humans to think and do- advertising is unbelievably effective for mass control of the population.

There's a great Calvin n Hobbes cartoon where Calvin states that Karl Marx regarded religion as the opiate of the masses. Then the Television thinks to itself "Karl never got a load of me".

Also, my point about stupidity is that it's not 'less brains' that makes people act the way we see on Sarcastic Bastard's blog. A lot of those idiots on Bastard's blog are the very people on the damn television that people watch for 5 hours a day. Lavished with wealth and attention.

Why? What's the goal here? Americans hate to even think that we have social planners... but we do. Why are they doing this? I don't think all this happens because so many people weren't born with enough grams of 'grey matter'. I think you have to work at it, and I think that is what is happening; day in, day out, rain or shine, everyone sits down for their five hours of re-education. And it's fun too! Chandler and Monica make us laugh!

Meanwhile not a single financier lost their job because of the death of the American economy; and yes, amazingly, it is a well-kept secret that the credit default swaps and the securitization of mortgages that have been targeted for blame are still going on. That's right: still going on. Not on the news, not on TV. TV watchers are, I guess, watching endless re-tellings of Michael Jackson's various timelines.

Television doesn't work for us. It isn't for us. It's against us and used against us. Why are CBS, NBC and ABC maintaining such a tight hold over access to the President, only to ask him about his date with his wife - or some similarly clueless question even if it does touch on something real? Does it make sense to ask the President how he's going to kill bad people in Pakistan? Or does it make more sense to ask how the hell he gets the nerve to involve the USA in two new wars when he promised he'd get us out of war?

The latter question is in the vein - more professionally phrased, of course - that someone like Amy Goodman would ask, if she were allowed. Television isn't free, and it's not a free country. There are mighty inconvenient truths about us out there - and they won't be appearing on television any time soon.

Great examples have to be kept off television also. My wife just mentioned that she listened to Howard Stern today and one of the staff talked about being in Italy and receiving super-fantastic care - for free. At the end, when it came time to fill the prescription, he found out to his shock that pharmacists are required to be within 5 minutes of the pharmacy. Even though it was after 10pm, the pharmacist - happily -ran down and got him his meds. $4.

They even discussed how it happens that we never hear about things like this. Their conclusion: companies don't want you knowing.

Well, that's not rocket science. Of course insurance companies don't want you knowing. What should gall the ever-loving shit out of us, is that coincidentally, there is a 100% success rate at achieving what the insurance companies want or don't want, on television. I mean yeah, of course Cigna wants to make socialized medicine look like Medieval torture (quote from the staffer on the Howard Stern show "I don't know! It looked like socialized medicine to me, and I LOVED it!" These guys tend to be well to the right, politically, of the country; this is no hippy talking, saying he loved socialized medicine).

They aren't supposed to be able to do it. But to accomplish near total compliance with the wishes of the Insurance companies - on television- which includes the news - should really anger the bulk of the populace.

I really think all at once 90% of this country should drop their cable/satellite connections. If Americans won't take to the streets, I can't think of a more devastating way to revolt against the corporate masters. Stop paying for cable and satellite. Stop watching commercials. Let network news desks wither and die. Be able to proudly ask "Ally McWho?" You'll start to see some changes.

Checking Television for Elves

"they (CEOs) say that they work hard, and that in the process of working hard they make a lot of people a lot of money. (laughs) this is true of every worker in the country."

--Warren Buffet, more money than he can ever spend

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0407.turner.html

This is an essay by Ted Turner called "My Beef With Big Media". I want to cut out excerpts to make points, but I don't know what to cut; I think every single line is amazing and worthy of snipping. It's a deep lesson in Power and How it Works. If I took the name off, and changed all the pronouns from "I" and "we" to more neutral ones, I think the natural assumption would be that some major dissident, maybe Mike Albert of Z Mag or maybe Dr. Chomsky or Howard Zinn had written this. It's what they've been saying for something like 40 years. But it's not a dissident. It's a Player.

Here's a quote: "When media companies dominate their markets, it undercuts our democracy. Justice Hugo Black, in a landmark media-ownership case in 1945, wrote: ‘The First Amendment rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public.’

“These big companies are not antagonistic; they do billions of dollars in business with each other. They don't compete; they cooperate to inhibit competition. You and I have both felt the impact. I felt it in 1981, when CBS, NBC, and ABC all came together to try to keep CNN from covering the White House. You've felt the impact over the past two years, as you saw little news from ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Fox, or CNN on the FCC's actions. In early 2003, the Pew Research Center found that 72 percent of Americans had heard "nothing at all" about the proposed FCC rule changes. Why? One never knows for sure, but it must have been clear to news directors that the more they covered this issue, the harder it would be for their corporate bosses to get the policy result they wanted."

That's the way the whole essay goes. It's a powerful person saying "This is how we do it. I did it, I did it because these are the rules I was left with and I was there to win, but I don't have to like it." Take it for what it’s worth.

"Naturally, corporations say they would never suppress speech. But it's not their intentions that matter; it's their capabilities. Consolidation gives them more power to tilt the news and cut important ideas out of the public debate. And it's precisely that power that the rules should prevent."

This isn't a conspiracy theory because it's not a secret. Just because we weren't there when it happened doesn't make it a secret.

"I freely admit: When I was in the media business, especially after the federal government changed the rules to favor large companies, I tried to sweep the board, and I came within one move of owning every link up and down the media chain. Yet I felt then, as I do now, that the government was not doing its job. The role of the government ought to be like the role of a referee in boxing, keeping the big guys from killing the little guys. If the little guy gets knocked down, the referee should send the big guy to his corner, count the little guy out, and then help him back up. But today the government has cast down its duty, and media competition is less like boxing and more like professional wrestling: The wrestler and the referee are both kicking the guy on the canvas."

Ted Turner calling for government, and society at large, to tilt towards protecting the weaker party? Woah. This guy's a freaky radical or something.

I want to paste the whole essay here but I won't. Let's move on.

Here's why I'm pissed off.

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/tv-internet-and-mobile-usage-in-us-continues-to-rise/

Americans watch 151 hours of tv a month. That's something like 5 hours a day. That's either a lie or it's a completely insane truth.

Just about every person I know, and know of, is getting paid for 8 hours and working 10, 12, 16, whatever. It's a testament to people that I never hear anyone complain. I mean people grimace, people sigh, but for the most part people feel it's what's left. And there's nowhere to go to at least get fairness. What they do end up doing is violently hating people who aren't renting out the only thing we got when we landed on this planet, Time.

And yet, try to have a discussion with anyone on the street about the issues of the day. People screw up their face into thinking mode, look into the distance, and make their voice sound like they're making a deep analysis - and then out comes something you could have heard out of any news program. People in the 'developed' world, exposed to heavy doses of television daily, believe they are making up answers even though what is actually happening could only be called Parroting.

And they'll say this to you, in this way, in an educational manner, even though they have to know you aren't hearing this for the first or hundredth time.

Something else can happen though if you give an opinion that isn't part of the Talking Point. People get red-faced and loud. Personal attacks ensue. Ask someone where they get their facts, and they honestly can't tell you, and that is confusing, and makes the threat coming from you seem more real. Pretty soon you are hearing, incredibly, the average wage-slave is now fully in defense of the rich and powerful.

Television's no joke folks. Stare at flashing lights for 3-8 hours a day, and it's insane to believe you aren't going to be hypnotized and brainwashed. This stuff will make you mental.

It would make sense for Ted Turner to protect what he has - but he doesn't. Neither does Warren Buffet. But ask the average person who, incredibly, believes there are such things as "Republicans" and "Democrats", or worse, identifies themselves as one (or worse, identifies themselves as a Republican), and they will come just short of wielding a weapon at you in defense of the Power System. This isn't because people are stupid, and we should stop calling each other stupid too by the way.

Well some people might be, I'm not going to deny the existence of stupid people today. Anyone checking out the insane pictures and titles on Sarcastic Bastard's blog would have to agree, through massive giggles, that some people are out-of-their-minds-stupid.

But a lot more people end up in that condition due to some pretty massive and serious deflection on the part of their employers and their government. Don't think about these uncomfortable subjects. Your friends aren't thinking about it. You want to be cool don't you? Cool like people on TV, right? People on TV aren't talking about these uncomfortable things, are they? Don't blow it - you could still avoid being a total loser in life!

And the insurance carrier, let's throw in those guys too. Michael Moore just sent out a mass email alerting people that Bill Moyers is conducting an interview with a high level officer for Cigna who is admitting that Cigna committed serious cash and time to defaming and slandering Michael Moore's "Sicko". The Cigna officer states that the movie is absolutely right on, and that insurance companies did whatever they could to counteract that unfortunate truth in the form of a massive media campaign.

So, yeah. Let's throw in those fucks in insurance too. Americans are not a cash crop goddamnit.

Piracy Is a Global Problem

In the interest of clarity, I’d like to follow up on a point made by Lou, who commented that certainly this behavior isn’t only carried on by the United States.  Lou is absolutely right. 

 

The problem is a rich-poor problem.  It is possibly at its worst in the US only because it runs rampant here, in a way it doesn’t get to do in other developed nations.  And because they are so incredibly profitable that some of these corporations that make our laws have economies that qualify them to be in the top ten largest economies of the world - a list we would expect to normally be reserved only to countries.  

But this is what globalization has long been about, so even if we could argue whether it ever was all about the United States or not (it wasn’t), today it is a global issue.  The rich people of the world do as they please, and global policing of the poor ensures that it stays that way.  

Consider that within the body of the Pirate Tales series, it was shown that there were foreign companies, for example, from Italy, committing crimes in Somali waters and that the Italian government apparently had to go to an international body to ask that Italian companies, too large to be regulated by Italy, be investigated.  

Consider that Spain, known for being anarchist, artistic -  and recently, for spearheading a major, semi-serious crusade to hold former US VP Dick Cheney, and former US Pres Bush, guilty of war crimes committed against Spanish citizens -   

this same country has companies within it that participate happily in the the theft and destruction of poorer countries’ resources.  A stunning article put out by Greenpeace only days after the Maersk-Alabama incident reads:

“As Somali pirates have captured the world’s attention over the past week, I’ve been up to my neck in pirates of a different sort.  Greenpeace got a tip that several Spanish owned vessels blacklisted for engaging in pirate fishing were en route to Singapore to offload illegally caught Chilean sea bass, or Patagonian toothfish.  We alerted U.S. authorities at NOAA, the Coast Guard, and the State Department, each of which deals with pirate fishing.”

This is within the week of the attack that captured the attention span of the nation.  Within a week, Greenpeace was, yet again, sounding the call that the conditions which create chaos were still happening, and as Hocevar blogs for Greenpeace:

“The investigation is still unfolding, but it looks like at least one or two of the vessels offloaded a considerable amount of illegal sea bass before local authorities were able to respond.  In fact, it is not clear that local authorities planned to respond at all – Singapore is not a party to CCAMLR, the Antarctic treaty under which the vessels were blacklisted.”

Reading this at the time, it was painfully obvious that some trickery, some skill, something, was being employed.  The pirate craze, brief as it was, was so all-consuming, that for a brief period there were frantic ads all over the internet offering pirate-related merchandise - shirts, mugs, eyepatches, pictures of ‘wenches’.  And yet somehow, in all this craze for everything-pirate, it was plain that stories written from the other point of view, stories showing the piracy perpetrated by major conglomerates, would be completely invisible.  Somehow they just wouldn’t make it, even on the horizon, to the public’s attention.  

“While these pirate fishing vessels may seem to have little connection with the pirates plaguing ships passing through the Gulf of Aden, these issues are in fact tied together by more than a word most of us associate with eye patches and parrots.  In all oceans of the world, vessels flying under flags of convenience – registered to countries with little or no concern for what the ships are used for – and owned by shady operators based in countries such as Spain, China, or Korea, pirates illegally catch enormous quantities of fish.  

“Somalia is a prime example of where pirate fishing thrives – a poor country with weak governance and no capacity to manage or patrol their own waters.  And as is often the case, the most impacted people are local fishermen, who can no longer feed their families after foreign pirate fishermen have literally stolen all the fish.  When deprived of their livelihoods, few breadwinners in any culture would be willing to quietly allow their families to starve.  So it is not surprising that some have resorted to illegal activity.  In addition to hijacking ships, unemployed fishermen in Ghana have been known to become wildlife poachers, adding new threats to already endangered populations of hippos, lions, and leopards.”

Yet another sad casualty of the chaos:  endangered wildlife.  

This isn’t something you’ll only find in regard to this story:  many of the starving nations in Africa are in fact so hungry that they’ve started poaching the prized animals for food.  The days of killing an elephant for the tusks are almost a thing of the past - now an elephant dies for lunch.  As I learned in another documentary about vanishing wildlife in Africa, when you kill off an elephant you devastate the entire group.  They live such close, intimate lives with each other, for all their lives, that the loss of one or two key figures can disrupt the group and further endanger the young.  

It should be noted that the Greenpeace blogger goes to lengths to note that the United States has taken some positive steps, and has usually behaved helpfully in cases such as the one involving the Spanish vessels.  Not that Greenpeace doesn’t have major problems with US leadership - but the US isn’t always the worst offender. 

Unfortunately the US also has its share of the misery.  The US is just as guilty of allowing foreign companies to use US ships in the commission of crimes.  Loopholes purposely exist so that a ship can be said to contain “humanitarian” supplies, even though it may also contain a large weapons shipment.  And, like so many of the countries involved, the US Gov’t. just doesn’t keep tabs on who is doing what.  Just like Italy and Switzerland, the US has corporations around the planet behaving recklessly and disgracefully.  When something goes wrong, the corporation goes to the government and demands protection, prosecution, revenge.  The government  will always, every single time, respond on behalf of the US Corporation.  Without much information, they have to do this - and even then, they know enough to know that we all profit and benefit from the behavior of these corporations.  

The Media - globally - is in the business of providing us with plausible deniability - each and every one of us.  If we can say, as Gary K did, “This is the first I’m hearing of this!” then we can sleep easier and feel true outrage when the poor people we hurt finally flip out.  

Recently, attorneys for a young man who was wrongfully imprisoned as a terrorist by the US sought to make President Obama aware of some of the facts in the case.  The President, for legal reasons, is on a strict ‘need-to-know’ basis.  When these attorneys filled him in on aspects of their case for which he had not already been made aware, the Justice Department seriously considered arresting the attorneys for precisely that.  They go to all this trouble of presenting the President with only very carefully redacted (blacked-out) documentation, so that he can’t testify that he knew certain things.  And then a couple of lawyers come in and blow the whole deal?  They came very close - it may not even be over yet - to finding themselves in the same cell their client had recently vacated.

This is a haves vs have-nots problem.  I try to describe it through the prism of the US for two reasons:  1) this is the country I live in and the best hope I have for change, and 2) because our outstanding wealth as a country, sadly, unfortunately, so often makes us investors in misery.  It is so often US money that is either knowingly or unknowingly killing, starving, stealing from the poor.  And it is so often true in the “unknowing” cases, as rare as they are, that someone in the US “knows” what is happening and remains silent out of greed.  And 3) because our media is being used against us, and even if it is happening in France and Germany and Britain and Japan - it MUST NOT happen here any more if we can help it.  

But no - this is not strictly a US issue.  This is a world issue.  As Hocevar blogs for Greenpeace:

“Yet another reminder that we live on Planet Ocean – and that the health of our marine ecosystems is intimately linked to the health of humankind.”