http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/7/10/64044/7089
Why didn’t the media do it’s job with the Iraq war? Why isn’t the media doing it’s job? Why is the media in bed with politicians and corporations? I’m only awake enough at the moment to ask the questions, not ponder them. Gut reaction is the influence of greed at the upper echelons of media conglomerations, an obsession with ratings over truth, and perhaps a discomfort with attacking a nit-witted idiot that is so dumb he could be described as almost-lovable. Like Barney Fife, a character I’ve always abhored. But Barney Fife never talked about bringing the full might of Mayberry County’s Sheriff Department to bear on Little Baghdad, the Arab diaspora on the other side of the tracks that happened to have a bit of a problem with street gangs Too bad for the gangs, Standard Oil wanted access to the oil fields they live on. I’ll bet that wasn’t too uncommon, in one form or another, in the ethnocentric righteousness of shows of the 50’s.
Interestingly, shows today are almost over-forgiving and over-conscious regarding diversity. Case in point (no pun intended), Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, where the family of almost every inner-city minority genuinely and unshakeably holds “American values”, whilst the perp is almost always rich, white, and conservative. And while anything is better than ethnocentric righteousness, a show with any kind of social righteousness opens itself to oversimplification that is just as harmful and divisive. Mainstream political action groups bear the blame as much as mainstream news media for complicity in obscuring truth. When you consider that the PR stunt of burying the N-word, as high-minded as that sounds, was intended to increase youth enrollment in the NAACP, one recognizes the antiquity of their conduct and communication in society. It’s a miniscule step forward that will unfortunately be forgotten next week, but it highlights how out-of-touch and antiquated their strategy is. They intend to foil evil social forces, yet are either duped by the news media, or choose not to impress integrity upon them. Society changes, intolerance takes new social forms, and political consciousness must come from new sources to face this. This is particularly interesting in light of the equalizing nature of many new technologies such as the internet (minus the barriers erected to withhold equalizing technologies from minorities, oppressed, etc). …Sidetracked. Point is, the ethnocentric righteousness has moved to mainstream news media in the form of play-journalism. (blah blah blah more thoughts on over saturation of information, decreasing emotional sensitivity in Western culture and inversely increasing sensationalism in media, value system becoming inverted, etc etc you don’t want to spend time reading it any more than I want to writing it… at least not right now)
Ok, so I’m more awake than I gave myself credit for in that first paragraph. Of course it all comes back to the corrupting power of capitalism. Damn the truth, damn integrity, damn compassion, damn creativity–feed people what they want (or if you’re a cynic, feed them something that resembles on the surface what they think they want). Give ‘em toys, keep the masses intellectually sedated. “Getting bored of your 1.3MP camera phone, well now now now hold on just a second, don’t go seeking something deeper and more meaningful in life, just go down to the corner bodega and get a brand new, hot-off-the-assembly line, 2MP camera phone so you can reduce your brain matter to a phone-operating device and maintain that delusional narcissistic sleepwalking that keeps you unconcerned with the capital-hedonism of the few. Oops.” Anyway, in closing, as the caffeine works its way into the nooks. crannies, and sulci of my scrambled brain, I will add that I hope that technology proves itself invulnerable to the corruption of greed (and elitist regulation, and the threat of the ad-supported model), and emerges to challenge the mainstream media and other institutions and give voice, and expanded consciousness, to the muted masses. In that, I can only hope. Failing that, I believe Truth–or perhaps Understanding, to be less morally absolutist, or some un-worded combination of Truth, Understanding and Authenticity–is an inextinguishable, insatiable part of the spirit. Curiosity, Understanding, and Self-Expression. In the end, I can accept wherever we take ourselves with them.
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