From: Timothy.J.Young@dartmouth.edu (Timothy J. Young)
Newsgroups: alt.activism,alt.politics.usa.misc,alt.politics.media
Subject: Re: Turn Off Your TV: part 12
Date: 24 Jan 93 19:19:30 GMT
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
X-Posted-From: InterNews1.0a5@newshost.dartmouth.edu

In article <1jtp10INNa6@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu>
aq817@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Steve Crocker) writes:

> Tell me, Tim, which of these criticized elements do you identify as
> "leftist".

What exactly are Judeo-Christian values? The term gets thrown around
like it's going out of style. If I decide, for example, that I think
homosexuals have a right to do whatever they want with each other, I'm
suddenly being "anti-family". If I'm "pro-choice", as we call
ourselves, I'm suddenly "anti-life". I've heard these two terms; I
don't know anybody that is actually "anti-family" (though I think Marx
wrote something about that stuff) or "anti-life", except maybe the
militarists who have managed to brainwash the American people, and did
so long before TV. 

Conservatives tend to think MTV is a problem because it promotes
immorality. But, in truth, the cause of the problem is really the
mass-media culture as a whole. If Americans didn't have to be so
puritanical about culture, nobody would think 2 Live Crew was very
interesting (I never did) and they wouldn't get any publicity. "Cop
Killer?" You don't really think that song is telling people to kill
police, do you? If it weren't for all the brouhaha, nobody would have
cared about it, and few would have heard it (It is a stupid song.)
Alcohol use, remeber, went up during Prohibition, and that's where Al
Capone came from.

MTV is not necessarily good, but it has managed, among other things, to
get more young people involved in the political process. Republicans
charge that the these young voters were, like myself, mostly Democrats.
Well, what can I say to that? It's not because of MTV. We saw the GOP
convention, were told that if we didn't agree with the religious
right's cultural Fascism, that we could go to hell and vote with the
Democrats. Well, that's what we did, plain and simple. 

I'm certainly not saying TV is all good. But it can be very
informative, watching the right programs. Watching Bill Clinton on MTV,
for example, was very educational for people who otherwise might be
left in the dark. I try hard to ensure that the songs I've written for
my band, the school newspaper columns I've written in, and the speeches
I've given, serve as education for my generation. We haven't been
taught how not to want instant gratification. Instant gratification is
not just a moral problem, but an economic one. More and more, we spend
our money foolishly. This is done by the mass media culture, including
Steve, as you have pointed out, TV. This is also done, however by the
nature of our capitalist economy, something most people fail to
understand. The far right can talk all they want about the "cultural
elite" : the corporate elite is the only elite that matters. Corporate
America, not people like me, is responsible for bringing this pox on
society.


Tim Young, Dartmouth College, Class of '96
"Not everyone can carry the weight of the world..." -R.E.M.
The opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of Dartmouth
College or any of its students...