From: aq817@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Steve Crocker)
Newsgroups: alt.activism
Subject: Re: TELEVISION: The Ultimate Weapon of Mass Enslavement
Date: 30 Aug 92 08:42:01 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, (USA)


I want to heartily suypport John DiNardo's insightful critisims of
TV brainwashing. If possible, it is even worse than he indicates.
TV has subverted our democratic republic by nullifying a crucial
assumption of democratic decision-making. That is the idea that
politics should rest upon a base of informed citizens who discuss
policy questions and make their thoughts known to their representatives.
TV has short-circuited this process by creating a method of mass
dissemination of social and political images under centralized control.
The insidious aspect of this, is that as individuals, we retain our
nominal freedom of speech, but if we seek to speak to ideas or
realities not included in the centrasl image bank, we soon find
ourselves talking to a vast and uncomprhending emptiness, where perhaps
once in a great while we may be fortunate enough to spot the flicker
of response in a kindred mind. 

TV has made not simply politics, but reality itself into a spectator
sport. I'm reminded of the joke abpout the guy who was run over by 
a car, who crwaled down the street to home in time to catch the news
and find out how badly he was hurt. 

And what of the cultural impact on our children. I am of the generation
that was already somewhat literate before TV came to our homes (third
grade), but even so, it has affected me profoundly. What of those who
grew up with this influence from the beginning? Even worse, what of
those who grow up in dysfunctional homes, where cultural values are not
strongly transmitted by the parents, where quality parent-child nurturing
is rare or absent, where the TV is not only the baby sitter, but the
default source of the child's images of life. 

And let's not forget the whole question of attention span. TV has addicted
a generation to the rush of the fast paced visual cut and the snappy sound
bite. Where is the time for reflection. WHere is the concentration needed
to follow a profound idea as  it sinks into the waiting pool of a receptive
mind and ripples its implications outward from the point of impact.

A science fiction story of the fifties spoke in poetic imagery about the
reality of TV brainwashing. The Non-Statistical Man by Raymonf F. Jones
depicted a protagonist who found himself able to perceive a reality not
comprehensible to those around him. As was a standard theme in the genre, 
he is xoutcast and even violently attacked due to the fear and hatred
aroused by his superior insight. Finally he remembers reading a little
human interest story in the paper about the town somewhare in the 
midwest that SMASHED ALL ITS TV'S. He goes there and finds others like
himself, for a happy fnatasy ending. But for all the retrospectively
obvious pandering to the loneliness of the adolescent intellectual, the
image of the town that smashed their TV's remains a powerful image in my mind to this 
<oops>
image in my mind to this day.

Well, enough of this depressing subject. I'll close on the more cheerful
note that if you're reading this, you're not watching TV.

For which I thank you,
-Steve
Xref: sparky alt.activism:15735 alt.news-media:1102 talk.politics.misc:42976