Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - The times, they are a changin'

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

times are and are not changing.

on bolton: his appointment was an extension of the attitude particular to the neocons relative to the un. that attitude was, and is: fuck you.
this manly man nonsense--bolton is a manly man--is simply idiotic.
but after 4 days in a hotel television watching station (they called it a room, but they didn't fool me...) i have to say that i am amazed--appalled at the level of sustained idiocy that is television "news" and understand more than i did before where such idiotic views of--say--john bolton come from.

i think that the quality of infotainment on the cable news networks is SO bad---SO bad--that they really have to be viewed as a threat to the charade that is american democracy....and i am not overstating this....because anything like a democracy presupposes an informed citizenry...and you are NOT informed by television.
you are provided with moving images.
if you confuse that with information, then you are not much more advanced than an infant watching a pretty mobile spin over his head from a viewpoint shaped by a crib.
pretty moving pictures.
ooo.

cable news networks provide an illusion of information.
what kind of relationship to the world do they fashion?
they are entirely composed of truncated footage handled in a simple-minded manner that relies on the movement of images to give you the illusion that the "real" is being reflected in it---this is glossed with two registers of empty moronic commentary--one by the reporters, most of whom standing doorways waiting for important people to walk by so as to give the illusion of connection between the potted infotainment they sandwich over the images of white boys in suits walking across thresholds---and another, even stupider gloss is provided by the anchors.

everything is presented in a way that treats the limitations of commercial television like natural horizons that shape without particular problem or loss the way in which "reality" functions.

the frequent gatherings of television-sanctioned idiots for crossfire-like exchanges of short pithy cliches that is fobbed off as debate between political positions are, somehow, even dumber than the running non-coverage of television style pseudo-events.

within the context of these gatherings of television-sanctioned idiots for crossfire-like exchanges of pseudo-information actually manage to stage what passes for meaningful debate within this joke of a pseudo-democracy.

it is only within the frames provided by these idiots wearing glasses (you know, "intellectuals" in that kinda pol pot sense)--and ONLY within the frames provided by them--claims about questions like whether john bolton is manly or not even begin to make sense.
outside of these frames, the claim appears to be...well, nothing.
it is nothing. it means nothing. it says nothing.

but the vacuity of this particular claim is really not important.
what seems to me much more important is the degenerate nature of television in america as a news source.
i think this is a huge problem.
i think we, as a public, should consider organizing a viewer's strike.
i think we should turn the television off for a week.
more than that. longer than that.
turn it off.
.
turn it off:
read.
do something else.
listen to music
talk to people
fidget
anything.

we should organize a collective withdrawal of consent from underneath this stream of sustained crap, this lobotomy instrument.
i would think that the major news networks could be brought to their commerical knees by a week of viewer strike action particularly if it was accompanied by threats of other such actions.

seriously....
how do you put up with television as an information source?
why do you put up with it?
what possible reason is there to accept it?

shifts in the composition of congress are presented on the same level as infotainment about britney spears and k-fed or anna nicole smith and the problems she has with her mother. footage of iraq is no different from footage of college football games. it is astonishing. you put up with it. it is normal.
i dont get it.

I quite agree with this (and your later statements as well in this thread). Television is essentially devoid of any but the most base value as an information source. I doubt even Paddy Chayefsky could have imagined "news" falling to such a level, at this point "Network" almost seems naive. But unfortunatly, it's also the primary source of news for most people. And I think this is also slowly eroding any true political discourse, as the parties realize that it is most effective to frame everything in the most bitesize way possible, so it can easily be sandwiched in between the latest white-woman missing story and the report on Tom Cruise's newest antics. Although to be honest, I don't know if newspapers or online sources are too much better. Some undoubtedly are, as reading generally requires a longer attention span, but just because they take the time to go more in depth, doesn't necessarily mean the quality improves. I do think it could be an interesting discussion into how the modern media ties into not just the political landscape, but the economic landscape and how it applies to globalism. But I think that would be going too far off topic.