Well I've been watching my local news and I'm 20 minutes in to it and still nothing about Honduras (this is a country a couple borders away where a revolution is taking place). Nothing yet about the potential for a strike of the public transit workers. There's been robberies, marijuana growing in private homes and people robbing them; other robberies and murders and even a old howitzer shell found on a street I once lived on.
Now there is a segment on celebrities and about how they are always in the news. What is it about us that we want to read about them all the time, that we want to talk about them and are interested in their pathetic lives?
I don't deny that Michael Jackson's death doesn't have some interest to me, mostly I feel sorry for his tragic life and how capitalism turns everything in to a commodity, sex, love, art. The intention here is to create the view that what is in the media is what people want, what they are interested in and demand. It is to obscure reality, that the news, the media has an agenda, it has a class base, the content of the media is the reverse of what they say it is; they have to convince us this crap is important and they spend a lot of money and resources doing this.
Who decides what is news and how much time is spent on this or that issue? Do the owners of the corporations who are interrupting it every 10 minutes to sell me things have any influence in what counts as news? People are interested in all sorts of things, or can be. Human's are naturally curious. The goal of the the capitalist class that actually controls the media and decides what is news and what isn't is to ensure that curiosity and interest in the world around us doesn't develop in to anything that might lead to changing it; that our class consciousness is supressed.
The power of those that own the media is very extensive here in the US. The movies that Hollywood turns out are always, when they're not the car crash blowing up and raping kind, about beautiful people with lots of money. The movies are much less likely to be about ordinary working people as they often are in other countries; after all, workers are stupid and live very boring lives just drinking and wondering what Paris Hilton is doing.
In the last analysis, ideas have a material base. Someone living in misery cannot be convinced by the TV that they are well off, but they can be influenced enough to believe, certainly temporarily, that their situation is their own fault. Those that own the means of producing the goods we use every day in society also control the manufacture of ideas; the dominant ideas of society are the ideas of the ruling class.
A friend once pointed out that there was a poll some years ago. Women were asked what most they wanted in a sexual partner. The overwhelming number of respondents said kindness was what they wanted in a partner There are thousands of magazines that encourage us to wear certain clothes or drive certain cars as this will bring us happiness and good sex. Yet there are not magazines about kindness. This is because kindness, solidarity, unity, these things are not good for capitalism, in fact they are hostile to it, threaten its existence---so kindness is out.
Instead, capitalism rewards selfishness, greed and individualism. It rewards those who advance themselves at the expense of others. It encourages anti-human behavior.
But as the poll results showed, despite all this, kindness, solidarity and compassion are very powerful human urges. These human characteristics that have been developed over thousands of years of human evolution are what will help us end capitalism and build a society that nurtures our collective spirit and allows us to develop our full potential as human beings. The proof that this side of human nature is very powerful is shown by the amount of money and time convincing us wer'e all selfish greedy bastards them. Aren't we born sinners?
1 comment:
I'm not sure that most Americans are actually that interested in celebrity lifestyle and gossip. The media is pretty good though at shoving it down our throats.
Biased is an understatement, intentional and knowingly complicit, the media distracts us from the things we actually need to know, but gives us the impression that we are informed.
In the time of MJ's death, a military coup orchestrated by two graduates of the School of Americas (in Fort Benning, GA) has taken control of Honduras.
Violence in Iraq is cycling out of control (once again) with daily large scale massacres
the coal industry did well in subsidies from recent environmental legislation
and 19 americans have been kidnapped and detained by the Israeli military when attempting to deliver much needed aid to the besieged Gasa strip. Including Cynthia McKinney, form congresswoman and green party Presidential candidate.
Nothing to see here folks, move along.
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