Mrs Mock Tudor:
People on television treat the general public like idiots.
Mrs Elizabeth III:
Well, we are idiots.
Mrs Mock Tudor:
Oh no we're not!
Mrs Elizabeth III:
Well, I am.
"The Public Are Idiots"
Monty Python's Flying Circus, Episode 42
"Michael Dreaver, former deputy chief of staff under Reagan ...
“MICHAEL DEAVER: Eighty percent of the public gets all their information from television
... it better be interesting, entertaining, look good or they’re going to switch off and watch something else. ... It has to be believable or the people are going to say it’s not real.
... television is an entertainment medium, not a news medium."
"Children under 2 years old should not watch television, older children should not have television sets in their bedrooms and pediatricians should have parents fill out a "media history," along with a medical history, on office visits, according to recommendations by the American Academy of Pediatrics. ...
Violence in movies and television has been linked to aggressive behavior in young people in studies by the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the National Institute of Mental Health."
"2D / 3D Conflict, n. phr., ety.: coined by me several years ago.
The pragmatic and functional conflict that arises as a result of a practice of conflating the personality, characteristics, actions, or abilities of a fictional character or characters with the real-life human being who created that character(s) or impersonated that character(s) as an actor to the point where one is fundamentally unable to discern that there is, or should be, any difference between a fiction and a real human being. ...
(E.g.) assuming that Arnold Schwarzenegger's forearm can turn into a machine gun..."
"Neil Postman is deeply worried about what technology can do to a culture or, more importantly, what technology can undo in a culture. In the case of television, Postman believes that, by happily surrendering ourselves to it, Americans are losing the ability to conduct and participate in meaningful, rational public discourse and public affairs. Or, to put it another way, TV is undoing public discourse and, as the title of his book Amusing Ourselves to Death suggests, we are willing accomplices.-- Links and bold are mine -- ed.
... he examines the effects of TV on several important American cultural institutions: news, religion, politics and education. All four institutions, Postman argues, have realized that they have to go on television in order to be noticed which, in turn, requires them to learn the language of TV if they are to reach the people. Therefore, they have joined the national conversation not on their own terms, but on TV’s terms. Postman contends that this transformation of our major institutions has trivialized what is most important about them and turned our culture into 'one vast arena for show business'. "
"In a development bordering on what the American Civil Liberties Union called "surreal," the on-line magazine Salon.com today revealed that the Department of Justice is forwarding incoming Operation TIPS calls to the Fox-owned "America's Most Wanted" television series. ...
The author of the Salon article, David Lindorff, reportedly signed up for TIPS more than a month ago, heard nothing and followed up last week with a phone call to the Department of Justice, the agency responsible for overseeing the proposed program. The department gave Lindorff another phone number, which it said had been set up by the FBI. When he dialed that number, Lindorff was greeted by a receptionist for "America's Most Wanted," which features reenactments of unsolved crimes and then asks the public to phone in leads and tips.
Shocked that the number did not connect to the FBI, Lindorff was told, 'We've been asked to take the FBI's TIPS calls for them'. The ACLU today said that, not only does the Operation TIPS program on its own pose serious threats to the American ideal that neighbors not be expected to inform on neighbors, but the program, when coupled with the power and profit incentives of television, could enhance its resemblance to Big Brother through sensationalism and the thirst for advertising revenue."
Your television set is watching you.
(With a little help from your neighbors.)
"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment."
-- From 1984, by George Orwell. Part 1, Chapter 1
Online here, here
When neighbors attack!
"Volunteers for Operation TIPS, John Ashcroft's citizen spy army, are being steered to the Fox crime show "America's Most Wanted." Is the merger of tabloid TV with the federal snooping operation funny or scary or both?"
by Dave Lindorff Salon, 06 AUG 2002
Is this for real? Certainly one of the craziest stories yet to come out of the post-9/11 climate.
"... no one can dispute television's unrivaled immediacy, impact and entertainment capabilities. But it is exactly these features that make it a potent agent of truth decay in postmodernity. Television is an unreality appliance that dominates our mentality. We then take this unreality mentality and impose it on the rest of the real world. That is, we (mis)understand the world in terms of the mentality inherent to the form of communication that is television.
Throughout this book, I have distinguished between postmodernity as a truth-decaying social condition and postmodernism as a truth-decaying philosophy, as well as emphasizing that these reinforce each other in various ways. One primary engine or dynamo for truth decay is the cultural system of television. I will highlight five ways in which television contributes to the loss of truth, and then give three practical suggestions for overcoming these effects."
"... two of many reality shows invading our TV screens that have helped people to escape from the reality of life."
"Dear Editor, TV is very bad for our country... it controls our minds... and makes [us] crazy. The enemy is right here with us in our own living room. People behave like the actors, and are now anxious, greedy and discontent."