jamesteufel.com

The mass media offers little but dangerous distracting entertainment for the typical person on a typical day in a typical frame of mind. This focus inevitably degenerates media coverage to that which is salient to those who find comfort and ease in living in consistent state of false consciousness. A typical response to statement like this is something like “to each their own” or “its relatively harmless entertainment.” Unenlightened post-modernism is an unfortunate ally of the mass media, though most post-modern positions are built upon unsubstantiated foundations (e.g., misinterpretations of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and Quantum Mechanics). For example, not everything is equal in process or outcomes simply because a person expresses a less than thoughtful opinion that this is so. Furthermore, the idea that the mass media is simply a benign form of entertainment is ridiculous. One can reach this conclusion from the study of recent history quite clearly. For example, the mass media was complicit in causing the Iraq war (the War of Terror or Operation Iraqui Freedom). The proposed harmless form of entertainment was a necessary condition in the enacting of a falsely substantiated war that has cost over half a trillion dollars and more importantly thousands of innocent lives that have been lost. This is a horrible atrocity. There were reasoned people in the media and government who tried to speak out before and shortly after the beginning of the war, but they were labeled as un-American (e.g., Dixie Chicks, Dennis Kucinich, and Cindy Sheehan) and shunned from “mainstream” society. The media fixates on finding and punishing a murderer of a white middle class wives or children, which are also tragic. However, from a societal perspective, the magnitude of those murders falls far below a tragedy such as the Iraq war, which has rarely been questioned in great depth. To rephrase a Karl Marx quote: Media is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The media has hooked people on pointless sensationalism and has convinced them that this nonsensical sensationalism is important, reasonable, and representative of reality. Though some people state that shows such as South Park and Family Guy are tactless or improper, I perceive these shows (cartoon comedies) to be a better reflection of society than the mass media’s portrayal. The depth of these shows greatly exceeds that found in the mass media. All it takes in the mass media to be successful is the ability to exhibit a stern countenance and commanding voice when discussing something serious and to be able to switch from that look and tone into an appearance of approachable happiness within 30 seconds (e.g., between the sequential stories of 1) a school shooting and 2) the world’s oldest acrobatic parrot). The internet has offered some opportunity to avoid the mass media, but there is discussion on how the variability on the internet could be controlled, regulated, or minimized.