Ray9
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2016
- 2,707
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I was born in 1947 and as it turns out that was an important year. My generation may be the last to remember life before television. We know that television, like a lot of modern technology, had great promise as a teaching tool and we know that it quickly descended into commercial mindlessness. Lately it has devolved into an authoritarian tool for government to control the people and that aspect is far more dangerous than vacant game shows, violent crime entertainment, and air-headed celebrity-worship distractions that keep the people from questioning their circumstances or drawing conclusions about leadership that may threaten the political status quo.
In 1961 Newton Minnow, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, a democrat by the way, described television as a vast wasteland. Minnow’s critique was quickly dismissed by advertisers that were raking in huge profits and their lobbyists in Washington promptly blocked any legislation that would have regulated television in any meaningful way to help the people. We may never know how many cases of lung cancer were delivered to the citizens by clever television commercialization of poison from the 1950’s to the 1970’s. But we do know that Minnow’s Death Valley of television in 1961 has gone to a Chernobyl of the American mindset today.
In Minnow’s Day, there was no 24-hour news cycle with hundreds of channels broadcasting relentlessly like North Korean loudspeakers screeching into American households bending minds in the wrong direction. We know that publication of the Bell Curve in 1994 revealed that about 85 percent of the world’s population falls into a category of sheepish mediocrity and that may be good or bad depending on how you view it. What makes it dangerous is that the largest faction of most human groups is particularly susceptible to propaganda, something authoritarian governments figured out long ago.
Advancing technology like satellite communication is enhancing television in ways that go straight to the dark side. When you hear politicians on mainstream television saying “I am so-and-so and I approve this message” that is a clue that something is wrong. The message they are approving is an uninvited interruption into something else you were doing. Political advertising on mainstream television is an invasion of your personal space by coy Madison Avenue merchants on behalf of politicians that have no right to enter your home trying to convince you to vote for them. Our homes are the only places we can go to escape the noise and chaos of the world on the other side of the front door. Political campaigning on standard television is a genuine problem and we need to put a stop to it.
And what about prescription drug advertising on television? Unless US doctors became so stupid that they could not figure out what drugs to prescribe their patients, there was no logical reason other than greed to bypass physicians and go directly to consumers. But that is exactly what happened beginning as far back as the early 1980’s when the first attempts were launched. By the 2000’s direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising was in full swing and today we have an opioid crisis that is destroying our population one addict at a time. There are generations of television viewers today that think prescription drug advertising is no different than industries that sell trucks or bread.
The problem was not the doctors; it was lawyers. Suddenly arguments that rich drug companies have First Amendment rights were front and center in a bizarre propaganda campaign like the one that says corporations are people. Patients today stampede doctors’ offices demanding chemicals they see in the same slick advertising format that sold cigarettes to Americans for decades. Billions in lobbying funds have been spent to circumvent the experience of America’s doctors and our society is sicker for it.
With the toothpaste out of the tube it appears there is nothing we can do; but there is, and technology can come to the rescue. All we need to do is sequester political and prescription drug advertising from mainstream television and confine it to specialized channels. We have cooking channels, golfing channels etc. If politicians want to campaign on television, they should be required to do so only on special political channels that the people can go to by choice, not invasive intrusion.
Do the people have the will to ask for legislation making it unlawful for politicians and drug companies to advertise on mainstream television? We should find out. It would not be easy considering the money involved but we should at least give it a try.
Ray
In 1961 Newton Minnow, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, a democrat by the way, described television as a vast wasteland. Minnow’s critique was quickly dismissed by advertisers that were raking in huge profits and their lobbyists in Washington promptly blocked any legislation that would have regulated television in any meaningful way to help the people. We may never know how many cases of lung cancer were delivered to the citizens by clever television commercialization of poison from the 1950’s to the 1970’s. But we do know that Minnow’s Death Valley of television in 1961 has gone to a Chernobyl of the American mindset today.
In Minnow’s Day, there was no 24-hour news cycle with hundreds of channels broadcasting relentlessly like North Korean loudspeakers screeching into American households bending minds in the wrong direction. We know that publication of the Bell Curve in 1994 revealed that about 85 percent of the world’s population falls into a category of sheepish mediocrity and that may be good or bad depending on how you view it. What makes it dangerous is that the largest faction of most human groups is particularly susceptible to propaganda, something authoritarian governments figured out long ago.
Advancing technology like satellite communication is enhancing television in ways that go straight to the dark side. When you hear politicians on mainstream television saying “I am so-and-so and I approve this message” that is a clue that something is wrong. The message they are approving is an uninvited interruption into something else you were doing. Political advertising on mainstream television is an invasion of your personal space by coy Madison Avenue merchants on behalf of politicians that have no right to enter your home trying to convince you to vote for them. Our homes are the only places we can go to escape the noise and chaos of the world on the other side of the front door. Political campaigning on standard television is a genuine problem and we need to put a stop to it.
And what about prescription drug advertising on television? Unless US doctors became so stupid that they could not figure out what drugs to prescribe their patients, there was no logical reason other than greed to bypass physicians and go directly to consumers. But that is exactly what happened beginning as far back as the early 1980’s when the first attempts were launched. By the 2000’s direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising was in full swing and today we have an opioid crisis that is destroying our population one addict at a time. There are generations of television viewers today that think prescription drug advertising is no different than industries that sell trucks or bread.
The problem was not the doctors; it was lawyers. Suddenly arguments that rich drug companies have First Amendment rights were front and center in a bizarre propaganda campaign like the one that says corporations are people. Patients today stampede doctors’ offices demanding chemicals they see in the same slick advertising format that sold cigarettes to Americans for decades. Billions in lobbying funds have been spent to circumvent the experience of America’s doctors and our society is sicker for it.
With the toothpaste out of the tube it appears there is nothing we can do; but there is, and technology can come to the rescue. All we need to do is sequester political and prescription drug advertising from mainstream television and confine it to specialized channels. We have cooking channels, golfing channels etc. If politicians want to campaign on television, they should be required to do so only on special political channels that the people can go to by choice, not invasive intrusion.
Do the people have the will to ask for legislation making it unlawful for politicians and drug companies to advertise on mainstream television? We should find out. It would not be easy considering the money involved but we should at least give it a try.
Ray
