Raynine
Platinum Member
- Oct 28, 2023
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Because I am retired I have more time to think. I have been thinking lately about how media can affect our lives in negative ways. This goes back a long way, and I have an example that I missed when it happened in my life. I was born in 1947 and that same year an event took place in Hollister California that was blown way out of proportion by the local media and then picked up by national media. Some motorcycle riders had a big party in the town and got a little out of hand with drinking and skirting local ordinances about peace and quiet. It was likely a one-off phenomenon that would have been quickly forgotten but the national media grabbed it to sensationalize a big story for themselves.
A local yokel was paid to sit on a motorcycle with beer bottles strewn around and play the part of an out-of-control hoodlum on two wheels. It took off and made big headlines and later inspired the movie: The Wild One, with Marlin Brando. This set the tone for outlaw motorcycle gangs across the country and made motorcycles symbols of troublemakers and thugs. I bring this up because in the early 1970s I got a motorcycle and had long hair, another media generated marker of societal miscreant at the time. I was playing lead guitar in a rock band but as far as thumbing my nose at law, that never happened.
When I got on my bike, a Honda, not a Harley Davidson by the way, I was treated differently because of that damned movie with Brando. I went to a hamburger place in town, and they told me “We don’t serve motorcycles here!” That really happened and I know I am not alone. My brother and one of my friends went on a road trip once on bikes and one of the bikes got low on oil. They stopped at a gas station and the owner told them to get off the property and just keep going! They were victims of media not of bad behavior.
The media has always been really good at riling certain kinds of fearful people, which is why they could get away with calling one faction of society protesters while another faction was labeled insurrectionists!
This is why I do not trust the media.
en.wikipedia.org
www.bing.com
A local yokel was paid to sit on a motorcycle with beer bottles strewn around and play the part of an out-of-control hoodlum on two wheels. It took off and made big headlines and later inspired the movie: The Wild One, with Marlin Brando. This set the tone for outlaw motorcycle gangs across the country and made motorcycles symbols of troublemakers and thugs. I bring this up because in the early 1970s I got a motorcycle and had long hair, another media generated marker of societal miscreant at the time. I was playing lead guitar in a rock band but as far as thumbing my nose at law, that never happened.
When I got on my bike, a Honda, not a Harley Davidson by the way, I was treated differently because of that damned movie with Brando. I went to a hamburger place in town, and they told me “We don’t serve motorcycles here!” That really happened and I know I am not alone. My brother and one of my friends went on a road trip once on bikes and one of the bikes got low on oil. They stopped at a gas station and the owner told them to get off the property and just keep going! They were victims of media not of bad behavior.
The media has always been really good at riling certain kinds of fearful people, which is why they could get away with calling one faction of society protesters while another faction was labeled insurrectionists!
This is why I do not trust the media.
