“This Is a Test of the Emergency Broadcast System…”
Had this been an actual emergency…
Has television always propagandized us? Probably. It was selling us cigarettes and soda pop from the start. Making money for somebody.
But if we’ve been getting sold things, then we have also been getting sold opinions and perspectives and agendas. I don’t know when it started, but I know that I can end it for myself. I would like to believe I can, anyway. And I often succeed. Any time not spent in the thrall of the televised scavengers, pimps, and whores that constitute network news is time well spent.
Because when the news doesn’t go to sleep, it goes mad. When there is no end to the broadcast day and there is no cold and eerie recording of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and the test pattern never does come, foolish things start to happen and reason breaks down.
Remember that most of what Americans know of the War for Iraq is told to them by the very same companies, networks, management, and journalists that are exploiting the recent massacre in the city of Blacksburg, Viriginia. Or exploiting the carnival of Anna Nicole Smith’s life and death. These people know neither proportion nor context. They’ll tell you about a bombing in Baghdad that killed five people, but won’t tell you about the five million people whose lives are slowly but surely improving now that they no longer struggle under a dictatorship.
I do not trust their judgement since their only motive is to make a profit.
Reject television news. Only read the news. And pick lots of different sources. Range around. Don’t be dictated to or manipulated by these people. They are the enemy of a thinking populace.
