dr. elsewhere here
Hi, folks (she offered sheepishly).
Long time, no see.
All my fault. The world is just too much with me. Though I'm not sure if that's more the case when I'm immersed in blogworld or when I'm out of it, truth be told.
Hoping to put in some two-cents worth here and there, now and then, though they may be more on the order of ha'pennies! But, we'll see.
For now, just wanted to make sure everyone out there is aware of the new FCC Chair's intention to dredge up, yet again, this very old and very dead horse of ....(cue the Twilight Zone theme song)
MEDIA CONSOLIDATION!!??!
Yeah, this extremely cynical guy, Kevin Martin, is trying to steamroll the issue, despite the fact that the whole project tanked four years ago, was reversed by the courts, and got bipartisan rejection from the Hill. Go figure. Clearly, the powers that be really do understand - just as the founding fathers did - that if you control the press, you control the people. Hell, control the press and you control history, you control reality!! Hence the big push.
So we have to push back. Please, GO HERE to send the message to Mr. Martin and the FCC that we really do NOT want big media corporations to swallow up what is left of our free press!
And spread this around; there is really NO freedom more important than freedom of the press. Think about that one for a bit, and I'll get back to you on it with some thoughts....
...for what they're worth.
5 comments:
With genuine regard for your anxiety about worse "Media Consolidation" than already exists, and with all due respect to your generous host, Mr. Cannon, I should alert you that (1) I can't care less and (2) I am Mr. Cannon's worst progressive "purist" nightmare.
Of course I don't support further media consolidation, but I also figure that college text-book publishers, e.g., would have had to charge unbearable amounts for their books if they hadn't become subsidiaries of large parent corporations.
TV networks and newspapers deserve the loss of audience and reader share they've been having: American commercial TV produced a mass audience of fools, based on the axiom that a fool and his money are soon parted -- meaning that American TV required an audience of fools to hawk its advertised stuff, so it did its best to achieve such an audience. Can that be disputed? The few who can sit still or stay tuned-in don't pay TV's bills anymore. The rest (and restless) are the inevitable end-products of TV's oversaturation process. TV's power to influence is impossible to overestimate. Most viewers' knowledge consists only of knowing what's available in the marketplace and where to get it. Worst, most viewers are remarkably convinced that they are well-informed and very knowledgeable. They actually only have the illusion of knowing, but that doesn't change their sense of confidence.
Maybe you're being distracted from the real heist, which has more to do with the conversion from 'analog' TV to digital, which will enable/allow all providers to increase the amount of data they can transmit along any single pipeline; along with TV, movies, radio, music, telephoning, magazines, newspapers, 'Internet', and burglar alarms over 'TV', expect on-demand purchasing power of anything and everything. And also it will eliminate true and actual 'live' (real-time) TV (and radio) forever.
'Net neutrality' is more important, and just because it's been extended for a few years is no reason to forget about it today. Between now and then, we 'freedom-of-the-press' purists have to align ourselves with like-minded people and launch some satellites of our own and buy land where we can raise towers, and be willing to contribute money to make it happen, and be willing to pay to maintain a costly but free telecommunications system that's independent of the octopus.
Well, I'll be damned! This blog has actually received a non-insane comment. I haven't received many lately. The stuff I've been blocking at the gate has been pretty gruesome -- people trying to win me to Jesus or damn me for not accepting the Gospel of the CD or convince me of the imminent arrival of our brothers from space. There are also the guys who send me messages EVERY DAY telling me what a fiend I am and why I am irrelevant. If they hate me so much, why do they come here?
I'm rambling. Okay, regarding your specific points...
I must point out -- textbooks DO cost an unbearable amount, and it is a racket. Editions change from year to year for no reason other than to make sure that the students buy new instead of making do with used. And each edition costs another C-note. THIS I know, friend.
I find laughable the proposition that TV producers conspired to make people dumber. They certainly have been known to dumb down their shows to match the level of their audience, but that is a very different thing. Nobody ever held a gun to someone's head and forced him to watch Jerry Springer or "Cheaters."
I'll let the good Doctor deal with the rest.
"[Joseph] must point out -- textbooks DO cost an unbearable amount, and it is a racket. Editions change from year to year for no reason other than to make sure that the students buy new instead of making do with used. And each edition costs another C-note. THIS I know, friend."
One gathers that "friend" am me, who commented here at length some months ago about the college textbook racket, and with sufficient inside information and more contempt. Scroll, don't scroll. My "unbearable" was not the hyperbolic "unbearable" that my good friend employed; it was literal and pointedly conditional.
I would say and mean, Who the fuck is Jerry Springer? if it weren't for the countless TV apologists who refer to him as their poster boy LCD show. I can use Ted Koppel as an example, or any other "CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED" (their words, not mine) TV shill. Really, I'm not competent to discuss TV because, with few exceptions, I don't know what's on or what's been on for 35 years. What the fuck is "Cheaters"?
(Hey! I watched a PBS short filler in 1980 or 1981, an animation that continuously built a rising network of transparent cubes, perhaps suggesting Plato's notions of infinity and plenitude, and the soundtrack was Wagner's Prelude to Tristan und Isolde -- which shouldn't have been but was new music for me. At the time I had been 'studying' Puccini and Scott Joplin, and the Prelude gripped me then because it fit perfectly and has never let go.)
aitchd, not sure exactly what to make of your comments. if you don't watch TV, that is certainly your choice, but i hardly think that gives you any real cred in commenting on its power or perversity.
regardless of your commentary cred, tho - or lack thereof - no matter what you might think, there is no question that TV packs a serious power wallop in swaying and shaping cultural thought. this we simply cannot overlook.
you seem to get that fact, but miss the impact that media ownership has over that swaying and shaping.
but given that you seem so obsessed with over-priced textbooks - a fact that will not only bring no dispute here, but which is rather FAR FROM THE POINT - it seems you might be able to make the connection. granted, it's a teensy stretch, but consider the far more devastating fact about textbooks than your obscene pricing: that these media conglomerates hold so much power over not just the prices but the CONTENT!
therein lies the rub; dig it.
of course, you may no longer be 'watching' here, which is certainly fair. sorry to be so slow on the responding, but the holiday swept me away. and not a second of TV watching occurred, not even to catch a weather report.
er, thanks for 'watching.'
dr, cred isn't important in a conversation or a discussion, or even in a symposium. If you or Joseph were conducting a seminar, I'd expect to provide footnotes, and I'd refrain from agitating. About TV and TV watching, everyone's an expert and expert critic, including people who watch less than I do, and I mean that literally, though in the latest versions of Trivial Pursuit I would never be able to advance my token. Funny, you say not watching TV is my choice; I think of watching TV as my choice, and not watching it as being ordinary. But I'll agree with you in the sense that I avoid TV, mainly because I figure if I'm not watching TV it means I'm doing something else. And in the end, I agree with John Leonard's premises in his "Smoke and Mirrors" (probably the most exhaustive survey of American TV's history) that we are a better society because of TV, and we have more reason to be optimistic than hopeless.
The textbook matter I mentioned refers to college texts. The genuine worries about content would apply to K-12 materials, which the publishers fashion to suit the, erm, vicissitudes of local school boards. College texts with ideological bents are not unheard of, but I wouldn't worry about the content being controlled or conglomerated until the intellects of the professors have become stupefied. As Groucho put it, the Great Books controversy was around long before you got here, and it will be around long before you leave.
I'm very flattered that you attribute Joseph's ventilating about college textbook costs to what you call my being "obsessed" about them. He brought the issue up months ago and revived it replying to me here. My only point (in one obsessed-riddled sentence) was that octopussy corporate ownership of publishers has kept the costs affordable. Can anyone say the same about beer?
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