Drugs, TV, and the Tea Party:
WILLIAM J. BENNETT IS A CONSERVATIVE PUNDIT...
POLITICIAN AND POLITICAL THEORIST WHO ONCE talked vaguely about the heritage of the 60's permissiveness, the collapse of Traditional Values, and all that. Both he and President George H.W. Bush, under whom he served as the Secretary of Education, offered the traditional American excuse: It is somebody Else's Fault. This posture set the stage for the self-righteous invasion of Panama; Bush even accused Manuel Noriega of "poisoning our children." But neither he or Bennett ever asked why so many Americans demand the poison. Even then, there was unemployment, poor living conditions, governmental stupidity, a gap between rich and poor. And neither "Bill" or "George" ever seemed to consider that may be a part of the problem, as well.
Back when I was young, drug addiction was not a major problem. That, of course, was 60 years ago, during the placid 50's. There were drug addicts. So Commissioner Harry Anslinger pumped up the budget of the old Bureau of Narcotics with fantasies of reefer madness. Heroin was sold and used in most major cities, while the bebop generation of jazz musicians jammed up with horse. But until the early 60's, narcotics were still marginal to American life; they weren't the $220 billion market they make up today.
If anything, those years have an eerie innocence. There were only 1.7 million TV sets in use in the entire country (the number is now was 200 billion). But the majority of the audience had grown up without the amazing new medium. They embraced it, were diverted by it, perhaps even loved it, but they were not formed by it. In the last Nielsen survey of American viewers, the average American family was watching television 8 hours a day. This has never happened before in history. No people has ever before been entertained for 8 hours a day. The Elizabethans didn't go to the theater 8 hours a day. The pre-TV generation did not go to the movies 8 hours a day. Common sense tells us that this all-pervasive diet of constant imagery, sustained now for 50 years that have changed us in profound ways.
Television, like drugs, dominates the lives of its addicts. And though many lonely Americans leave their sets on without watching them, using them as electronic companions, television usually absorbs its viewers the way drugs absorb their users. There are other disturbing similarities. Television itself is a consciousness-altering instrument. With one touch of a button, you can be taken out of the "real world" and be placed at a baseball game, the streets of New York, or the back alleys of Paris, or in the cartoony living rooms of Sitcom Land, usually with music or a laugh track; read "self-help" books, and obtain our news from Jon Stewart.
In short, television works on the same imaginative and intellectual level as psychoactive drugs. If prolonged television viewing makes passive, then moving into drugs has a certain coherence. Both provide an unearned high, in contrast to the earned rush that comes from a feat of accomplishment, a human breakthrough earned by earned by sweat or thought or love. It's no wonder that 19 other nations lead us in literacy ratings and 22 are ahead of us in both science and math.
Both drugs and television give people what they want. We Americans no longer seem able to distinguish truth from fiction or reality from fantasy. This is easily attained by popping a pill or flipping a switch, a choice between cheap emotion over logic, where there are good guys and bad, nice girls and whores, smart guys and dumb, and the steady growth in American politics into the world of a new and somewhat absurd adventure filled with halfwits called:
The Tea Party...
...And now have Nation wherein the the tail is now wagging the dog...
...Because we are only giving people what they want...
Back when I was young, drug addiction was not a major problem. That, of course, was 60 years ago, during the placid 50's. There were drug addicts. So Commissioner Harry Anslinger pumped up the budget of the old Bureau of Narcotics with fantasies of reefer madness. Heroin was sold and used in most major cities, while the bebop generation of jazz musicians jammed up with horse. But until the early 60's, narcotics were still marginal to American life; they weren't the $220 billion market they make up today.
If anything, those years have an eerie innocence. There were only 1.7 million TV sets in use in the entire country (the number is now was 200 billion). But the majority of the audience had grown up without the amazing new medium. They embraced it, were diverted by it, perhaps even loved it, but they were not formed by it. In the last Nielsen survey of American viewers, the average American family was watching television 8 hours a day. This has never happened before in history. No people has ever before been entertained for 8 hours a day. The Elizabethans didn't go to the theater 8 hours a day. The pre-TV generation did not go to the movies 8 hours a day. Common sense tells us that this all-pervasive diet of constant imagery, sustained now for 50 years that have changed us in profound ways.
Television, like drugs, dominates the lives of its addicts. And though many lonely Americans leave their sets on without watching them, using them as electronic companions, television usually absorbs its viewers the way drugs absorb their users. There are other disturbing similarities. Television itself is a consciousness-altering instrument. With one touch of a button, you can be taken out of the "real world" and be placed at a baseball game, the streets of New York, or the back alleys of Paris, or in the cartoony living rooms of Sitcom Land, usually with music or a laugh track; read "self-help" books, and obtain our news from Jon Stewart.
In short, television works on the same imaginative and intellectual level as psychoactive drugs. If prolonged television viewing makes passive, then moving into drugs has a certain coherence. Both provide an unearned high, in contrast to the earned rush that comes from a feat of accomplishment, a human breakthrough earned by earned by sweat or thought or love. It's no wonder that 19 other nations lead us in literacy ratings and 22 are ahead of us in both science and math.
Both drugs and television give people what they want. We Americans no longer seem able to distinguish truth from fiction or reality from fantasy. This is easily attained by popping a pill or flipping a switch, a choice between cheap emotion over logic, where there are good guys and bad, nice girls and whores, smart guys and dumb, and the steady growth in American politics into the world of a new and somewhat absurd adventure filled with halfwits called:
The Tea Party...
...And now have Nation wherein the the tail is now wagging the dog...
...Because we are only giving people what they want...
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