A Conversation with Ray Bradbury ("if you watch local news, your head will turn to mush")

Fahrenheit 451, 50th Anniversary Edition ^ | 2003 (50th anniversary of Fahrenheit 451) | Ray Bradbury

[Recovering_Democrat]

excerpts from the interview with Bradbury....

[Q]: What forms of censorship do your regard as the most dangerous today?

Bradbury: There are none in our country. We have too many groups for censorship to be possible. We have Catholics and Jews and Protestants, and Republicans and Democrats, and women's libbers, and lesbians and homosexuals and bisexuals, and young and old...We're all watching each other...The main problem is the idiot TV. If you watch local news, your head will turn to mush.

[Q]: There seems to have been a decline in standards of journalistic objectivity, to put it mildly.

Bradbury: It's not just substance; it's style. The whole problem of TV and movies today is summed up for me by the film "Moulin Rouge".

[Recovering_Democrat]

Ray Bradbury grew up in a Baptist home while living in Illinois, Arizona and California.

He is best known for his book "Fahrenheit 451", a book about government censorship of books and thinking. The government uses TELEVISION as a distraction to real thinking, and anyone found with a book has their home and goods burned to the ground.

Bradbury's hero in the novel is a book burner whose mind and heart is changed. He sees the television for what it is: a distraction to keep people from thinking.

I don't know Bradbury's politics, but he was damn right about TV's detrimental effects on the human brain.

I think Bradbury's thoughts on censorship might be a bit different 8 years later--it certainly seems as though some form of "censorship", though not explicit governmental censorship, is rampant in some quarters. "Censorship" as I see it is an act of government, not the market place.

[Recovering_Democrat]

please delete this thread...I accidentally double posted. :(