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Posted on 09/08/2001 5:22:08 PM PDT by Pokey78
WASHINGTON
If you thought it would be hard for TV to top the Summer of the Insatiable Sharks, Ravenous Bears, Killer Bees and Stampeding Lizzie Grubman, you were wrong.
Two networks are racing to air prime-time specials this fall featuring mediums interviewing dead celebrities.
As Lisa de Moraes reported in The Washington Post, NBC and ABC are both doing such shows for fall sweeps. "The November of the Chatting Dead," she dryly calls it.
In a culture so besotted with celebrity, we were bound to run out of upright luminaries to interview. I may tune in if the mediums manage to conjure up the vengeful spirits of Natalie Wood or Nicole Simpson. But the celebrity specter I'd really like to hear from is Paddy Chayefsky, the dazzling satirist who wrote the eerily prescient 1976 movie "Network."
Mr. Chayefsky's ominous predictions from the Ford era about the damage to American democracy from the Pac-Man game of networks gobbled by companies gobbled by other companies gobbled by consortiums gobbled by foreign investors have come true.
W. continued to give away the store to Big Business last week, legally unleashing Microsoft and signaling media conglomerates that they can conglomerate away — accelerating the centralization of American power into the hands of a very few very rich people.
W. never met a merger he didn't like, except stems and cells. His White House has become a holding company for Big Money and the Media Oligarchy — Murdoch, Gates, Case, Eisner, Redstone.
Mr. Gates is getting back his monopoly over the desktop computer and his reign as the Czar of Broadband. And soon we'll have thousands of channels but they'll all be controlled by the same few moguls.
At least before we had a diversity of trash in our media. Now we're zooming toward a collective mentality, severely limiting the voices that may be heard and muting opposing views. A quarter of American culture will be filtered through Murdoch's sensibility, a quarter through AOL Time Warner, a quarter through Mickey Mouse, a quarter through Viacom.
W., afraid he will be blamed, as Dad was, for the cratering economy, has been going out the past few days echoing Poppy's "Message: I Care."
After the unemployment numbers rose sharply to 4.9 percent on Friday, the president rushed out of the Oval Office to commiserate: "Any American out of work is too many Americans out of work."
But the fanfare for the common man rings hollow, given that Bush Inc. is refusing to turn over documents to Congress about the secret deliberations of Dick Cheney and energy lobbyists cooking up their drill & spill energy plan and is knocking down regulatory hurdles, further pleasing Big Energy, Big Media, Big Oil, Big Tobacco, Big Telecom and Big Weapons Manufacturers.
A majority of Americans did not elect W. A majority of voters didn't even elect him. A new book about Florida and the Supreme Court decision, featured on this week's Newsweek cover, is titled "The Accidental President." His real constituents are the corporations that gave him $100 million, the biggest political haul in history.
In "Network," the crazed anchor Howard Beale reveals on the news one night that his network has been bought by a corporation and that corporation is being bought by a consortium of banks and insurance companies controlled by the Arabs.
Think of how mad Howard Beale would be today. There are so many examples to choose from: MapQuest, a Web site that provides directions, was swallowed by America Online, which swallowed Time Warner, which owns CNN. General Electric, the company that makes light bulbs and engines on fighter jets, owns NBC. Disney, which owns studios, theme parks and sports teams, owns ABC.
In the movie, the C.E.O. who owns the network explains to Beale that the world is "one vast and ecumenical holding company."
"There is no America," he says. "There is no democracy. There is only I.B.M. and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. The world is a business, Mr. Beale!"
And just as Beale railed: "There is not a single law on the books to stop them!"
How totally sane the mad prophet turned out to be.
5.56mm
LAZ, NOW TRANSMITTING FROM 2022!
Let me know when you get to -
...the year of 2525...
Laz, LOL! :)
LOL!
LOVE it Laz! You da man!
I’m trying to decide whether this message means that the Mayans were right or the Mayans were wrong.
These ‘polls’ are all over the map, and they are useless, the way they are using them.
The need to oversample Democraps +6 and +8 to get an Obama lead.
What it DOES show is that 100% of (R)’s are voting for Romney, but NOT 100% of (D)’s are voting for Obama- that is huge, when you consider independants will NOT break for Obama this time- won’t get fooled again would be a great (R) theme song for them this year
Thank God somebody understands the rules.
Funny but creepy! :)
Still going on about Bush II
Hasn’t time run out on that one?
And with that, you have given me my new tag line. :)
Set em up Joe. It sucks gettin old.
Remember, The Rule did not yet exist at the time of this thread’s creation.
Hey...glad ta be your inspiration in a small way! LOL!
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