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To: Ciaphas Cain
Howard Beale, "Turn Off Your TV" from 'Network' (1976)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePiZIKGUdXA.

We're in a lot of trouble, because you people and 62 million other Americans are listening to me right now. Because less than 3% of you people read books. Because less than 15% of you read newspapers.Because the only truth you know is what you get over this tube.

Right now there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube.

This tube is the gospel, the ultimate revelation. This tube can make or break presidents, Pope's, Prime Minister's. This tube is the most awesome goddamn force in the whole godless world and woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people and when the twelfth largest company in the world controls the most awesome goddamn propaganda force in the whole godless world who knows what sh_t will be peddled for truth on this network?

So you listen to me. Listen to me!.

Television is not the truth. Television is a goddamn amusement park. Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers, and football players.

We're in the boredom killing business!.

So if you want the truth, go to God. Go to your gurus. Go to yourselves!. Because that's the only place you're ever going to find any real truth.

But man you're never gonna get any truth from us. We'll tell you anything you want to hear. We lie like hell. We'll tell you that Kojak always gets the killer and that nobody ever gets cancer in Archie Bunker's house and no matter how much trouble the hero is in don't worry just look at your watch at the end of the hour he's going to win. We’ll tell you any sh_t you want to hear.

We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true. But you people sit there day after day night after night, all ages, colors, creed's. We're all you know.

You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal.

You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube. You eat like the tube. You raise your children like the tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass madness, you maniacs. In God's name you people are the real thing. WE are the illusion.

So turn off your television sets! Turn them off now! Turn them off right now turn them off and leave them off. Turn them off right in the middle of a sentence I'm speaking to you now! Turn them off! -

35 posted on 05/16/2024 2:29:17 PM PDT by T.B. Yoits
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To: T.B. Yoits
A guy at my high school did that monologue for a dramatic presentation contest. It was the first time I'd ever heard of Network. His performance was amazing.
39 posted on 05/16/2024 2:44:56 PM PDT by Ciaphas Cain (America needs deliberalization like Germany needed denazification.)
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