>We deluded ourselves into thinking that "Alternative" media ruled the day, when in reality those that control the sheeple's daily news, control the message...<
Here's an interesting take on that subject:
http://www.spectacle.org/496/dream.html
-In his book Bread and Circuses, Patrick Brantlinger analyzes the idea of "bread and circuses" as a narcotic for the masses throughout history. Though he never mentions Richard Dawkin's theory of memetics, the book is the history of a meme, a collection of related ideas replicating through history. Brantlinger defines as "negative classicism" the idea that Rome was decadent and that our society is sliding downhill to a Roman-style decadence. "The shade of Rome," says Brantlinger, "looms up to suggest the fate of societies that fail to elevate their masses to something better than welfare checks and mass entertainments."
Television, as our courts recognize, is a pervasive entertainment; its broadcast waves enter the home uninvited. Harlan Ellison called it "the glass teat" in his book of the same name. Proving McLuhan's theorem that "the medium is the message", television favors the visual and fragmented, jumping jerkily from one dramatic image or scenario to another. It is a better medium for depicting the explosion of a volcano than discussing the merits of a budget proposal. The meme "bread and circuses" is almost, as Brantlinger discovers, worn out as a metaphor for television; it has become a truism, as Minow said, that TV is "an intellectual wasteland". Neil Postman sees in television the death of narrative, of the consistency and logic demanded by typography. By contrast to the Roman Emperors, who could only offer their subjects 93 days a year of games, contemporary Americans watch four or five hours of television almost every day of the year. The narcotic effect of television is correspondingly much greater than that of Roman circuses.
Lawyers complain that juries' sense of justice has increasingly little to do with common sense, causation or traditional views of science. In other words, jurors have, like I did, acquired television brains. The wild claims of "A Current Affair" or The Oprah Winfrey Show are now the rules of everyday life. The fictional trial and the televised trial have merged. Both are pandered to the public as entertainment. It is impossible for an attorney, a defendant, a juror or even a judge not to play to a camera placed in the courtroom. The camera first warps our brains, then our behavior. The people who eagerly go on daytime talk shows to talk about their own idiocy or humiliation are no different than us. Both the camera and its product, the TV show, are a narcotic.-
Bump