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.
More of what Bradbury said about Moulin Rouge:
It came out a few years ago and won a lot of awards. It has 4,560 half-second clips in it. The camera never stops and holds still. So it clicks off your thinking: you can’t think when you have things bombarding you like that. The average tv commercial of sixty seconds has one hundred twenty half-second clips in it, or one-third of a second. We bombard people with sensation. That subsitutes for thinking.
Bradbury is a paleo lib but his comments here are good. And funny.
I think the film “Network” nailed it a long time ago. I gave up broadcast and cable tv a few years back and haven’t missed it a bit. In fact, I’ve lost all tolerance for it. If I am exposed to it for even a few minutes, it starts to make me sick.
I got rid of TV in the mid-1990’s. Whenever I’m exposed to LOCAL news anywhere in the US, without exception I notice the same thing. They speak and act, literally, like their primary audience is in the 7th grade.
Read all his major works in high school. I’m not a big si fi fan but loved his stuff.
that is why I stopped watching the news.
I’m Montag.
My favorite Bradbury book was “The Martian Chronicles.”
Obligatory Ping.
I can’t remember who said the following quote.
“Those who dont read the news are uninformed. Those who do are misinformed.”
And, if you watch national and international news, your head will explode!
bkmk
TV is great, but it depends on what you watch. I dont watch the news anymore. But history channel, science channel, etc, there are some excellent programs.
bookmark
The 'Gender Gap' explained: Robbing Peter & Paul to pay Mary!
"Local news watching makes you dumber," Jamieson said.