We Are As Dumb As We Were Thirty Years Ago
We just thought it was interesting to note this video clip from the movie Network is even more relevant than it was thirty years ago when the movie debuted. This is the movie that gave us the famed line, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" In the clip, Peter Finch rails against the public which has been dumbed down by television and don't read books or newspapers any longer. Sound familiar?
Television is not the truth Finch tells us. "It's a goddamn amusement park." TV will tells us anything we want to hear and it will lie to deliver. Combine that with the rest of the media business's insanity and the our fixation with celebutards and the world depicted in the recent movie Idiocracy seems completely plausible.
It's uncanny how much that Finch speech, delivered thirty years ago, rings true today. We are a nation of obese sloths with stomachs bulging over (and under!) our belts who lay around playing mindless video games, watch inane television programming and worship celebrities instead of true heroes.
The most important people in the world, teachers, have been reduced to underpaid babysitters who can't even discipline children for fear some uppity parent will sue them for mistreating their spoiled child.
We watch Britney Spears over and over and over and over...and over deliver that train wreck of a performance at MTV's dismal VMAs giving Chris Crocker and MTV more attention and ratings than they deserve.
PerezHilton is one of the most widely read websites in the world while newspapers and books fall further and further out of fashion. No one wants real news. We want salacious gossip.
We care more about who wins American Idol than why and for what purpose our troops are in Iraq...or anywhere else they are in the world because we have no idea since we never watch the news or read the newspaper which forces the media to stop reporting because they perceive we don't care and we'd rather know when Britney was last seen wearing no underwear.
Is it any wonder why a fifth of Americans can't locate the U.S. on a map and why that question can't be answered coherently?
We are as dumb as we were thirty years ago and if things don't change, the twisted world of Idiocary will become a reality.
Comments
Stevie, we've seen this editorial a million times before by others, it's about time we start coming up with solutions...
Agreed. And if I had the solutions, I wouldn't be here telling you about them. I'd be rich and on my 230 foot yacht somewhere in the Mediterranean basking in the sun while my crew of big breasted bikinied beauties tended to my every need.
Alas, I can only point out the problem and fantasize about big breasted women in bikinis tending to my every need.
I watched Network a week ago with my wife and had the exact same feeling. I'm mad as Hell and... well I'm just not sure what I can really do about it now that the media has become a corporate wasteland of borderline monopolies controlled by neoconic propagandist who are trying to dumb down the population so that they and their profiteering cronies can continue to use the cross and war to hide their evil and molesting ways with the American people while changing the constitution to make it not only socially acceptable but legal. Ouch, my brain hurts must turn on Oprah.
See the Movie Iddiocracy!!!
I fell on this movie in a bargain bin last week, I watched it and fell about laughing..at the same time sat there gobsmacked by the horror of the future, I have since watched it twice with friends and family,
"Its the future people, its the future"
seriously this is a funny movie with a very interesting view of our future. But if you have an IQ over 100..you can do something!! hehe
See the Movie Iddiocracy!!!
I fell on this movie in a bargain bin last week, I watched it and fell about laughing..at the same time sat there gobsmacked by the horror of the future, I have since watched it twice with friends and family,
"Its the future people, its the future"
seriously this is a funny movie with a very interesting view of our future. But if you have an IQ over 100..you can do something!! hehe
Nice article and points... However, it's a portion of society that has always been dumb. It's a smart 3% that run the world for the most part. Ok, what I said could be spun in different directions and taken apart but there is truth in what I said. But like you said, the news is a joke. They tell everyone what they want to hear. They love to make money off of celebrity stories and photos. It's all twisted when it comes to politics. A 90% mess if you ask me.