Too much to blog last night? I was struck by a comment left by a sensible sounding visitor on the site for bitterly acerbic right wing columnist Ann Coulter in which scores of insulting comments and diatribes follow her predictably flammable editorials.
In part 'dunkel' wrote: "The playground level tauntings that fly back and forth whenever a dissenting opinion is raised (regardless of the intellectual/logical merits or fallacies of such an opinion) don't add anything to the conversation. Neither side is any more guilty or innocent than the other, and the general commentary posted by authors on these sites is designed to rally their followers into a froth. And it works. Sad commentary on the state of American politics."
Bravo, dunkel, but that's not even the half of it. This is a commentary on the state of American society, in which we are bred from birth to be manipulated. We are taught to see things only one way, but we are also taught to want. We are fed this message from the moment we can focus on the glowing TV tube that fulfilment comes from consumer products and services. We are taught to follow fads and fashion, and customs so old we can no longer even explain their meanings. We are indoctrinated into our parent's religion, given an all too limited number of choices for political parties and ultimately are the pawns in a massive battle for public mind control being waged between enormous media conglomerates and their affiliated political and commercial allies.
You point out what is obvious to any teacher who corrects simple middle school essays. We are not building discussions out of mutual inquiry, deductive or constructive reasoning, discussing and challenging one another's cases and opinions, we are merely recycling the summaries of our media heroes as casually as memory permits, while inserting smarmy quips to score juvenile jabs against strangers. These blogs have also lost most civility, making dunkel's comment a rare exception. But that's what Ann Coulter designs for us, that's what Townhall thrives on, and just as some for-profit sites do on the left, they have us all clacking away endlessly on keyboards without really listening or learning from one another.
A few months back, I posted a comment on an Ann Coulter essay pointing out that her article was essentially a democrat/liberal smear which didn't even address her own stated topic. When middle school kids are taught to construct a persuasive essay, it's most basically done by stating a premise, supporting it with facts and opinion, clearly differentiating what is research-based and what is commentary, and making logical connections to sway neutral readers. Ann's essay not only mixed fact with opinion, but humor with actual calls for killing foreigners. Her points were random, unrelated to her opening statement and her comments grossly insulted and degraded her subjects, as is her trademark. She aims to demean those who don't share her viewpoint, roundly perceived as fomenting mob-style hatred against fellow Americans, with a level of verbal abuse few other professional commentators maintain. In the end, Ann's commentary distinctly fits the definition of propaganda, however her underlying motives may be more complex then seeking publicity or book sales.
The media does not care if we are at eachothers throats as long as they are generating profit. They know provocative hosts make little sense, and they know well-reasoned, intelligent commentary is too challenging for the type of viewer they ideally want to sell advertising to. McNeil-Lehrer or BBC reports present two sides of an issue and highly qualified guests in quick order, cutting right to the heart of an issue and leaving it to the viewer to form their own conclusions. But that doesn't sell hemorrhoid cream, so networks hire nuts like Glenn Beck and Dan Rather. Suddenly you aren't listening and learning, you're talking back to your set and cheering (or swearing) - this is because responsible, informed journalism breeds discerning thinkers who don't respond to ads well - they are more likely see through marketing and sales hype.
Our primary usefulness to those in power is to buy products, pay taxes, vote for specific candidates and send our young into service. For most everything else, they want us docile and complacent. In order for us to do this however, there must be motivation, otherwise why would we want to do someone else's bidding? The solution for this is something called Bernaysian manipulation and it works like a charm. This deliberate control of the masses is meant to achieve all of their ends, including the seemingly impossible task of convincing the middle class that laws should cater to the upper class.
But it works and here's how: in order to get you to buy a product, they convince you you want it. Pretty simple really, for example, to sell clothes they show you they same items being worn by a beautiful model. Your subconscious does the rest, turning your desire to look good into an association with that product - it's well proven. We do respond, we buy these clothes to project the qualities of the beauteous model onto ourselves, a promise made by the ad but carried out us, acting just as expected. The average consumer is ordinary - a model is gorgeous. Like clockwork, the formula proves true - our hidden desire to be extraordinary triggers the impulse to buy the product. But this is small potatoes - Bernaysian manipulation actually has us projecting the prestige and power of the wealthiest elite onto ourselves though similar "associative bait and switch" means, even enlisting us to advocate their causes to our own detriment.
Let's look at higher ticket items next: To sell you a car, they show you how empowering it is with nifty animated effects, basically creating a fantasy perception of an ordinary vehicle. Americans are complete suckers for this, while the rest of the world gets more fuel efficient every year, we still buy wasteful SUVs because it fills personality voids, addressing insecurities, such as the need to be noticed, the need to wield power or the need to impress or compete with others. We could buy a modest car, they're safe, reliable and are fine values - but the American consumer is brainwashed to feel "entitled" our whole lives long - told that we need to be above average, special, unique. Ads sell us on the idea that a really fast car, or extraordinary handling is what we "deserve", though any buyer with the same amount money can obtain the same car. We're trained that we will gain "status" by associating our self with a prestigious brand, even though most drivers today just sit in traffic and commute, we're sold many types of oversized guzzlers and luxury models. Once we've seen these dazzling ads, we do the rest, justifying the cost and other factors to ourselves to chase the fantasy we saw in the ad.
This works too, we've been buying these models like crazy, to the point where all American car manufacturers have lost sight of the world market and gone into horrible losses and horrendous export deficits for years now. Our advertising is that effective, it works time and again because we haven't been trained to see through and deconstruct it.
An excellent consumer product really needs no advertising - it just adds to the cost. But it's so ingrained into our lives, we may not even know it wasn't always this way. During our agrarian days, most luxury items were considered by heartland Americans to be frivolous and needlessly expensive, for those who needed to "buy" their self-worth. Then a man came into the picture that would profoundly change almost every facet of our culture. His name was Edward Bernays, the Austrian born nephew of Sigmund Freud. He came to America and took the country by storm, deeply versed in Freudian theories before Freud's works were widely published.
His early successes included selling Europe on the idea that President Wilson was a hero and liberator in the aftermath of World War I, achieved by staged rallies and planted news stories. Yes, Bernays is considered the "father of public relations", opening the first P.R. firm with the U.S. government and the largest U.S. corporations all lined up as clients.
Bernays also brought us the 'publicity stunt', such as the famous 1928 event in which women were enlisted to light up cigarettes in the NYC Easter parade. The papers were told they were suffragettes, openly defying the societal ban on female smoking in public, lighting "torches of freedom" a la the proud Statue of Liberty. This ran on front pages everywhere, but in reality the girls were hired by Bernays on behalf of his client American Tobacco, whose sales doubled, rising $28 million that year alone. Bernays smugly commented that women everywhere began to smoke because they wanted a surrogate "penis" of their own.
Bernays was key to the development of "consumerism" itself as a lifestyle, convincing Americans to buy things they don't need by conning them using more of Freud's insights into the subconscious. Lehman Bros. and others bankrolled the development of huge "department" stores, using Bernaysian techniques to persuade people to purchase a host of products that they never would have thought to otherwise buy. Shopping became recreation rather then a chore as Bernays perfected the concepts of product placement, the celebrity endorsement, and the more insidious psuedo-scientific product endorsement. The public responded exactly as predicted -- the wasteful overspending on a mass scale directly contributing to the crash of 1929.
Bernays became so powerful he actually came to control his uncle Sigmund's publishing rights, leaving the genius to struggle in war torn Vienna with just enough to get by. Unfortunately, Bernays published many books of his own, including "Crystallizing Public Opinion" in 1923 and "Propaganda" in 1928 (yes, the original "Propaganda") which Joseph Goebbels as the Nazi propaganda minister made abundant use of throughout the Holocaust, often crediting Bernays.
Bernays also convinced your grandmother to use Betty Crocker cake mix. After sales of it's new instant cake powder slumped, Bernays suggested adding an egg to the ingredient list on the back panel. Though completely unnecessary, this made sales soar because housewives did not feel as guilty about using a shortcut if they were including their own egg, though it was purely symbolic.
GW is a proud American from NY State, concerned about ethics issues, media manipulation and overconsumption. He has recently changed careers to become an inner city schoolteacher. A firm proponent of curbing overpopulation and international adoption, he hopes to adopt a third child and enjoys history, outsider art, garage rock music and rare/unusual vinyl records.
A very fine essay, Mr. Wynn. Thank you for taking the time to articulate so clearly what has been fluttering around the edges of my consciousness for several years now. A combination of cirumstances, and if I'm honest, a few bad decisions, resulted in some financial difficulties for me over the last five years. ( And I'm talking about living very close to the poverty level here, no savings, debt-to-income ratio severely out of balance). Commercial television and cable were the first non-essential items to go. I've listened only to non-commercial radio for a long time anyway. I gave up on renting DVDs from the local franchise purveyors, the local small independent shops, and finally subscribed to a mail order service with an inventory of somewhere around 70,000 titles, including foreign and documentary. Because I have lacked discretionary income, I have given up gong to the mall, the great American pastime. I haven't been able to replace my 11 year old vehicle. My occupation requires a practical wardrobe and precludes fashion of any kind. The net result has been a very liberating distancing from the media barbarians at the gate of my self-awareness. I hasten to add that I did not arrive at this situation solely because of my financial difficulties, and in fact, a great deal of conscious thought went into my decision to stop chasing the almighty dollar and instead learn to live with less income but more peace of mind. Making lemonade indeed.
This kind of decision is probably easier for me than for many others because I live alone (3 dogs, 1 cat, all geriatric), my child is grown, I am single, and I can gratefully say that I am very independent emotionally and mentally. I might add that I am by temperament a cynic and a curmudgeon, so I'm quick to doubt and resist the pressures to conform. But it has been sickeningly clear to me for years that the media and advertising cartels have co-opted any independent thought in most of the American population. The failure to teach critical thinking in public schools at any grade level has created 2 generations of lemmings who are proud to pose as free mobile advertisements for the very companies which enslave them with addictions to alcohol, tobacco, gambling, religion, oil and gasoline, farm equipment, cars, and trucks, and pretty much any other consumer product you can name. In my part of the country, it is common to see a $40,000 car or pick-up truck parked beside a used-up, worn-out junk house trailer on a lot scattered with trash and broken plastic toys. Cognizant dissonance reigns.
I agree with your recommendations for change, but I fear that our psyches have been so damaged that our hard-wiring is actually changed and most of us will not be able or willing to retreat from the edge of the cliff. And when we finally jump over that edge, no more and no less than because everyone else is doing it, those cartels who have co-opted us will have won.
A. Kaiser
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Annie (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 4 comments)
on Sunday, January 7, 2007 at 10:06:20 AM
An excellent article and a very perceptive comment as well. I was nodding in agreement and talking back to your essay as I read it. I teach college composition, and my biggest goal for the students is to teach them how to deconstruct visual rhetoric and jump-start their critical thinking abilities. Most of them are clueless about media manipulation and thinkig for themselves in constructing argument. They are stunned when they realize that things they take for granted often have a hidden agenda. I did not know about some of the history behind advertising and propaganda, but now I will be sure to use some of this information for my class. I taught my son to deconstruct ads when he was very small. Now at 15 he is both politically and culturally savvy. We shop at thrift stores and, though we do watch some TV, we still like to take apart the commercials... when we don't mute them!
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Debbie Scally (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 33 comments)
on Sunday, January 7, 2007 at 12:14:43 PM
The media is the government's mouthpiece. Long ago, they stopped pursuing news and instead merely regurgitate gov't positions. The main goal of the news is to censor anything opposed to the gov't will. Censorship is becoming America's favorite past-time. The US gov't (and their corporate friends), already detain protesters, ban books like "America Deceived" America Deceived (book) from Amazon and Wikipedia, and fire 21-year tenured, BYU physics professor Steven Jones because he proved explosives, thermite in particular, took down the WTC buildings. That is why the internet is surpassing the mainstream media.
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Lorring II (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 86 comments)
on Monday, January 8, 2007 at 7:21:58 AM
It is not Judaism causing media to withhold information or introduce bias counter to the interest of Americans, it is greed or immorality. Indeed I would assert the Jews mentioned in your link (which seems to be a white supremacist site and will probably be removed) aren't all too religious, they, like the millions of Christians who ignore Jesus Christ's clear message of pacifism and charity and the Muslim extremists who have revised Mohammed's message to include and condone violence, are actually devotees of Mars, god of war.
Acting to insult eachother, condoning violence and war is the opposite of all accounts of Jesus' beliefs, indeed the all-important point of the story of Jesus crucifixion is the example that one should not allows sins of others to corrupt our own morals.
Anti-semitism is a sure way to guarantee your own censorship - any real corruption you may have uncovered will be ignored. If you really think the best way to combat media manipulation is to disseminate hate speech I doubt you will reach many people. For example, if I was a Jew reading your post, but wasn't personally an immoral media manipulator, I would be extremely offended. Such is the damage of the "broad brush" you use to accuse all Jews of corruption, such is the lack of logic you demonstrate, the lack of balance and lack of tolerance which is needed to build bridges across communities.
You may get your jollies bashing Jews but you yourself are a media manipulator and, based on similar spam mails that went out today, I suspect are part of a funded campaign.
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Gustav Wynn (45 articles, 32 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 215 comments)
on Monday, January 8, 2007 at 1:00:12 PM
Congratulations on COMPLETELY IGNORING FACTUAL INFORMATION.
Amazing the length people will go to in order to avoid looking at reality. I invite you to factually disprove what i have said about Jewish media ownership. I invite you to factually disprove what i said about Jewish leadership in both left and right policy institutions and organizations.
Fantastic how we've allowed ourselves to become convinced that truthful statements about people who do us harm is hateful! I wonder how that idea was worked into our culture...maybe media had something to do with it?
I invite any reader on this board to do some investigation for themselves--that way there's no "hate" material to offend. Go spend an hour or 2 and discover for yourselves who owns and operates American media. Don't take my word for it, don't take anybody else's word for it--motivate yourself!
These are facts. FACTS. And I am NOT sorry if it offends you.
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Chris Smith (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 3 comments)
on Monday, January 8, 2007 at 6:23:15 PM
I'm not ignoring your "information" I'm disproving it and thereby discounting it. You seem to believe ALL Jews engage in media manipulation? That just because a corrupt media figure is Jewish means all Jews are corrupt?? No logic there.
If there is just one Jew in the media who isn't corrupt, or one non-Jew in media who IS corrupt, your statement is disproven. This should be easy.
What about Mike Bloomberg, Stephen Spielberg - powerful and popular Jewish media figures who support various humanitarian causes. What about Rick Rubin?
Then corrupt non-Jews in media: How about Silvio Berlusconi, Serge Dassault, Jesús de Polanco, Wm. Randolph Hearst, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity?
You must know the majority of Jews across the world, including the most religious Jews have nothing to do with media, or media manipulation. In fact, the many Jewish media moguls who might be considered corrupt are hardly religious, perhaps even non-practicing - where are their yarmulkas?
It is not Judaism, it is immorality. Just in case you are unclear: there are Jews who are not corrupt and there are corrupt people who are not Jews. You owe it to logic to look at another factor besides Judaism to identify the problem. I would suggest capitalist greed, something ALL corrupt media manipulators DO have in common.
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Gustav Wynn (45 articles, 32 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 215 comments)
on Monday, January 8, 2007 at 10:53:49 PM
I appreciate your comments but allow me to again show you how your statements do not hold up to the tenets of basic logic. I assume a fair way to summarize your argument is that "The Jews control the media, they are manipulating us and causing us harm".
I see you reduced your number of the corrupt Jews in media from 100% to 99%. However you have no citation to a scientific survey that demonstrates this or any other number as accurate, making it nothing but fiction of your own invention, bent by will and showing a racist bias and I'll elaborate on how.
I'll grant you that there are a high number of Jews who work in the media, it's not unusual or wrong for a particular race to have a high concentration in one profession. Historically there have been a lot of Irish cops, Middle Eastern cab drivers, Korean greengrocers or Romanian fortune tellers. This is neither here nor there, it's just a proclivity for a race to be close knit, keep traditions going, be part of family or friends' businesses or pool resources. Despite some stereotypes, there is no inherent harm in this.
Jews came to the US as migrants like anyone else, often shying from physical labor to become vendors, merchants and manufacturers. It's safe to say they emphasized education and upward mobility to their young, taking much pride in a grown child becoming a professional, such as a doctor or lawyer. Again there is nothing inherently wrong with this - you wouldn't begrudge any race of people the same opportunity in America to make their lives anything they wanted, as long as they weren't hurting anyone else.
Now comes the question of whether Jews operate in a manner detrimental to others, taking advantage of their positions to exert bias in promoting the religion or culture of Judaism. The answer to this is yes and no. That is, some surely do but others do not. Surely the Jewish Forward does, and unabashedly, as a newspaper by and for Jews, just like Ebony, Jet or BET does for Blacks, the Irish Echo does for Irish and Al Jazeera TV does for Muslims. It's often a fine balance, supporting your own kind and seeing how that affects those who are not your kind. For example a scholarship for Eskimos is already discriminatory to non-Eskimos. Do these culture-oriented media have a bias that can be considered wholesale corruption of the entire company and everyone that works there? No - the devil is in the details and each report, author and incident must be weighed on it's own merits.
The same goes for CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, Fox, Newsweek, Time, US News, AP, Reuters and others in the so-called "mainstream media" - they have reports that are biased and reports that aren't. Therefore they cannot be broad brushed. Ironically, both the left and right complain about the mainstream media simultaneously claiming bias against their side. Obviously, it varies depending on the report and who wrote it, and whose ox is being gored. The NY Times and CBS are accused of left-leaning, but almost any liberal or progressive would disagree, claiming they do not go nearly far enough. Obviously, as large corporations with business in front of Congress, they have "skin in the game".
Logically, your "alarm" due to an inordinate amount of Jews in the media is useless without proving that there is systematic bias and abuse. Clearly the most biased of the large media is Fox. I say they should be boycotted and removed but not because there are Jews working there, because they are yellow journalists. CNN also has turned a largely blind eye to Bush's failures in past years. Looking at his disapproval ratings, it's clear there is bias in coverage. I personally know a CNN employee who tells me coverage of Bush's failures has been suppressed for years. All of these media are compromised in some way. The best bet for to be properly informed is to use a variety of sources, understanding that no individual source by itself is complete. This said, BBC, PBS and NPR to me most closely resemble responsible journalism.
There are "many" Jews in the media, including a number of the most rich and powerful media moguls who are also corrupt. But I am asserting it's NOT due to their Jewish background, rather it's their exact the opposite, their LACK of ethics that causes this, even if they steer money to "Jewish" causes.
The Jewish religion as I understand it preaches basic morality, for example via the Ten Commandments, just as Christianity and Islam do. Manipulating a news story is a direct example of harming "thy neighbor" and therefore is blatantly antithetical to the most popular, most visible doctrines of Judaism. Therefore, if a powerful Jewish mogul does manipulate readers, he is a renegade Jew, just like radical Islamists who bomb people in the name of Allah or warmongering Christians who fund death squads, sell WMD to dictators or torture people have strayed from the stated dictates of their religions.
To criticize these moguls is fair, but not as Jews - this does a disservice to the vast majority of Jews the world over who haven't harmed anyone. The number of Jews in the media who also happen to be corrupt is a tiny fraction of the total number of Jews in the world, therefore your statements are false, and not by a little, by a lot. In fairness to these millions of peaceful, moral, law-abiding Jews, you have to figure out a better way to state your argument.
Another pitfall would be to consider those corrupt media moguls listed on your web link as pro-Israeli - Israel itself and Jews everywhere are sharply divided, embroiled in a massive debate of it's own conscious, with a huge portion of Israelis taking the position that their own government is out of control, a violent, imperialist regime treating Palestinians and others unfairly. So when you get right down to it, even using the term pro-Israeli is unfair to the millions of Israelis who disagree with the policies of the Israeli government and the various militant factions that contribute to the violence and strife in the region.
Logic also requires us to acknowledge that being a corrupt media mogul is nothing exclusive to Jews - as we've already visited, we see this in the plurality of media magnates from all corners of the globe including not only Goebbels, Berlusconi, Moon and their ilk, but specifically the the long history of blasphemous Christian broadcasters like Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Jones, and the recently disgraced Ted Haggard, the singularly most powerful voice in the Evangelical right before his dishonesty was laid bare.
Since we can no longer use the term Jew, or pro-Israeli to logically classify the corrupt media moguls who manipulate our people, we need to look for another term. The interconnected subsets of race, gender, class, geography, age, religion, and political affiliation can carve groups up in various ways. Yet the only descriptions that hold true under any and all conditions for these media manipulators is the fact that they are UNETHICAL. Regardless of whether they are defiling Christianity, Judaisim, Islam or American common law, media manipulation is an immoral act which can be committed by any race, creed or culture. People should be judged not by their race but by the content of the character.
An example of this is your own attempt to associate "Jews" with "pedophilia", pointing out mentions of pedophelia in the talmud. But some of what we call pedophelia today was commonplace not only in ancient Judaism, but almost every other ancient culture the world over. Not only did marauders of every stripe and variety (including Huns, Vikings and Crusading Knights) kidnap and rape underage vicitms, many families themselves sold their young daughters off in exchange for dowries as a matter of course. It's still done today in the third world, showing us how we all lived before evolving into a more enlightened civilization.
In modern times, no race or nationality is free from pedophiles but I've never seen evidence of any systematic pedophilia from any particular cultural or religious group except for Nambla and the Catholic church which has endured decades of embarrassing scandals regarding the behavior of rogue practitioners and subsequent cover ups sanctioned by church leadership. Remember, as recently as the mid-70s, child pornography was legal in the U.S. and the legal age of consent was lower almost everywhere, so today's attitudes are unique in history.
The idea of the ancient talmud condoning sex with 3-year olds is quite shocking. I've never heard a credible source confirm an authentic talmud contains this language but I understand this to be your belief as fed to you, and will only point out that it is illogical to accuse modern Jews of engaging in or condoning pedophelia by projected "association". If I said all Christians were murderous rapists because the Crusaders were, you might see a similar flaw in this logic. In other words, one can only be a pedophile if one is actually a pedophile. It's illogical and manipulative to suggest that today's Jews engage in pedophelia unless you have separate corroboration. Just as there are numerous and conflicting versions of the bible, the talmud has been edited by Popes, destroyed and rewritten various times, and translated from ancient tongues leaving hotly contested debate. But even if it were true about the one version of the talmud you have supposedly uncovered, no where do we see Jews anywhere openly defending pedophelia in any way today. Therefore your assertion is a stretch, a manipulative association based on disputed evidence. Though you have your own right to believe it, I'd look to a few objective sources of documentation other then racist websites!
Your complaints about corrupt Jews in the media are exaggerated and unfounded under the scrutiny of logic. You cannot talk of "lie after lie" without specifics. Who lied in the media, and when? I am all ears. The guilty parties in the lies leading to the Iraq war have been right wing Christians for the most part, as have the liars and manipulators that led us into Vietnam. There is solid proof of the president, vice president and his cabinet lying and blatantly fabricating propaganda, passing it off as news and were caught red handed - on the most grave issues possible. If you are concerned about lies in the media, where do you prioritize these very important lies?
You need to furnish proof about the Jews being anything more a part of the "unimaginable evil" that infects our media then any other race, and especially because they are such a large part of the industry. I am open to hearing specifics from credible sources.
To summarize, I've reminded readers that there are scores of responsible, ethical Jewish media moguls (my favorites being Jon Stewart and Mel Brooks). Spielberg's "Munich" was a very well balanced portrayal of the deadly Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
I've also shown there are many corrupt non-Jews in the media. If media manipulation is a problem, it must be combatted even handedly otherwise you are as guilty as them, for the news media's greatest crime is lack of objectivity and ethics.
I can appreciate your attempt at a civil, logical intellectual argument supporting your statements. But your lack of evidence, specifics, and links to sites that contain ads for "Prussian Blue" make you look like a racist.
As Oscar Wilde once said, "The truth is rarely pure and never simple".
Jews have the same problem as Christians and Muslims, Israelis the same as Americans and Arabs. We are all people internally divided - we all have major objections to the actions of our governments and so-called leaders, and we disagree on how to treat the least among us and deal with foreigners. But the overwhelmingly vast majority of all races and creeds are law-abiding citizens trying to live in peace and raise families.
by
Gustav Wynn (45 articles, 32 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 215 comments)
on Wednesday, January 10, 2007 at 2:16:44 PM
