A professor of mine used to talk about living promiscuously. And he didn't mean sex. Ok, well not just sex. Actually the specific context was Brett in
The Sun Also Rises (my favorite book ever). She does whatever the hell she wants and then takes a bath to wash off any guilt.
Why do people live promiscuously? And so many of them do. Maybe some of us do too, occasionally. I'm sure I do, even if I don't mean to. No one is perfect. But why do some people do this all the time?
It's always about whatever feels good, right now. Is this why the quality of our mainstream newstainment is so poor?
UPDATE: I forgot about this but it is probably the most relevant point to make here - Fake TV News - remember VNRs anyone? Great site here on them.
I admit - I am sheltered from the "normal" news. I don't have a TV, and I get my news from dKos. I'll never been the Kossack who breaks the story first. Rather, I come here to read the story as soon as another Kossack finds it and posts it here with an eloquent analysis. We all contribute different things... that's one thing that I appreciate from others who post here.
But right now I'm sitting in an airport, where there is trash on TV. Actually, they are doing a story right now that I find important. They are talking about endangered species and also some invasive lizard species in Hawaii that's eating all the other lizards. But why don't they tell us what we can do about it?
Why don't they make the connection between polar bears drowning and global warming? They don't say that your SUV is contributing to the polar bears' declining population. Nope, they just say the polar bear population is down. Then we have permission to go "Oh that's sad... too bad I can't do anything."
Who should make the change? Scientists? Governments? Eskimos? Anyone but us. Or maybe there's just nothing we can do about it. Species go extinct every day. What if it's just a normal occurrence in nature and it has nothing to do with us?
Randi Rhodes says it best. The news doesn't want their ad dollars pulled. It's always like that. If you want to keep your advertising money, don't say anything that might offend a car company, pharmaceutical company, etc etc, just don't make waves.
Back to my original point - who wants to know that their SUV kills the polar bears? Stephen Colbert said it: It's depressing!
Our society is in cahoots with big business. We don't want to hear the news, they don't want us to hear the news. Voila! No news.
God forbid they made one penny less because we found out what they were really up to, and god forbid we feel guilty about our own lives.
Drive your Hummer (or my favorite "going for a drive" i.e. wasting gas for fun), watch some half-assed version of the news, maybe catch a reality TV show or two, and then wash it all off with a shower. That's living promiscuously.
These aren't revelations. Frustrations, yes. New ideas, no.
Another English teacher who made an impression on me - this time one from high school, not college - talked about the Dockers ads. He said men need to be hit in the face with whatever you want them to know. The Docker's slogan is "Nice pants." Clean and simple. You watch the commercial and you think "Those are nice pants."
People don't always make the connection. Is it fair that the news should help them make the connection? Should the anchors have the ability to reach their hands out of the TV and shake people and yell "THIS ALL HAPPENED BECAUSE YOU VOTED FOR BUSH! THERE IS A CONNECTION!"
If opinion is injected into the news, it's no longer news. It's a pundit show. But with the lack of facts in the news - nonoffensive to viewers and advertisers alike - is that news either? Is it too much to ask that they connect the dotted lines for us? We need to hit people in the face with "Nice pants." Don't leave it up to us to figure out that SUVs kill polar bears. We won't get it. We won't want to.
It feels good to buy new clothes. It feels sad to watch 20/20 report on sweatshops. But it feels worse to learn for absolute certain that your own clothes were made in a Saipan sweatshop. It's no fun to go to the mall if you see a T-shirt and realize that it took 3 pounds of pesticides to produce it and then some indentured servant, more or less, had to sew it for you in a sweatshop. It feels nice to spend $60 on the T-shirt and tell yourself it's high quality and you look good. Or to spend $3 on the T-shirt and tell yourself that you got a deal.
Better yet, don't tell people to never shop and ditch their SUVs. Tell them what the government could or should do about the sweatshops and the SUVs. Maybe we can't get our cars to run on dreams and rainbows, but if we used our technological resources to their maximum capabilities, why couldn't SUVs get 40mpg (or more)? Ethanol and biodiesel have also been kicked around. A solution is out there. Of course, that's offensive to the advertisers... back to square one.
UPDATE: Someone in the comments suggested I am advocating big government. Not necessarily. The government in my city is talking about making the government buildings all run on solar power. That's a smart use of resources - if the entire government did that they would stimulate the economy AND save oil. They keep calling on us to conserve - well set the fucking example! Another thought would be funding scientific research to find a solution to our problem. No one would call that big government.
It's not the news' job to be the morality police. I think if they could do a little more informing and a little less providing us with half-assed entertaining tidbits without offending anyone, that would be a start in the right direction.
Making news non-profit and finding a way to finance them without advertisements is the solution that I find the most appealing. That would decrease the tendency towards sensationalism and mitigate the affects of the advertisers' interests. I'd like to see media reform as part of a progressive platform.