Most every liberal blog has covered this ABC mini-series fiasco pretty extensively. Why? Because we know how much influence it’ll have. We’ve all been scared shitless this thing will warp the minds of millions of Americans and their children, many of whom do or will vote.
Think of how thoroughly fucked up that is for a moment.
Of course children are susceptible to propaganda; they can’t be expected to differentiate between good and bad sources yet. However, educational materials giant Scholastic can, and they were more than happy to promote study materials to 25,000 teachers to help them push a mini-series in the classroom. Forget whether they clean up the materials or not — we’ve entered an era where screenplays and moments of actorly improvisation are the new historical texts. Kids have access to all kinds of input we can’t control, but if a teacher is pushing something, most kids are pretty darn likely to treat it as legit, no matter how many times s/he sent you to the office for shooting spitballs at Jenny Eller.
Arguably, though, that’s not even the most distressing part. When you muse on your fears about the mini-series, don’t you imagine millions of American adults watching this thing and taking it all in as fact? And don’t you imagine that they would deeply and permanently absorb the show’s fallacies as much as the other tropes they’ve been fed, like the idea that Gore claimed he invented the internet or that Hillary has a hairy pair?
I live in a country where everyone gasbags about their rights and freedoms but hates the idea of talking or thinking about politics. It’s even been criminalized in speech. Both sides of the aisle constantly fling the accusation that someone is “being political” or “playing politics” or “using something for political gain” or “politicizing something,” and most of the time Americans react to that like someone pissed in their coffee. How dare someone link an event or idea to a political agenda or philosophy such that it becomes part of a larger tapestry of events and beliefs! How dare I be forced to place a tragedy or fear or war into a broader context that supposedly contains a reminder of the goals and limitations I want for my government! Really, that’s so rude.
Even in your personal life, how many times have Americans around you groaned about hearing you argue about something “political” like the death penalty or why we’re in Iraq? People whine that they work so hard that they can’t bear to think outside their jobs; middle-class folks just want a cold one and a not-too-awful rerun of Two-and-a-Half Men to ease them to sleep so they can continue to live in their bubble world of SUV commutes. When political issues can’t be avoided, most Americans expect to be spoonfed the smoothest and creamiest of ideas, uncomplicated by any lumps on which they might have to chew. They just want to support our troops and president in a time of war, believe abortion is murder because it’s a baby, and that Republicans are still the Small Government party.
The only way to get politics to middle America is to trick them into watching it. Feed them a gripping story with dramatic music and witty (but not too witty so as to make you feel dumb) rejoinders, and you can sucker them into believing anything. That’s what’s so disturbing about the looming broadcast of this mini-series: that it will work.
We’ve lost a huge swath of this country to the machine. They absorb whatever corporate drivel the newly consolidated media monsters air. Most of these companies no longer even pretend to play at objectivity anymore, but Americans still gulp down their upchuck. They think, “ABC wouldn’t lie, that’s just stupid.” Actually, it probably won’t even occur to them that a network might lie, so they’ll never even ask the question. Phrases like “corporate drivel” make you sound like a whacko hippie conspiracist to these people, because the idea that media conglomerates have and push an agenda that sacrifices the rights of the viewer to the altar of the company’s pocketbook sounds like crazy talk to them.
There were always kids in school who used to give someone crap just for getting good grades. Unfortunately, the shame of using your mental faculties has become ingrained in many Americans, and now the fuckwits in giant leather chairs who throw around phrases like “leveraging market share” prey on that. So do the ministers and Big Church leaders. So does the Bush administration.
Even if we win this one shitty little battle over ABC’s latest mockery of truth, how can we stop the endless stream of these distortions that will continue to come afterwards? If people refuse to hear about what’s wrong, I fail to see how we can get through to them. The monsters control the message, and unless people desire an alternative, we’ll be powerless to deliver one that competes with the big boys.
Americans treat critical thinking like a pox. Unfortunately, the real disease is willful ignorance. Based on how much damage we believe “Path to 9/11″ can do, and how many more times we can expect offerings like it in the future, I’m worried it might be terminal.
Yeah, and because I like talking about politics and discussing ideas, I’m too “fixiated”. Nevermind the fact that my friends babble on about planes for hours on end (not that I don’t enjoy that) or D&D for DAYS (not that I don’t enjoy that as well) I mention something like “The push to privitize ATC is retarded” and I”M the one that’s too fixated.
You’d think these people’d know better.
The worst part, for me at least, is how many people will pat themselves on their own backs and congratulate themselves for watching the movie and educating themselves.
One year when I was teacher, our vice-principal forced us to teach penmenship (despite the burning importance of TAKS testing). Most kids didn’t know or use cursive and while this is a bit strange I didn’t rate it as that important considering everything else they didn’t know.
Anyway, as a bellringer lesson I printed a passage about the 2000 elections (don’t remember from where, probably some blog.) for them to practice their cursive. This was probably the first time most of them had ever really heard about the sheninagans that went on and they were stunned. We talked about it for the rest of the week. heh. Penmenship.
For once, I’m hoping TLC or Discovery will realize how much money there is to be made in a *counter-documentary and stir up a challenge with this one…It won’t reach everyone and probably won’t be too great, but hey, something is something.
I’m in love: idiocracy and gasbags as verb. Thank you!
BTW, i’ve been down and out with bursitis from too much work, so I’ve been reading this book about this issue: what a criticial social theory is, what kind of politics it entails, what kind of educative (consciousness raising) it requires to change society. However, the author talks about the limits to educative change — very dry stuff, but logically organized. I’d forgotten how good the ideas are in this book; they just need to be made more practical — in a What’s Wrong with Kansas kind of way. I wish I had less pain and more time because I think you’d really like the ideas in this book — where he lays out what it is that gets in the way of consciousness raising — and how we might address that.
There were always kids in school who used to give someone crap just for getting good grades. Unfortunately, the shame of using your mental faculties has become ingrained in many Americans, and now the fuckwits in giant leather chairs who throw around phrases like “leveraging market share” prey on that. So do the ministers and Big Church leaders. So does the Bush administration.
’bout time someone else just said it because I’m damn tired of saying it all by myself. I grew up in a family where political discussion and argument was de rigeour (sp) and to not demonstrate critical thinking skills was considered a deficit worthy of serious shaming.
Then I become an adult and find that such is the polar opposite of most of America.
By the way, most people in other countries love political discussion and love a good debate, such as our friends to the south of us.
I have pretty much given up on the idea that a slow change by information will have any effect. I think the US needs to divide into smaller ethnic/cultural self governing enclaves where leadership and participation are direct and local. I truly believe we are in a fascist state now, we (the white middle class majority, of which I am a member only by skin color) just haven’t suffered the real oppression yet to come. But it will come, then we’ll see who wants to think.
“Unfortunately, the real disease is willful ignorance.”
Spot on.
“People whine that they work so hard that they can’t bear to think outside their jobs;”
I think you gloss over this one too easily; it’s actually, in many cases, a fairly valid opinion.
I’m in a weird situation, in that I’m fairly poor, but I have wealthy relatives who can help me out if things start to go too horribly.
But I have worked and lived with a lot of poor people, people who would take a serious hit if they didn’t work eleven hour days every week.
Most of these people had kids, too.
There’s a level where you’re poor enough that most of your waking hours involve either hard work or immediate crises, and at some point you have to prioritise.
On the one hand, if you don’t find some extra money to fix the heater, you’ll either freeze or starve, starting right now. If you don’t find a way to make your influence known on the issue of the Iraq war, the nation will greatly suffer in some indeterminate way at some point a few years down the road. You have one hour to solve one or both of these crises. Which one are you going to choose.
Me, I tend to take a conspiratorial view of things, that this is just another way the man keeps us down, just like the taboo on political argument.
What pisses me off the most is that it doesn’t even make any sense for political argument to be taboo.
I mean, say I have a difference of opinion and we disagree on something political. There are two possible scenarios.
1) My viewpoints are fairly trivial and do not repreent a particularly great moral breach. If this is the case, then why should you be so angry about them that basic social interactions break down.
2) My viewpoints are extreme and dangerous (I feel that Muslims should be rounded up and put into camps, or that the American government should be overthrown and christianity outlawed, or whatever), in which case, wouldn’t you want to know about them, so you could put a stop to them, either by convincing me I’m wrong or aiding groups that oppose me?
I mean, this taboo on talking politics is like saying, “I couldn’t be friends with you if you were a murderer, therefore, I won’t ask you why I always see you wearing a mask of blood-drenched human skin”.
It pisses me off.
Great post, these are the people, willfully ignorant and so weirdly defensive that make my head explode:
…most of the time Americans react to that like someone pissed in their coffee. How dare someone link an event or idea to a political agenda or philosophy such that it becomes part of a larger tapestry of events and beliefs! How dare I be forced to place a tragedy or fear or war into a broader context that supposedly contains a reminder of the goals and limitations I want for my government! Really, that’s so rude.
It’s all in your head, they say. Fabulist, you’ve seen too many movies. As if imagination is the problem, and not a failure of imagination coupled with an ahistorical and unreflective jingoism. How do people plan for anything *not right now* if they’re so averse to speculating on possibilities, consequences, remembering what went wrong before and learning from their errors and projecting into the future in order to foresee likely unintended outcomes? To be so disconnected and unaware is to be a zombie, whose one sign of life is the defensiveness. I think getting through to someone like that starts with learning what it is they’re trying to protect. Good luck!