- For most people in the United States, the picture of
events since Sept. 11 has been largely framed by television. When pollsters
with Princeton Survey Research asked "Where have you gotten most of
your news about the attacks?" more than a week later, a whopping 87
percent of adults gave TV as the answer.
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- While newscasts are still apt to be disturbing,
television
is mostly back to normal. Some commercials pay respect to patriotic themes,
and Old Glory continues to get a lot of screen time. But an ultimate
expression
of media normalcy -- the relentless barrage of TV ads -- returned to full
strength after a mid-September hiatus of several days. The one-two punch
of mind-numbing commercials and checked-out entertainment has never packed
more of a wallop than it does now.
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- Overall, the media disconnect is pretty extreme:
Journalists
and a range of commentators have told us that our world changed profoundly
and irreversibly on Sept. 11. Yet the vast majority of what's on television
is in the same old groove.
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- In our society, the one-track momentum of commercialism
has so much velocity that even horrific events don't slow it down for very
long.
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- The corporate-driven locomotives of consumerism keep
barreling ahead. Like the cloying MasterCard commercial with its endless
variations, the messages are slyly contradictory: There are precious things
that money can't buy.
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- So, to fully avail yourself of those precious things,
be sure to buy buy buy.
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- President Bush has stressed that Americans shouldn't
fail to shop, as if pulling out credit cards is a defiant blow against
"the evildoers."
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- Thousands of TV commercials go on their merry way,
oblivious
to dire circumstances outside the calculus of huckstering.
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- The sensuous imagery of a current Jaguar ad includes
a man and woman kissing as the word "wicked" flickers through
sultry jump-cuts.
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- Flashing snippets seem to imitate the Orson Wells film
"Touch of Evil" -- all in the service of selling a high-priced
car, marketed for prestige and sublimation.
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- Such commercials are merely business as usual, but at
a time of extraordinary crisis -- when the yearning for straight talk and
human connection is especially acute -- the customary TV onslaughts ring
more hollow than ever. And while advertisers can't stop treating the public
like gullible children, top government officials can't resist using the
rhetoric of idealism to paper over the huge gaps between pretension and
policy.
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- The president tells us that the tragic events compel
us to engage with our deeper values, that we should hug our kids, actively
treasure our loved ones. On TV news, we see the Pentagon's grainy
computerized-video
abstractions of a far-off war on Afghanistan. Tiny blips and pixels
represent
Afghan individuals who -- with no more links to Osama bin Laden than you
or I -- hugged their loved ones and watched them die.
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- This country's fabled "exceptionalism" -- aided
by the buffers of huge oceans, massive economic clout and military prowess
-- has involved the wishful belief that to be an American is to be exempt
from some basic human vulnerabilities. We're encouraged to assume that
the United States can keep speeding through history without really looking
at grim consequences for some other people on the planet. But they, too,
want to hug their children; they too want to provide their loved ones with
a safe future; they too experience rage that springs from grief and
fear.
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- Particularly in times of crisis, our mass-mediated
democracy
makes us part of a swift marketing loop: The media spin is intense; opinion
polls gauge its effects; the polling results are grist for further media
spin.
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- Among the American public, we're told triumphantly, the
president's favorable ratings -- like the approval numbers for the war
-- are very high. Television has served the White House well.
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- To credulously watch TV is to submit to a numbing
process.
What television offers today, perhaps more than ever, is anesthesia in
the face of apprehension. As a stunned spectator, the body politic is
incessantly
coached as to the implicit limits of sensitivity -- the innocent lives
at home are clearly precious, the innocent lives in Afghanistan nearly
worthless. With impressive high-tech visuals, the TV set offers us
expansive
zones of unreality, swaddled in the comforts of commerce, hermetic
entertainment
and propaganda. If we must watch, it's essential that we recognize what
we're seeing.
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- ___
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- Norman Solomon's latest book is "The Habits
of Highly Deceptive Media." His syndicated column focuses on media
and politics.
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