OT - 10 steps to fascist police state

Do you really want movies to be made based on their "societal
usefulness"?
...Should stick with the status
quo where pictures of Cho draw viewers, which equates to higher ratings,
which equates to higher ad revenue, which equates to higher salaries for the
executives?...

I don't even know (or care) who "Cho" is. Why? Because I choose what I
watch. Do you? If you don't, that is a problem. But if you do, then
why do you want to choose what =I= and everybody else watches?

Movies about how drugs, violence and promiscuous sex are genuinely bad would
be better than Snoop Dog's Girls Gone Wild extravaganza...

Oh. That's what you want us all to watch? What if we don't =want= to
fill our brains with purple dinosaurs? You want to make movies about
how drugs, violence and promiscuous sex are genuinely bad, go make them.
It's not all that hard. The hard part is forcing people to sit
through them.

Who decides what kind of society we should have?
In reality? The people who make celebrity cult heroes out of Michael
Jackson and Tupac,

No, that misses the mark. In rality, =each= of us, acting individually,
decide what kind of society we have. That includes a society in which
we are permitted to eat red meat and soft boiled eggs, a society in
which we are permitted to jump out of perfectly good airplanes, in which
we are allowed to swim naked in our own back yards, in which we are
allowed to raise our children the way =we= see fit, and not by vote of
the Grand Canonical Ensemble.

If you don't like what you choose to watch, turn off the TV. But if you
don't like what your neighbor watches, why is it your business?

And what if your neighbor doesn't like what =you= watch?

Jose
--
Get high on gasoline: fly an airplane.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

On Tue, 24 Apr 2007 21:37:38 -0400, Jose
wrote in :

If you don't like what you choose to watch, turn off the TV.

And what of the news you'd like to watch, but because it may have a
negative impact on the news media's parent company, it isn't reported?

If you don't like what you choose to watch, turn off the TV.
And what of the news you'd like to watch, but because it may have a
negative impact on the news media's parent company, it isn't reported?

Then watch the news on a different channel.

Actually, the problem isn't so much that the news reporting is
"controlled" by media companies, but rather, that news reporting is
under the entertainment division and not the journalism division.

Who wants to watch real news and actually analyze current events? Yes,
those kinds of people are in the minority. Most people =prefer= to
watch a white SUV drive down the highway.

=That= is the problem. It is us, collectively, who decide what is
profitable to the media companies. I agree that in doing so, we are
handing over the keys to our brains, and at some point it will be too
late. But the power was not siezed by them, it was given to them.
Whoever the "them" turns out to be.

Jose
--
Get high on gasoline: fly an airplane.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

"Jose" wrote in message
.. .

Most people =prefer= to watch a white SUV drive down the highway.

=That= is the problem. It is us, collectively, who decide what is
profitable to the media companies. I agree that in doing so, we are
handing over the keys to our brains, and at some point it will be too
late. But the power was not siezed by them, it was given to them.

That was pretty much my point. WE are society, not the corporations who
control the media.

But millions of people have already "handed over the keys to their brains"
and, the fact is, showing the faces of murderers prompts copycats. There
would be no "copycat killers" if they weren't handed a role model by
somebody selling them ads.

Earlier this month a kid in Oregon fired a rifle into a high school. Later
he said he was inspired by a documentary about Columbine. That's what I'm
getting at: Kids who idolize symbolic antiheroes will emulate them to
capture the same 15 minutes of fame.

http://copycateffect.blogspot.com/20...columbine.html

-c

But millions of people have already "handed over the keys to their brains"
and, the fact is, showing the faces of murderers prompts copycats. There
would be no "copycat killers" if they weren't handed a role model by
somebody selling them ads.

Earlier this month a kid in Oregon fired a rifle into a high school. Later
he said he was inspired by a documentary about Columbine. That's what I'm
getting at: Kids who idolize symbolic antiheroes will emulate them to
capture the same 15 minutes of fame.

I see it the other way around. People are responsible for their own
actions. If they have handed over the keys to their brains, they are
responsible for the result. (Despite the fact that we have to live with
it). But handing over the keys to our brains is exactly what you seem
to be proposing.

Your theme seems to be that we can't do it (properly) ourselves, because
we are making "bad" choices. Who is going to decide what's a bad
choice? Government? The Pope? The PTA? The League of Parents of
Small Children? Gatt himself? We already have too much meddling in our
private lives by the superstitious, the power hungry, the righteous, the
misguided, and the stupid.

The scariest video I've ever seen was a short clip about kidnapping. A
car drives up to a kid and asks where Mulberry street is. The kid goes
up to the car to answer, and inside of a few seconds the back door
opens, somebody snatches the kid, and the car drives away.

What was scary was not that kidnapping is so easy, but rather, the
message which followed, which was that kids should run screaming if
somebody drives up and asks directions. It turns kids into assholes who
are so disconnected from society and so mistrusting of those around that
they will grow up into people who would think nothing of firing a rifle
into a crowd at school.

That was twenty years ago. Those kids have grown up now.

Jose
--
Get high on gasoline: fly an airplane.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Jose wrote:

The scariest video I've ever seen was a short clip about kidnapping. A car
drives up to a kid and asks where Mulberry street is. The kid
goes up to the car to answer, and inside of a few seconds the back
door opens, somebody snatches the kid, and the car drives away.

What was scary was not that kidnapping is so easy, but rather, the
message which followed, which was that kids should run screaming if
somebody drives up and asks directions. It turns kids into assholes
who are so disconnected from society and so mistrusting of those
around that they will grow up into people who would think nothing of
firing a rifle into a crowd at school.

That was twenty years ago. Those kids have grown up now.

Jose

My wife was in Junior League a few years back and they do a project for 5
year old kids called Safety Town. They work with them on every thing from
how to cross the street to how to not talk to strangers. Near the end of
this WEEK of training I was asked to walk into the play ground looking for
my dog that I lost and see if the kids can put what they learned about not
talking with or going away with strangers to practical use.

I was able to get every single one of the 30 or so kids to walk off with me.
Scared the crap out of me and the parents that were watching the kids from
inside the building.

Near the end of
this WEEK of training I was asked to walk into the play ground looking for
my dog that I lost and see if the kids can put what they learned about not
talking with or going away with strangers to practical use.

I was able to get every single one of the 30 or so kids to walk off with me.
Scared the crap out of me and the parents that were watching the kids from
inside the building.

What would you have them do? Refuse to talk to you and run screaming?
What kind of adults would they turn into?

We get the kind of society we create.

Yes, there are dangers, yes children need to be taught how to
discriminate between good people and bad people (even grownups have a
hard time with that), and yes, "my child" is different. But there is a
real societal cost to this kind of training, which could easily be far
worse, and far harder to undo (because it's a far longer term), than
watching movies without purple dinosaurs.

Jose
--
Get high on gasoline: fly an airplane.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

"Gig 601XL Builder" wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net wrote in message
...

My wife was in Junior League a few years back and they do a project for 5
year old kids called Safety Town. They work with them on every thing from
how to cross the street to how to not talk to strangers. Near the end of
this WEEK of training I was asked to walk into the play ground looking for
my dog that I lost and see if the kids can put what they learned about not
talking with or going away with strangers to practical use.

I was able to get every single one of the 30 or so kids to walk off with
me. Scared the crap out of me and the parents that were watching the kids
from inside the building.

Scary!

Similarly, as adults we have received years of education and experience in
history and political science but are still willing to trust those we know
are liars because they are the tallest or the most photogenic. Our leaders
should have more qualifications that a simple 'least worst'.

Reminds me of Pogo, "We have seen the enemy and it is us."

On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 09:17:04 -0400, Jose
wrote in :

If you don't like what you choose to watch, turn off the TV.
And what of the news you'd like to watch, but because it may have a
negative impact on the news media's parent company, it isn't reported?

Then watch the news on a different channel.

Actually, the problem isn't so much that the news reporting is
"controlled" by media companies, but rather, that news reporting is
under the entertainment division and not the journalism division.

Actually, the problem is that the communications industry is
controlled by only a handful of large corporations, and thus what gets
reported must not taint the image of any of their holdings.

Who wants to watch real news and actually analyze current events? Yes,
those kinds of people are in the minority. Most people =prefer= to
watch a white SUV drive down the highway.

=That= is the problem. It is us, collectively, who decide what is
profitable to the media companies.

Please explain how the audience can decide on having news of which
they are unaware reported.

I agree that in doing so, we are
handing over the keys to our brains, and at some point it will be too
late.

That point has arrived.

But the power was not siezed by them, it was given to them.

Actually both are true.

Whoever the "them" turns out to be.

Rupert Murdock, Sony, ClearChannel, TimeWarner, ...

Actually, the problem is that the communications industry is
controlled by only a handful of large corporations, and thus what gets
reported must not taint the image of any of their holdings.

There are plenty of uncontrolled blogs. While they are also unvetted,
some would say that's a good thing. I agree that big corporations have
an unhealthy influence on our perceptions, but it is not all that well
hidden.

Please explain how the audience can decide on having news of which
they are unaware reported.

By choosing which channels to watch. By choosing channels that do =not=
feature the lastest sex scandal or UFO visitation. By subscribing to
significant intellectual communications rather than fluff. They'll get
the message. Right now the message is that we want bread and circuses.
So, that's what they dish out.

Jose
--
Get high on gasoline: fly an airplane.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.