I've come to the conclusion that there is a great sweeping movement inside the USA to ensure that, at least in appearance, Americans appear to be completely clueless and unaware of even the simplest of important matters. I reached this conclusion several minutes ago when I checked Yahoo's most popular news page and found this:



A "news" story about the completely irrelevant John Edwards admitting that he was banging some tail on the side has been sent as important news more than double the number of times as the story of the beginning of almost certain war beteen Russia and Georgia... a story which at least has the potential to draw this country and much of the world into war.

I truly believe that our nation has become a bunch of babbling, idiotic, and clueless retards vs what we once were. At one time we actually had a clue as a general populace. I don't believe that on the day the Battle of Fort Sumter began, a story about Boss Tweed diddling one of his secretaries would have been bigger news to the American people. I do not believe that when news broke of Austria's reaction to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand hit the news wires that the American press decided instead to headline a story about Rasputin's penis. I would be dismayed to learn that when the story broke in 1937 that the Japanese army had swarmed the Marco Polo bridge and invaded China, the top story in America was about how Edward the VIII and the Dutchess of Windsor had shockingly engaged in heavy petting several weeks before their nuptuals.

So why in the hell have we managed to become so braindead that we have anyone in this country who considers an extramarital affair to be of more signifigance than an incident which could very easily end up being pointed to years from now as the true beginning of either World War III or at the very least the Cold War part deux? Wake up and grow up, America.

I think those listings are in many cases rigged, in much the same way youtube video viewings are bs. There are a lot more aware people than most people think, they just don't seem to be aware of each other ironically. People need to network more, so positive synergies can be brought into being.

Truth is, sex sells. We know the Georgia thing is more important. But America is a country of gossipers. Sex is more important than some trivial war (I meant that sarcastically, by the way). Funny thing is that people are acting so shocked by it. "Oh my God! I can't believe he had an affair!"

Yeah, me either. I honestly can't believe that A POLITICIAN had an affair. I am so truly stunned by this turn of events. *rolls eyes*

Originally posted by Lightmare
I go to earlier today and nobody seems to know or even care about the fighting between Russia and Georgia. Nobody seems to care about the negative effects it could have. All they seem to care about is getting drunk after work and looking forward to the start of football season.

It is as if people are being hypnotized into apathy.

I can understand the getting drunk and watching football thing because at least that's a diversion from stuff of major importance. I honestly believe if we focus on the (real) news of our world 24/7, we'd go stark raving mad. I can even understand talking about the new Batman movie, sports, local interest crap, or even feel good stories like boy scouts raising money for charities or whatever.

What chaps my ass is that the media has become so brazen in their complete apathy towards real news. I just so happened to be stuck at home today watching my kids while my wife had a much deserved day out. The weather here sucked, so I spent my day channel surfing (which is rare as I almost never watch TV unless there's something specific which I'm wanting to watch.) I managed to hit CNN, Headline News, Northwest Cable News, and Fox on half hour intervals trying to get an update on this conflict in Georgia. Every single network lead off their top stories with John Edwards, and CNN & Fox both began them with a line like "...and the story on everybody's lips today..." or "The only news story that anyone seems to be following this morning..." and then their 2nd story was on Bernie Mac's passing (which I will grant them has some importance as anytime a beloved celebrity dies it is of importance to a large number of people who were entertained by them... so I have no beef with that being a "top story") and then they managed to throw in a brief comment about an American being stabbed in China.

I had to bust out my Crackberry to find news about a war with major implications on this country and the rest of the world.

Somehow a paragraph was lost from my opening post in this thread, BTW. It actually seems lik ethe title of the thread is oposite what I posted without that paragraph. Clearly there is a conspiracy in this country against our citizens being aware of the world around them in areas of actual meaning and importance. Our media, for some sick reason, wants us to be focused on gossip and star gazing in Holywood rather than focused on issues which have the potential to affect our lives dramatically. Even with the few "important" issues they do cover, it seems like they ignore them entirely until celebrities start talking about them and people start wondering what their favorite personality is blabbering about. Take global warming... while I do not believe in man driven climate change, I did observe that our media ignored it for the most part until Hollywood started making it a key issue. The same can be said for the war in Iraq, human rights issues in China, etc.

The thing is, I can't figure out when this began. I'm not that damn old (32) and I clearly remember the nightly news covering real news. I remember when you scarcely ever saw anything but the most important and pertinent celebrity NEWS (not gossip) being given some valuable time at the end of the nightly news broadcast. The problem is, I don't remember when things changed. It's like somewhere between the 80's and the mid 90's we went from "War breaks out in the Balkins" being Tom Brokaw's leadoff story to "Michael Jackson's plastic surgeon tells all" being Connie Chung's leadoff story. There used to be a program in the 80's called "Entertainment Tonight" which followed the nightly news and covered all the crap the tabloid crowd gave a crap about but which they never saw on the real news. Does this program even exist anymore, or has it been merged into the regular news to the degree that the show is redundant and no longer needed?

If watching the news 24/7 makes you go mad imagine being a journalist or the editor having to choose the news. Maybe they just don't want to cover too difficult subjects, don't want to bring the bad news because people don't want to hear but instead want "light" news. Whatever gets the most ratings right? And most of the stations do, which might lead to the conclusion people don't want to know about the worlds problems either because they have their own personal problems or want to believe in a dream (there are only a few localized armed conflicts, it's so far away that it's not going to affect me).

But georgia is insignificant, the Edwards story reaches into every household in america. We are the victims of poor economy. Is your spouse's conviction lessened by understanding they are not married to the power rich? News people know this. Plus a good "dirt" story is gripping. Now "stay tuned" to see what his wife's dirt is or what she has to say about it. Not his dirt, her dirt. Political wives always say it's o.k. because money matters the most.

Georgia is a what? A small province seeking world domination? The president there is trying to protect that area from other "pieces of a dream" around that place. Now which news of an impoverished people are you going to pay attention to more theirs or yours?

You seem to forget that now we live in a 24 hour news cycle. Anytime day or night you have hundreds of news sources at your fingers. Takes a lot of non stories to fill that demand.

Well, you get a star and a flag from me.

Not just because I tend to respect your opinions and posts, but because I sincerely agree with you.

While troops are getting killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and everything is being done to escalate wars and tension between countries... The major news networks were talking about B!tchney Queerz's shaven head and custody battles, and what Beyoncee decided to wear to some award show, etc etc.

Entertainment is, apparently, a great escape from knowing what is going on in the real world. We are like children who need babysat, and told what to wear and what we should know about the world.

Stupid internet connection.. This was a double post.


Sorry.

[edit on 13-8-2008 by LostNemesis]

This is something that has been bothering me for quite a while.

I came in to work the other morning and said "Well, how's the war in Georgia going?" I got a blank look. "Hadn't you heard that Russia and Georgia are fighting?" A blanker look, and then "What? How can just one state be fighting another country?" She didn't even know there was a country named Georgia.

If you want to find out if there's anything of importance going on in the world, you almost have to go to a BBC or maybe an Ozzie outlet. (Not that you guys are so much better, it's just that we can {mostly} understand your stuff.)

The magazines and the newspapers and the TV are busily covering entertainment, sports, the stock market, celebrities, and maybe .. if we're lucky ... some real news on page 15 or in section C behind the comics.

I'm not sure, however, that they're entirely to blame. Advertisers are beginning to have a say in the content of the advertising venues, and advertisers always want to be associated with positive, cheerful content.

Another concern for me is our so-called heroes. Who are our heroes, and the heroes of our youth? People who can sing, or lie (act) well, or throw a ball, or knock someone down and keep him there. Where are the scholars? the scientists? the researchers? the leaders? the warriors? the writers?

Yeah. We don't have any. Or at least it seems like we don't have any, no more than we hear about them. A few weeks ago I was talking about this very issue to "real" people, and said "My idea of a hero is not someone who can throw a ball, run fast, or jump high, it's someone like Stephen Hawking."
Half a dozen people immediately asked "Who is Stephen Hawking?"

I rest my case.

Originally posted by Heike
Another concern for me is our so-called heroes. Who are our heroes, and the heroes of our youth?

Call me old school, but my hero has always been my dad. If 10 or 20 years from now I can say that my son & my daughter consider me to be their hero, then I can't think of a greater honor or better vindication for a parent to get.

I think the problem is we have made the word hero synonymous with the word idol, even though they are two entirely different concepts. As a kid growing up when I was playing football I was John Elway, when I played baseball I was Dale Murphy, when I shot hoops I was Larry Bird, and when I was wrestling with my friends I was Randy "Macho Man" Savage. I never would have called any of these guys my heros, though... they were just guys I idolized and had fun pretending to be.

I definitely see what you're getting at with this, but I say it runs alot deeper than even us placing less importance on the stuff that really matters like brains and real accomplishments. I believe it also covers the fact that we have more kids than ever before growing up in shattered homes, many only knowing one parent and never having any interaction whatsoever with their fathers (or in less publicized cases, their mothers). Of course they're going to be looking for a hero! The spot at the head of their family dinner table traditionally reserved for the family hero is empty every night. They just reach out and grab whoever they see as a role model or prominent figure in their life in their dad's absence, usually a sports star, an actor, or a musician.

Originally posted by burdman30ott6

For example, use this as an opportunity to expose the fact that the man is ridiculously wealthy, made his millions off of ambulance chasing,

I still don't understand how people support these ambulance chasing lawyers. All they do is make health care more and more expensive. I wish the ambulances that these jackasses are chasing would slam it in reverse and give them a little more appreciation for what doctors do. But thats just me

and yet HE always talks about this "two Americas" nonsense as if he was part of the disadvantaged he supposedly wants to help.

Totally agree. There is nothing more divisive than claiming a nation as already divided.

Seriously though, what the hell do we expect from a media which churned out 24 hour a day coverage of some dumb whore that overdosed in the Bahamas and the fact that she had no Earthly clue as to who had fathered her child? That entire Anna Nicole Smith business basically drove the last nail into the relevancy coffin of network news in my book.

My god, I had just about forgotten that nightmare until this post. I could not believe the coverage that story got. It was so incredibly rediculous.

There was one thing that was good about that period, and you mentioned it, is that it ultimately showed how shallow the news networks are.



[edit on 13-8-2008 by Cool Hand Luke]

Sensationalism, seems to be ATS. Here is where you get it second.
General beleif is that we should be more concern with death of human beings than.........mondane existence?

No one likes to see real human horror. A dramatic death is hard to come by, censored, to graphic for the public. So the first hand account that would probably gain more interest is censored.

Now one still photo or just words, not the gripping moving picture more close to reality, is all that we must cling to, of the memory of a human being. I think that is more an accepted norm for the shallow minded who's minds aren't developed enough to understand reality.

Well, when it comes to news, I always use this site. To find out these days what is happening in the world, you pretty much have to search for it. The MSM here is just the same. Members here tend to find news and post it, so it saves time searching.

It does seem that the trivial events in celebrity's lives are a distraction from important events. I too often find that people who are fascinated by "what John Edwards did" (etc), have no idea of what is going on as far as important international incidents are concerned.

Great post Burdman, I couldn't agree more with you.

We have turned into a Nation of apathetic, celebrity idolizing wannabes, whose only concern is whats happening in Hollywood or where their favorite team is in the league standings, and it never ceases to amaze me just how un-informed the majority of the North American populace is. It seems if an issue doesn't directly affect an individual immediately, then it isn't a concern, and someone else will deal with it. In my experience, there are very few people I come across in my day-to-day business that can converse, even with the most basic understanding, on any of the major issue happening in todays society, and when I try to inform them about what I feel may be of importance ie- The conflict in Georgia, their response is typically one of disinterest.

WOW rant over, I feel better now

This is my take on "news"...

America has become the epitome of a consumerist society.
Bad news depresses people and they tighten the purse strings.
So the networks true, to their corporate advertisers keep the
bad news to a minimum so the people that watch that pap will
continue to spend, and spend and spend.

Remember when high gas prices was the big news item? All businesses
suffered because of the "fear" psychology generated. Thus, play it safe
and appeal to the prurient interest of the sheep and keep that money spigot
turned on full blast.

It's a brave new world, welcome to the monkey house!!

Thanks for the pity of my fragile mind. I don't want to know that horror story. Where I live the sky is blue and sunny, not dark and grey, smelling of the carbon-monoxide where somebody just died.

Look at 9-11, although we are calling for extensive awareness, the first thoughts were to go on normally.

I need to believe its o.k., this new conflict is paralyzing. You may not have been alive during the 60's cold war but brehznev was convincing in his roll as communist lunatic. Very scary.

Now, I have nothing to base Putin's trust on. So naturally I need something to disavow reality. People like myself believe the hype of Sen. McCarthy because we've lived to this day when those who were suppose to be trusted, should never have been. I think people need normal news, to cling to, especially if they've elected a lunatic of their own.