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"A
few naysayers like to disparage our system of mass communications.
Yet overall, modern free-enterprise media outlets are the best that money
can buy."
"The global village is being wired with fiber optics; the power to
consume is now in the hands of billions."
"For the 21st century, from one shining sea to another, a manifest
corporate destiny is upon us."
"Every
priceless moment, as MasterCard commercials have often reminded us,
somehow seems to coincide with financial expenditures."
"To
better live in a society that treasures individuality, you can
learn how to be more in step with everyone else who matters."
"Contrived
narratives that provide maximum profits can have little to do with
authentic experience."
"As
Marshall McLuhan observed, 'All media exist to invest our lives with
artificial perceptions and arbitrary values.'"
"Media
consumers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your brains."
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My fellow American media consumers:
At a time when news cycles bring us such portentous events as the
remarkable wedding of Britney Spears, the advent of Michael
Jackson’s
actual trial proceedings and the start of the Democratic presidential
primaries, it is time to reflect upon the state of the media union.
The achievements are everywhere to be seen and heard.
On more than a thousand radio stations owned by the Clear Channel
conglomerate, the programming quality is as reliable as a Big Mac.
In cities and towns across the nation, an array of outspoken radio
talk-show hosts can be depended on to run the gamut from the mushy
center
to the far right.
Television provides a wide variety of homogenized offerings. With
truly impressive (production) values, the major
networks embody a consummate multiplicity of
sameness, with truncated imagination and consolidated
ownership. These days, there’s a captivatingly
unadventurous cable channel for virtually
every niche market.
A few naysayers like to disparage our system of mass communications.
Yet overall, modern free-enterprise media outlets are the best that money
can buy.
In 2004, those who scoff at the transcendent future of new media
technologies are like those who greeted television several decades
ago
with cries of “idiot box” and “vast wasteland.” The cynics failed to trust
those who would be enriched by the emerging medium.
Today, let us not be bound by old concepts of national boundaries.
The global village is being wired with fiber
optics; the power to consume is now in the hands
of billions.
In an era of international understanding -- when everyone from Peoria
to Belgrade to Beijing knows the meaning of golden arches or a Nike-brand
swoosh -- commercial expression has become a kind of global lexicon
in a language gradually redefining what it means
to be human. For the 21st century, from one
shining sea to another, a manifest corporate destiny is
upon us.
Leaving no pixel unturned, entrepreneurial genius has found endless
ways to innovate on behalf of the eternal quest for more capital. Just as
the highest monetary achievers among us have learned to seem to do good
while doing extraordinarily well for themselves, the TV networks
teach us that the most pristine values are to be
achieved by, not coincidentally, spending money.
Every priceless moment, as MasterCard commercials have
often reminded us, somehow seems to coincide with financial
expenditures.
To better live in a society that treasures individuality, you can
learn how to be more in step with everyone else
who matters. Glancing at a TV screen for
scarcely more than a second, you have the potential to absorb
the latest data from key stock-market indicators as well as glimpse
snippets of headlines crawling across the bottom of the screen,
absorb computer-generated graphics, listen to
voices, hear background music -- and, of course,
keep an eye on the big picture.
But with all media privileges, my fellow American consumers, come
responsibilities. Some technologies are being abused to bypass commercials
on television, suppress pop-up ads on line and resist legitimate
efforts by sponsors to replace your unduly
iconoclastic sense of reality with lucrative
facades.
Yet let us be candid. The legends of corporate-driven community, laid
down by conventions of commerce and politics, are suitable for compliance
with never-never lands of public pretense. Contrived narratives
that provide maximum profits can have little to
do with authentic experience. To guide the
expenditures of time and resources for enhancement of cash
flow, our powerful institutions must function as arbiters of social
meaning.
First among equals of those institutions are the powerhouses of mass
media. As Marshall McLuhan observed, "All media exist to invest our lives
with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values."
These are revolutionary times, media outlets often remind us. All
over the planet, mass marketing boosts cultural
products to digitize the
future. In the binary mode, you’re either with it or you’re not. Media
consumers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your brains.
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