Bill Moyers: The Weapons of Mass Distraction

[marmar]

https://vimeo.com/70162196


Marty Kaplan on the Weapons of Mass Distraction
July 12, 2013


Across the world — Greece, Spain, Brazil, Egypt — citizens are turning angrily to their governments to demand economic fair play and equality. But here in America, with few exceptions, the streets and airwaves remain relatively silent. In a country as rich and powerful as America, why is there so little outcry about the ever-increasing, deliberate divide between the very wealthy and everyone else?

Media scholar Marty Kaplan points to a number of forces keeping these issues and affected citizens in the dark — especially our well-fed appetite for media distraction.

“We have unemployment and hunger and crumbling infrastructure and a tax system out of whack and a corrupt political system — why are we not taking to the streets?” Kaplan asks Bill. “I suspect among your viewers, there are people who are outraged and want to be at the barricades. The problem is that we have been taught to be helpless and jaded rather than to feel that we are empowered and can make a difference.”

An award-winning columnist and head of the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California, Kaplan also talks about the appropriate role of journalists as advocates for truth.


http://billmoyers.com/segment/marty-kaplan-on-the-weapons-of-mass-distraction/

[chervilant]

1. Kaplan's "analysis" of why US citizens

aren't "taking to the streets" is both simplistic and 'victim-blaming.' The vast majority of US citizens live paycheck to paycheck, and cannot afford to take chances with their jobs. Those who would like to protest may still be convinced their votes matter.

And, therein lies the biggest monkey wrench: most of us have been trained to believe the media (especially television), which feeds us carefully crafted messages of 'slow, but steady economic recovery,' and pointedly ignores or under-reports protests--or any information that contradicts the messages proffered by the corporate megalomaniacs who've usurped our media, our politics AND our global economy.

I hope Kaplan is not making the same mistake as the corporate megs: underestimating the Hoi Polloi. We are networking, we are organizing, and some of us are already out in the streets.

[burnodo]

2. K&R

[Enrique]

3. this is fantastic

i'm at the part where he responds to David Gregory citing "some lawmakers say.." by saying matter-of-factly, "some lawmakers are morons." I had to pause the video and come here to

[PATRICK]

4. Personal observation

On picket or demonstration lines some of the relaxed joking shows that many make a nostalgic comparison of there activities to the "Sixties". This is a far far cry from understanding even that reference. probably this occurs at a lot of other rallies where many first timers try to make a pleasant tie in. While that was a long time and many if not most the people joking about it never participated in it. Sort of a look at us we're Woodstock celebration.

NPR is part of that deeper culture. They often lead you to the well of human misery, let you peer in, feel something or other, but NEVER not once a clue that reaction leading to action is ever a human conception, unless it is part of the story. Action usually centers on victimology, coping, conversation, wondering why and other safe cloud gazing, cud chewing activities of anxiety and outrage dampening. Then of course, with equal aplomb and sensitivity they have the monsters on, and the pundit variety too to more than match Moyers in audience reach.

I am sure Rome itself was very expert in controlling its populace. Caesar was of that faction that used the mobs to gain absolute power. THAT was supposed to be fundamental fear of our Founding Fathers, confirmed maybe by the form of the French Revolution. Chaos and those who use chaos.

Yet the real pathos similar maybe to the failure of the "mobs" of citizens and armies post WWI to heave over a failed system, is that the Caesar model lives on, revolutions usually peter out.

We had a fairly healthy anti-Iraq war demonstration simply squelched by MSM active countering from spreading. From containing, ignoring, discounting it moved to fait accompli. The Viet nam War upheavals
bothered lawmakers a lot- as the war bled and spread on to finally giving up the draft, then longer.

The tiny Tea Party sideshow, those playful crank Ringwraiths waving red plastic light sabers, were financed and anointed as a MOVEMENT, given immense play and actual political power. A pre-emptive insult to any type of popular or just critique of the system. I am sure these Libertarian fogies as the misfit Christian Coalition hypocrites before them appreciate the attention, the money and power and feudal change showered around them. No tear gas night sticks or government checks to worry them.

Moyers himself reminds us we are, especially at the top, an idiocracy, and that is how everything is run. The stakes are always raised in the game so that no movement can stop or leave any stone unturned to reverse the legitimization of insanity. If any movement does or has, it settles back to what we have now, chews the cud too slowly to clear the weeds. The same as when the demonstrations stop, the new government or union morphs into the old and the bastards learn better tactics in perfect freedom
to use them.

[xchrom]

5. du rec.

[cali]

6. a great explanation

sad but true. k&r