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His Master's Voice
By David Glenn Cox
It has been six solid months since I stopped watching broadcast or cable TV. At this point I don’t honestly know if I could ever return to the old ways. I was raised in the golden age of television, yet today I am struck by the exploding irony of ever-larger sets with ever-greater definition and yet there is absolutely nothing worth seeing on them.
I still watch programs online though, and have noticed an interesting phenomenon going on. I awoke at 4 AM, and unable to go back to sleep I went online to Justin TV and found a documentary about Sid Barrett and Pink Floyd. That was followed by a documentary about The Yard Birds and then a documentary about the new clinical research into hallucinogens. There were no commercials, no BS, just programming by someone who cared about what they were streaming.
Over the weekend I watched “A Christmas Story” and “It’s a Wonderful Life.” A major TV network had bought the rights to “It’s a Wonderful Life” when they discovered its cult status and now limit its showing to increase their revenue stream. OK, such are the pains of Capitalism, but once under the wire and outside the range of broadcast television gunfire you find that your threshold for nonsense is fatefully lowered.
While watching “Countdown” online they aired a commercial for skin products. “Skin care is hard,” the announcer begins. No, quantum physics is hard! Skin care isn’t hard, but the announcer continues, “Now you can go online to the oil of Australian wombat anuses website and there our skin care experts can help you.” All I could see in my mind was little Ralphie locked away in the bathroom with his Little Orphan Annie decoder ring. D-R-I-N-K M-O-R-E O-V-A-L-T-I-N-E. Ralphie was what, eight? Ten? This ad was directed at full-grown adult women. Do they really think that by any stretch of the imagination they would recommend anything other than to drink more Ovaltine?
I like to watch college football, but now for some reason the networks employ announcers who depart from the game to tell us stories about the game. About plays and players two, ten or twenty years ago. They hyper-analyze the game until it becomes a misery to watch. On a thirty-yard pass underthrown by the quarterback, “The receiver should have seen that the quarterback was in trouble and had to rush the throw. He should have watched the quarterback's eyes and held up just a step.”
First of all, the play was called in by the offensive coordinator, and the coach said run as fast as you can to get open. Second, thirty yards is almost a hundred feet; try reading someone’s eyes from a hundred feet away on a field full of 300 lb. linemen. It is absurd. I would prefer barking cocker spaniels in the booth as they might listen when someone says shut up when they try to describe why little Ralphie spilled his Ovaltine.
My ex-wife liked to watch crime dramas, and I usually liked to leave the room. But on two occasions of watching "Law and Order" the plot centered around pedophiles escaping justice because of a technicality. Both times the criminals had a top-drawer legal defense and the subplot was the police fighting a system that favored criminals. That system is known as the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but you know what, Ralphie? You really don’t need it; it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, anyhow.
On "CSI" investigators cracked the case when they found the victim's cell phone which the murderer had thrown from a moving car onto a busy street and they recovered her messages. Not only was the phone still operating, but it had not been run over or rained on for two days in Miami! Talk about phoning it in! Drink more Ovaltine. No, it does not taste like crap; it is very good and good for you. Go online to Ovaltinedoesnottastelikecrap.com for more answers.
In 1961 a psychologist, Stanley Milgram, began testing to determine a person's ability to follow authority. In the experiment a teacher recites word combinations to a learner in the next room. When the learner makes an error, the teacher is instructed to push buttons to give ever-increasing electrical shocks to the learner. In truth the learner is an actor and there were no electrical shocks. When the teacher began to protest the shocks they were told by the authority figure to please continue. The experiment requires that you continue. It is absolutely essential that you continue. You have no other choice; you must go on. If, after that point, the teacher still objected, the experiment was ended. 65% of participants continued shocking the learner, even when they were in obvious pain.
One of the researchers working with Milgram set up his own experiment in 1971. Phillip Zambrado, using twenty-four undergraduates at Stanford University, set up a mock prison in the basement of the psychology building. Prisoners were given smocks with numbers sewn onto them and had to wear skullcaps and small chains around their ankles. Guards were given khaki uniforms and mirrored sunglasses to eliminate eye contact. They were also given wooden batons to carry.
On a Sunday morning the prisoners were arrested at their homes for the crimes of armed robbery and burglary. They were spread eagled against police cars, handcuffed, and read their rights. Then they were taken to prison where they were strip searched and deloused. The prison was a hallway in the basement; the cells were classrooms with the door replaced with jail type, iron barred doors. At the end of the hallway was a closet, called the hole, for solitary confinement.
The school's intercom system allowed the cells to be bugged. There were no windows or clocks; the prisoners were dependent on the guards for even the time of day. The prisoners entered the jail one at a time. The first day was uneventful, but during the second day the prisoners rebelled and began to taunt the jailers. The guards responded by shooting fire extinguishers at the prisoners, then stripping them naked and taking their beds away. The perceived ringleaders were placed in solitary confinement. The guards began to use forced push ups as a punishment, then they discovered a new ploy. They created a privilege cell for inmates who cooperated. They were given their beds back and were allowed to wash and brush their teeth. This effectively broke the solidarity of the prisoners, but the prison rebellion had the opposite effect on the guards. Guards volunteered to work extra shifts and never showed up late or left early.
Within thirty-six hours of the beginning of the experiment, prisoners began to suffer emotional breakdowns. On visiting day parents who complained about the condition of their sons were chided. "What's the matter with your boy? Doesn't he sleep well?" One father was asked, "Don't you think your boy can handle this?"
"Of course he can -- he's a real tough kid, a leader." Turning to the mother he said, "Come on, Honey, we've wasted enough time already." And to the Warden, "See you again at the next visiting time."
Not only were the prisoners conditioned, so were their parents.
By the fifth day the roles had congealed. “There were three types of guards. First, there were tough but fair guards who followed prison rules. Second, there were 'good guys' who did little favors for the prisoners and never punished them. And finally, about a third of the guards were hostile, arbitrary, and inventive in their forms of prisoner humiliation.”
By the end of the experiment the prisoners were solitary, isolated and emotionally broken individuals, subservient to their masters. The guards routinely broke rules and treated the prisoners arbitrarily and in a dismissive manner.
Though the experiment has been critiqued for a lack of independent controls, it vividly illustrates that humanity is but a thin gauze and no protection from the beast that lurks inside of many of us.
We have been invested in two protracted wars, so long in fact that a generation of Americans has little idea of what peace is like. Our service people are portrayed in the media as heroes protecting our freedom, and you’ll have no trouble rousing an...uh, rah! The people that fight against them are called terrorists and wild-eyed religious fanatics. These evil devils are portrayed on programs such as “24” and “West Wing.”
The media tells us of the righteousness of the cause and gives little space to opponents of war. We have twenty-four hour, right wing cable media outlets that are caught repeatedly fabricating the news. Fabricating the news is not a free press. It is the opposite of a free press; it is propaganda, whoring and prostituting the truth for the goal of expanding a political idea. A political idea like the police are never wrong. Suspects who are mistreated deserved it, because our Constitution and our Bill of Rights are tools for the criminals to the detriment of honest law enforcement.
These people, so duly conditioned, meet in parks and wave signs and salivate when the bell rings, while those on the other side cheer for the same policies they once vehemently opposed. Because you know what, Ralphie? You’re going to drink more Ovaltine and like it! You wouldn’t want to upset Little Orphan Annie, would you? Our troops are fighting to defend your freedom and they would love to sit at home and drink more Ovaltine. You’re not going to let the troops down, are you?
Timothy Leary had it all wrong, Not, “Turn on, tune in, drop out” but “Turn on, tune in and drink your Ovaltine!”
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