Taibbi: America Is Too Dumb for TV News

The country is heading for voluntary retardation.

performed with a ball-peen hammer and a wood chisel.

Plus several million...

I also couldn't imagine any sentient person agreeing to be under his scalpel (or hammer/chisel).

I don't expect to be alive in the 30-40 years when this can be reviewed as "That Were The Years When ..." but it's either going to be hilarious, or brain-deadening.

I theoretically have about 30-40 years left and, based on my first 56 years, am seeing things only going in one direction. Would love to be proved wrong....

the official Fan Club Card. There is no other reason to do so.

and now a heartwarming story about an adorable kid....

used to praise his work during the Bush Administration. Their opinion of Taibbi flipped 180 degrees on Obama's inauguration day.

gave it to someone, who really wanted a TV. The internet is all I need, and judging by the kind of stories I find on the internet, most of those are never covered in this COUNTRY! You have to go find an English speaking site out of country to find real news stories, that aren't about what the Kardashian are wearing this week or get the opinion of a Duck Dynasty wierdo about the Middle East.

Pluuuueaaaaaaaaaase! Our TV sucks so bad.

Here we have a good example of another sort of media manipulation . .

Ridiculing the truth so that people THINK it is a lie.

The first IMPs to transmit packets between a very few university/research organizations.

What Al Gore didn't realize at the time is that billions of people would be making use of this. And that some large percentage of those would take advantage of the communications power to misinform so many people that can't think.

and mass mailings.

Someone in charge suggested it be given to the people. When presented with the opportunity to take charge of this amazing creation, not one legislator was interested in working on the project. Had it not been for Al Gore, who actually was fascinated by the project, that legislation might not have ever been written. And in 1992, he spoke to the American people about the concept of an internet super-highway. I heard that speech.

Al Gore was ridiculed for a number of things by GE (Jack Welch) who despised both Clinton and Gore. Under the Clinton administration, GE had been fined millions of dollars for violating the Clean Water Act. There was no way Welch was going to remain silent while Gore campaigned for the Presidency, and he took the avenue of simply ridiculing Gore for every possible thing he could, with Tim Russert, et al., backing him up.

Sam

I know I never believed the BS the corporate media spouted about Gore. Unfortunately it seems even the great Matt T has succumbed to the corporate media's spin on his career.

Afterall he was VP. How Unsuccessful is being VP? And his 2nd career as a spokesman for the planet. I don't know but to me he was very successful.

He even won the vote in 2000. But the Supremes stole it away from him. His real problem was the mistake he made by not fighting the Supremes and the RepubliCONS when they stole his win. I think that is why Matt T sees him as unsuccessful.

And here's what they had to say about Al Gore:

Al Gore and the Internet

By Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf

Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the
Internet and to promote and support its development.

No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the
Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among
people in government and the university community. But as the two people
who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the
Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a
Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to
our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of
time.

Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his role.
He said: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the
initiative in creating the Internet." We don't think, as some people have
argued, that Gore intended to claim he "invented" the Internet. Moreover,
there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's
initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving
Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and
promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. We feel it
is timely to offer our perspective.

As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed
telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the
improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official
to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact
than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship. Though easily
forgotten, now, at the time this was an unproven and controversial
concept. Our work on the Internet started in 1973 and was based on even
earlier work that took place in the mid-late 1960s. But the Internet, as
we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still
in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided
intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential
benefits of high speed computing and communication. As an example, he
sponsored hearings on how advanced technologies might be put to use in
areas like coordinating the response of government agencies to natural
disasters and other crises.

EDIT

http://web.eecs.umich.edu/~fessler/misc/funny/gore,net.txt

I previously read some time ago a military historian's statement about Gore's involvement with the creation of what we call today the Internet. I could not find that this evening, but I did start reading another interesting article that I will quote from here:

Gore's 1986 bill called for a study of the possibility of creating fiber optic links to supercomputer centers, requiring the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to issue a report on the subject. Though references differ on whether Gore's 1986 bill was ever actually passed, the report it called for was issued in November of 1987. It expressed concern that the U.S. was falling behind Europe and Japan in the development of supercomputers and high speed networks, and recommended creation of a program to advance research in those areas.

Gore's 1988, 1989, and 1991 bills were attempts to create such a program. During this period the White House was reluctant to do so, but in early 1991, just before the Gore Bill finally passed, the White House proposed in its budget to fund a High Performance Computing and Communications Program. Gore's 1991 bill defined that program and authorized spending more than a billion dollars over the next five years on supercomputing and network projects. This funding was mostly under the control of the NSF, but also parts also went to DARPA and NIST.

These efforts contributed substantially to allowing NSFNET to grow into the modern Internet. Interesting discussions of their significance can be found in a 1992 paper advocating further expansion of the net, 1993 testimony from the head of OSTP, and Vinton Cerf's description of the evolution of the Internet. All give Gore primary credit for this legislation, and stress it's importance in the development of the Internet. (emphasis added)

from: http://greatgreenroom.org/cgi-bin/bt/backtalk/wasabi/begin?item=11

The point I was trying to make, but which I seemed to have done clumsily, was that when this shall I say communication tool was no longer needed at the end of the Cold War, when the question was asked "what shall we do with this?" - the answer was "give it to the people." We the people were able to accept it and to build it from what it was then to what it is now because one person had a keen interest in this area and agreed to write the legislation creating what eventually came to be referred to as "the Internet."

This is a very long article about Gore which might interest many DU'ers.

Sam

this country may in fact be doomed.

Perhaps it's for the best, and the rational people and the lizard people can reform into separate and mutually exclusive societies.

The fascism is out in the open on one side and hiding behind a happy-face mask on the other. We now live in a completely surrealistic and arational society.

only question is how long we will last. We seem to be an evolutionary dead end, but who knows.

Quite yet. Homo sapiens is a remarkably persistent and adaptive species.

But as a species we are going to set ourselves back 500-1000 years with the current playbook. This may be one of those "burning of the Alexandrian library" periods, though it is possible that greedheads or religulous lunatics may unleash a nuclear holocaust in which case all bets are off the table.

Next time the "holy books" of fairy tales should be burned first and we can try again with science, reason and logic as our guiding lights.

We're a pretty mixed bag as a species. The same genotype that has given us Plato, Euclid, Eratosthenes, Aeschylus, Lao Tzu, the Buddha, Confucius, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Hokusai, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Shakespeare, Goethe, Kurosawa, Newton, Einstein and Mandela has also vomited up Chinghiz Khan, Attila the Hun, the Spanish Inquisition, Ivan the Terrible, Vlad the Impaler, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Henry Kissinger, ISIL and the Bush Crime Family.

of course, as you allude to, there is also great potential for intellect, creativity and compassion.

Quite the mixed bag, that's for sure.

Hairless apes with big brains, but still apes with reptile sections at the bottom our brains.

Someday we'll live on Venus, men will walk on Mars
But we will still be monkeys down deep inside
If chimpanzees are smart then we will close our eyes
And let our instincts guide us, oh oh oh oh no.

- David Byrne "The Facts of Life"

Just like me and most rational people.

Only the crazies will ascend to their heaven and we'll be left with a rational world.

I wish them well (NOT).

and only a pea shooter would be needed) and get the hell on their way.

life in some not too distant dark age. Afterwards, civilization will regroup, rebuild and reach another unsustainable "golden age", only to again whither away or be conquered every thousand years or so. That cycle has happened four or five times, so far.

We'll get the sort of collapse we deserve.

..due to the pressures exerted from within (irreconcilable factions) and without (climate change, end of cheap energy, no way to maintain empire).

So some of those constituent parts will be an "evolution" compared to what we have now. Others, of course, quite the opposite...

And I hope the civilized state, which I believe will be a democratic socialist one, will zealously guard against infiltration by the reactionaries, religulous nitwits and other assorted stupids/evolutionary throwbacks. With machine guns if necessary. The humanitarian impulse does not require the entry into a suicide pact.

Maybe they can survive together instead of as individualists. One is the democratic socialist while the other is greed in motion. ME ME ME.

The young seem to be rejecting the gated community for the good of all.

Well worth a read and a think. Henry Giroux is one smart cookie.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/18/donald-trump-and-the-ghosts-of-totalitarianism/

they teaching this in any colleges?

We need to counter this dumbing down but how are we to do that?

How is this article and the notes after it being used today.

and it sank like an anchor. Sigh.

Its just one of his blog posts. His long-form writing has to be magnificent.

would have used his writing in a philosophy class but I am not sure anyone would today as it is long and detailed. Part of the dumbing down I guess.

Then we won't have to worry any more.

the documentary "Idiocracy".

Judge cast present society into a different time period to illuminate the insanity of the now.

That film becomes more prophetic every day.

How else would we accept W as President....twice.
Everything is aimed at keeping us mind numbingly entertained. Not informed.
News Divisions were, at one time, purposely exempt from being profit centers.
Once this changed, reporting and editorial lost any distinction.
Now, we have only advocacy "journalism" profit centers under the banners of fewer and fewer mega monopolies.

Those that stood to profit from 9/11 and the wars made sure he took the oath of office but Bush lost the elections.

eom

killing the criminally stupid "liberal" media myth has long been a desire of mine

of CNN,that seemed to be the moment the so called Media did their death spiral. You could see the change to what I can the Advertisement Model,story length was shortened and void of any background,and with the fairness doctrine scraped by Saint Ronnie the Fake,we started to see and hear personal editorials by on air talents. And the rest is History.

I think there are some countries other than the United States on this earth, but I rarely hear of them any longer unless it is somehow a United States story that brings mention of them.

It is so easy to get real world news without using US outlets (effluents).

Absolutely first rate.

Of course the Righties® can always dismiss it as Muslim propaganda.

The networks like One America, Fox, CNBC, MSNBC and the rest are corporate feces piles with on-air monkeys to fling it at each other.
There is no reason to watch any of that crap unless you do not have a local zoo in driving distance to watch monkeys fling poo in person.

The local MHZ lineup features state-sponsored programming from China, Russia, Japan, Germany, France, etc.

And one PBS TV station airs BBC news at suppertime.

And the 4 am network news shows aren't half bad...(ha ha)

and differences between Ted Turner and Donald Trump. I think that could be the source of a lot of analogies to explain how the media has changed in the last 30-40 years.

Great comparison. Really miss CBC,used to get it on Dish,when we lived in the Midwest. One would think people would hunger for real news,but the truth is,our Nation has gone dumb and dumber.

CBS at about the same time decided that the news department had to be profitable. During that same period print media was being bought out by "investors" that expected a return and couldn't give two squats about informing the public.
I wish I had the money to support all those independent real journalists that actually give us something resembling real information.

"Fair and balanced." Like both sides are always equal. Bullshit.

Real journalists investigate the pros & cons of the issues & present both sides. They aren't afraid to say that one side doesn't add up. I'm sick of the "democrats do it too" crap that has passed on the "news" for 20 some years, now. The hypocrisy in how they report on repubs vs. dems is boggling. If the democratic candidates had complained that the debate questions were too hard, they would have been the laughing stock of the media. That the media even takes the repub clown car seriously, tells everything about how far they have fallen.

The entire system is so compromised with everything-for-profit & the greed heads are in control. I don't know if we can get it back before they ruin everything. Not one major power/organization is doing anything of scope about climate change.

Sometimes I think as a collective we might be going insane.

Had a Poly Sci Prof at the School of Higher Learning make this statement,the art of Politics is,convincing the other Guy that your ideas are better than his in making Society a better place to live. And that was in the early sixties. And he also said,there are a hand full of very wealthy folks who will do what ever is necessary to protect and enhance their families positions within our Nation. What is so profound is,he was a Norwegian University Professor,doing a visiting fellowship.

Even the "shows" are marketing crap.

Squee is always exempt.

I'm a boomer from the mid 50's. In hindsight, Mad magazine educated me on the evil horrors of advertising and commercialism, so that grew into a little above average critical thinking skills. Frank Zappa also helped. Been studying the man for 43 years.

And I try to practice my citizenship obligations any way I can. Mostly as a keyboard warrior, which is pretty insipid. So I'm part of a Church that had a group get together for a "talent night". I don't have any talent worth an audience of humans, so I offered to discuss the TPP as my "talent" The reaction was negative, so I thought I'd be going only for the chips and dips. But, then, they made everybody at the party display their talent. Well, mine happened to be lecturing extemporaneously about the TPP, with no outline or prep what so ever. (I don't think good on my feet, so an outline, bullet points, to look at while you talk is a tool to cover the subject deeper and completely)

And I mention this because I feel the TPP and the political leaders that support it, are the END GAME for some kind of Authoritarian, fascist, corporatist, totalitarian NEW WORLD ORDER. I think the orders were given after the 2000 Election, where the Oligarch's learned they could pull off a big lie and get away with murder. Then it escalated with the Iraq invasion lies, to the point where they learned they could lie with impunity about going to war, so there was nothing so venal and preposterous and openly corrupt they couldn't do if they wanted to.

Trust nothing in the mass media was its message and brother, did I take that to heart. Big Zappa fan here, as well.

And Carlin was the Great American Truth Teller of his generation.

The downfall began after WW II when Allen Dulles brought many unreconstructed Nazis to the US and seeded them through what became the Deep/Permanent Government because TPTB of the 20s and 30s thought Nazi Germany was the bright shining wave the future. The US oligarchy very much admired the way Hitler and Mussolini did business - let money run free and crush the proletarians. That has ALWAYS been the wet dream of the American Oligarchy. And now they have it within their reach.

to be obtained if a person had the intelligence to find it. Nowadays, what most Americans know about the world is the equivalent of teenagers sitting around on the couch discussing this person and that person. Our news is just a series of conversations about whether we should like this person or not.

that Power of the People was finally gone. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson reportedly on his knees begging Pelosi to bail out the banks. And Congress did. Who could have imagined that?

Follow that with the "Citizens United" decision by the Supremes and their recent gutting of crucial parts of the Civil Rights protecting citizen's voting rights and add in our now endless Wars and Interventions we are near the final takeover. If you throw in Climate Change it's a dark time for those of us who've been around long enough to observe it all taking place.

Still...its important to try to stay hopeful. Those of us who've observed it have to to what we can to educate and inform and keep working for change.

Thanks for your post on your own efforts.
'

With the demise of the Soviet Union there came a realization of, "Be careful what you wish for." on a massive scale.

The authoritarians had to bring their Iran-Contra mentality to the domestic arena for, despite all their efforts to the contrary, there were no remaining undefeated enemies.

The Oligarch's learned they could get away with absolutely anything. And why not when the system was designed to deal with the entire Soviet empire.

We have watched this ugliness unfold before our eyes since then.

THERE IS NO LIBERAL NEWS. not even NPR. Not the NYT.

Maybe Amy Goodman.

what more do you want?

A good dramatization, if you like visuals:

Always appropriate, especially given the current republican talent (cess)pool.

Left it behind 8 years ago and haven't looked back.

Its tells us that education has failed in America since the Republicans have hijacked it.

I came to the determination years ago that the commercial advertisers of news hours were all evil. To me, they basically market products to viewers that stereotypes them into products they don't need. Air fresheners, OTC drugs & medicines, buying new status symbol goods and services, etc. So I thought, I don't need that crap and why are these companies the sponsors of news? If there's a monetary relationship there between advertisers and news media, it's very possible the news in tainted. Then, as Matt Taibbi points out, you hear stuff in the news that's not news, but basically infomercial content...more and more. You've arrived at your moment of impasse.

Time to turn the news off. While you're at it, might as well turn TV off completely. It's more commercialized bullshit than informative/educational/entertaining value. And I don't need to pay for that.

We all need a bit of a break from the stress of daily life. Watch a good TV show or a good old movie. As far as news?
I agree with Randi Rhodes. The news has been cancelled! There is no news on TV. If you want news, you've got to read it.

Just sayin'

-- Goethe

To Faustian Motivation!



http://www.jstor.org/stable/2378523?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Infotainment is supercharging the race to the bottom intellectually

Fox "News" is exhibit #1 that America is too dumb for TV News.

Sean Hannity, Bill "O" Reilly, and John Stossel conjuring false political equivalency and reaping advertising dollars while doing it, is ample indication of how collectively dumb we are as a nation.

Just when we can't afford to get any dumber, we put creationists in charge of science funding, put children in home schools dedicated to theocracy, and put climate deniers in control of our carbon. When we can least afford to..............

We elected George W. Bush. Of course we are collectively too dumb for TV News.

Seriously. People who haven't had a television in years-- like me-- look at the rest of Americans incredulously. The utter crap that people spend their non-working, waking hours watching on television will shock you pretty quickly after you get that stuff out of your system. They don't call it the plug-in drug for nothing. Over the years, interesting, challenging content has slowly given way to purile entertainment, although arguably television was always deeper down that rat hole than print media.

Every two or three years I'll turn on a television in a hotel room and surf the channels looking for some redeeming value. I'm usually appalled. Television isn't the only thing that is killing journalism, but it's one of the worst offenders. Voting with your feet and turning that noise off permanently is the first step toward undoing the dumbing down of Americans.

RS nails it again.

Oh wait a minute---that goes against the BS'ers narrative. A Hillary supporter loving Matt.

I swear you BS'ers could conflate anything.

eom

The US citizen isn't too dumb for TV news, it's too dumb because of TV news.
I had never been a major consumer of TV news. Even since the 60's I had seen it as being just so much BS. Play to the baser instincts, push every sensational story, limit the discussion to an acceptable story line.
Perhaps we can accept some responsibility because we didn't demand better but that falls into that area of not being able to recognize our own blind spot.
It might just be that we have to exert so much effort just to get through the day. I think that applies to me, I didn't hit my breaking point until 2002. By then it was painfully obvious that the mask was off for the ruling class. They no longer felt the need to hide their goals.
I'm lucky that I now can now invest my time in being informed. I only wish I had the resources to share half of the information I gather with my neighbors. I know they're smart enough to connect the dots but we never seem to be in the same place long enough to get into serious conversations.

The thread does remind me of this cartoon though...

are better informed than at least 90% of the people I see around me. My close friends are informed, intelligent and interested in current events. Thank, gawd, for my close pals and for the DU.

I see the DU, even with are the current primary wars right now, as being a place where I can read, learn, discuss, and consider new information, ideas, points of view and do so with some very well read and informed intelligent people. I always find out something new each day that is of interest -- besides what is posted in GDP!

When I visit internet sites -- not very often, to say the least -- like Free Republic or have a conversation with many in a line at a grocery store, it amazes me how uninformed the general public appears to be. One clear indication of that is look around at the magazines on sale at the grocery check out...I used to see at least Time and Newsweek. Not any more -- the magazine stands are like a Kardashian super-book store.

So, I am not the least bit surprised that things such as Faux Snooze Entertainment network exists and that it pretends to be a news information source. Some, unfortunately, are not too dumb for that supposed and alleged TV News station!

We stopped watching all television over 23 years ago. Have not looked back ... never missed it. It was all far to stupid and insulting to any sentient being's intelligence.

We missed the Rodney King beating, the OJ chase, 9/11, someone's nipple, and every other notable, newsworthy event.

Raised our kids without it, who - in their 20's-30's have thanked us for it and say they will raise their kids the same.

We stopped reading any of the newspapers - except catching links on line - shortly after that.

One of our primary motives was that we did not want corporate America owning the souls of our children.

We didn't want our two daughters AND our son to have problems with image perceptions.

Television is a black hole where good intentions and time are sucked in and strangled.

We didn't want them addicted to garbage.

We never missed it.

People often ask in shock "What do you do instead?" ... and we tell them .... Everything else.

*

If the truth is bad for corporate business, fighting against that truth is in the best interest of the shareholders.

Those who invest in and support Wall St have made a conscious decision to choose short term personal comfort for themselves over honesty, over democracy, for all people.

They are well represented by corporate media, lobbyists, think tanks and politicians.

Thankfully, we still live in the most democracy they haven't figured out how to cut off. Yet.

With every dollar and hour logged in service of those consumed by avarice, that final nail will soon be hammered into place.