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SyndicateThe Age of the Stupid Tube
By Robert Ringer - Wednesday, July 28, 2010
It’s becoming harder and harder to watch television. It’s no wonder they called it the “boob tube” in the days of yore. When I was a kid, there was a lot of dumb stuff on television, but it paled in comparison to what passes as acceptable television programming today.
If it was the Boob Tube in the fifties and sixties, it’s the Stupid Tube today. But let’s set aside pro wrestling, reality TV, Mel Gibson, LeBron James, and the Barefoot Bandit for now and focus on what are supposed to be serious news and commentary shows.
In this area, it pretty much gets down to Fox News as a rational person’s only meaningful choice. But even on Fox, one has to put up with a cast of lame characters such as Ellis Henican, Juan Williams, Kirsten Powers, Bob Beckel, and Alan Colmes … to name but a few. It’s a group that would make Howdy Doody proud.
I don’t believe any of these talking heads are evil. Nor are most of them ignorant. I think it’s more a matter of their realizing they have a role to play (as in, defend progressive policies at all costs), so they become adept at keeping themselves in self-delusive trances.
And now that we have the Kenyan Kid in the White House – a Marxist who has set back race relations in the U.S. forty years – today’s Stupid-Tubish topic of choice is racism. Listening to all the make-believe racism silliness is like being in a time machine and going back to the 1960s. It’s enough to make one yawn with excitement.
The latest racism story is downright bizarre. When BHO’s Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack fired Shirley Sherrod for supposedly admitting to prejudice against a white farmer, then offered her another job a day later when he realized he didn’t have his facts straight, it put the spotlight on just how ridiculous the whole racism industry has become.
And, of course, most of the media missed the real story – that Ms. Sherrod’s great epiphany was not just that blacks versus whites is a no-no to talk about, but the real “struggle” is the haves versus the have-nots. How reassuring. Instead of deifying her, Congressional Republicans should be demanding that she be permanently banned from working for the government.
Then there’s Bill O’Reilly’s stimulating discussions with intellectual dwarf Marc LaMont Hill – you know, the kid with the Ph.D. who tries to hide his lack of knowledge by talking at the speed of light. Listening to their recent exchange about the pros and cons of the New Black Panthers was like watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It made Lindsay Lohan’s court breakdown seem like an intellectual step forward.
And, trust me, the “New” Black Panthers are not going to go away. The chairman of the party, all-American boy Malik Shabazz, loves the spotlight too much. Who would have believed that major air time would be given to a handful of thugs who woke up one morning and said, “Hey, man, why don’t we call ourselves the new Black Panther Party and scare the hell of some crackers? It’d be a lot more fun than workin‘ for whitey.”
No big deal, really. After all, there are a lot of bored, unemployed people in this country who engage in meaningless activities every day. But, for crying out loud, we shouldn’t take every unemployed rabble rouser seriously. And the media certainly shouldn’t be giving them air time.
Of course, if they get carried away and start brandishing clubs and trying to intimidate people at voting stations, you simply arrest them, bring them to trial, and put them behind bars for a few years. Not to rehabilitate them; that’s a progressive fantasy. The reason you put them away is to keep them off the streets so they can’t harass civilized people.
But with a died-in-the-wool racist in the White House, that isn’t what happens. Instead, you let them skate by having the Department of Justice drop charges against them. But weren’t they already convicted? Sure, but in a country no longer burdened by a Constitution and with an imperial presidency firmly in place, that’s a minor detail. In case you hadn’t noticed, our current crop of U.S. rulers do whatever they damn well please – no permission needed, thank you, even from Congress.
The message is straightforward: If you’re a black racist, you can pretty much do anything you want. Even the once highly respected NAACP has joined in our new national pastime – Pin the Tail on the Racist. With his jaw-dropping rants, NAACP president Ben Envy (er, Jealous) has become the latest racist to achieve media status.
Everywhere you turn, you see and hear it: Racism is alive and well in America. Alert the media: It’s alive and well in every country on the planet – and always will be. That said, until the Duplicitous Despot ascended the throne in D.C., the U.S. had pretty much reduced its racial problems to the realm of insignificance.
If you’re as bored as I am listening to all this manufactured racial nonsense, I feel obliged to warn you that the worst is yet to come. As November draws ever closer, the angry Progressive Beast is starting to thrash about like a dinosaur trapped in a tar pit. And as the pain increases and reality begins to set in, you can count on it wailing in panic and ratcheting up its desperate attempts to paint everyone to the right of Fidel Castro and Barry the Bull Slinger as angry white racists.
Heck, if you’re a libertarian or conservative, they’ll probably even label your dog or cat as racist. Which you would have to admit would make for great Stupid Tube programming.
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ROBERT RINGER is a New York Times #1 bestselling author and host of the highly acclaimed Liberty Education Interview Series, which features interviews with top political, economic, and social leaders. Ringer has appeared on numerous national talk shows and has been the subject of feature articles in such major publications as Time, People, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Barron’s, and The New York Times. To sign up for his one-of-a-kind, pro-liberty e-letter, A Voice of Sanity in an Insane World, visit www.RobertRinger.com
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ROBERT RINGER is a New York Times #1 bestselling author and host of the highly acclaimed Liberty Education Interview Series, which features interviews with top political, economic, and social leaders. He has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, The Tonight Show, Today, The Dennis Miller Show, Good Morning America, The Lars Larson Show, ABC Nightline, and The Charlie Rose Show, and has been the subject of feature articles in such major publications as Time, People, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Barron's, and The New York Times.
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9 Responses to “The Age of the Stupid Tube”
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I agree with you. But racism is a category of collectivism. And collectivists have attacked individualism, and therefore Capitalism, even before the industrial revolution. If more people in this country knew that racism is collectivism, I think false racism charges would vanish. True racists do not want to be known as collectivists.
Finally someone else noticed that Shirley Sherrod’s brilliant epiphany was that the real enemy is the dreaded “Haves” and not “Whitey.” My liberal finance’ will be shocked that there’s at least one other person on the planet as demented as I am
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The idiocy and immaturity of the current average American, due in large part to the wasted hours of one’s finite life sitting passively numbed out in front of the television having the most useless and trivial information, is one of the saddest and most undeclared tragic events of modern life.
Television is nothing more than an adult baby sitter for a nation of short attention spanned enfant terribles with the totally vapid and useless information actually being PAID FOR to be pumped like intellectual sewage into a person’s home and into their consciousness.
We are allowing ourselves to be entertained, distracted, and pacified into incremental bondage through what amounts to mass intellectual laziness.
Is it any wonder that people cannot clearly think through our current societal problems and moral hurdles presented in real living color through the non television world of objective reality?
If we can agree that one is only “entitled” to what they themselves EARN, regardless of race, religion, or any other divisive titles used to advance socialist agendas, then and only then will our society actually have a more just and balanced administration of law.
We are living in an age of intentional information overload and as a result, people can no longer think objectively. Their ability to step back from their daily habitual and addictive sources of information and recognize all of the bland and useless trash, posing as news or required information for adult life, is compromised. As a result, too many people have been seduced into living what amounts to a zombie-like existence and yet they never realize it which is why we are failing as a culture and as a nation.
Speaking about pro wrestling, have you seen what is going on in the Connecticut Republican senate primary race. Linda has spent 22 million of her hubby’s money for her new hobby. Opposing her on August 10th is economist and financial wizard Peter Schiff, a 3rd generation Connecticut native and real patriot. I have been making about 100 calls per day from home for Peter using their free virtual call center. Its getting easier to convince people especially after I found video of Linda speaking at the Democratic National Convention in Boston to help Democrat voter registration. Rand Paul’s people helped us the other weekend to boost our calls from 6k up to 10k in one day. 80 thousand calls have been made so far in the last 10 days. Unfair and Unbalanced has been no help especially since Linda is ducking any and all debates recently. Listen to Peter’s interview by Robert Ringer on this site
deusimplicitus….
before tv was radio. before that was forced public ‘education’. before that was newsprint. before that was kings and deities and religions and myths and bread and circuses.
the only constant has been the human animal, human nature…..
HRoberts3…
race-ism is associational preference based upon race, and this preference is a generality that shows up in cross-section, which is to say groups of individuals. individuals have other preferences, too, of course, some, like race affinity are more reflexive, even biological you could say (to cite a different animal model, have you ever heard of grolar bears? it does happen…), while others are environmental (cultural), and individuals prioritize their most personally significant preferences into identities, seek those priorities/identities in others (which is ultimately about seeking validation, corroboration, justification, rationalization, social stroking/grooming — comfort and/via immersion/dissolution in a tribe…), and this is where your observation of “collectivism” comes into view.
it, again, is an aspect of human nature. perhaps the good news is that it is an aspect most typical +/- one standard deviation about the mean, and in theory, at least, means can shift. but, historically, the mean has shown itself to be very deeply rooted…..
Robert -
About six years ago I took great comfort in your description of the attitude of “To-Hell-With-It-ism” in Restoring The American Dream. It seemed to relieve some of my perceived responsibility for the fate of this great nation (i.e. forget voting).
I totally see the validity of being an observer rather than a marcher in times of great historical change…but…
I find myself experiencing somewhere between a low and high level of anxiety about this administration, the loss of our republic, and the eventual merging of our government with the BRIC (and G20) countries.
Is To-Hell-With-It-ism still valid, or do we have an obligation to not let liberty slip away in this age?
(I believe that socialism is part of human nature — a socialist would say Obama isn’t going far enough. Individualism is also part of human nature and must be nurtured and is a one-by-one liberation of individuals in an unfree world. Harry Browne didn’t seem to be advocating getting out and saving the world, either, but spent much of his time teaching individuals to find freedom in an unfree world.)
reunion,
Admittedly there has always been distracting “entertainment” information and misdirection trivia made available to the masses of people of all nations going back to the Roman times where “panem et circenses” were used to keep the citizenry amused and docile, yet it has never been as overwhelming and mind numbing as the present technology laden environment. The amuse and defuse strategy of government combined with a MSM has never been honed to such a fine art as it is in today’s world.
Digital media and the tidal wave of available information has allowed the masses to have a much greater selection of mind numbing poisons from which to commit a literal slow cultural intellectual suicide.
Add to this, the pharmaceutical companies and the medical community making more readily available a wide variety of anti-depression medications to further sedate an increasingly lost and lonely population, and the stage is set for a nation filled with apathetic, complacent, and numbed out automatons who on occasion find the frustration and angst to grumble but who no longer have the will or resolve to actually rumble.
We have now arrived in the future at Huxley’s prognosticated ‘Brave New World’….
From Wikipedia…
“In Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel Brave New World, Soma is a popular dream-inducing, hallucinogenic drug. It provides an easy escape from the hassles of daily life and is employed by the government as a method of control through pleasure. It is ubiquitous and ordinary among the culture of the novel and everyone is shown to use it at some point, in various situations: sex, relaxation, concentration, confidence. It is seemingly a single-chemical combination of many of today’s drugs’ effects, giving its users the full hedonistic spectrum depending on dosage.”
The trenchant question has to be, are there still enough aware people and cognizant individuals who have not become somatose to awaken a sufficient number of their fellow citizen sleepwalkers and thus make a concerted effort in turning the tide back from the present momentum of national ennui, erosion, decay, and a then the inevitable implosion and collapse?
deusimplicitous….
yes, correct, all your reiterated citations…yes, correct, “soma” (in all its forms)…but, what’s the root? Surely not this leafy profusion of externalities.
“If you build it, they will come.” That’s the root. Human nature, +/- one standard deviation about the mean – where the overwhelming glut resides.
the builders will build, the masses will show up, the minority you mention will always be there, and will continue to not stop, let alone turn the tide.
“somatose”…there is an expression, “you cannot awaken someone who pretends to be asleep”…every instance of debating someone into an inescapable corner of their own contradictory arguments – to no avail, no awakening – is the proof of that expression. I’ve experienced it many times, and I am sure you probably have, too.
another expression: “do something – even if it’s right”. Action for the sake of action and for the appeasing appearance of progress. perhaps analogous to whistling past the graveyard, if not whistling toward the grave.