Don't take the things I say as being all-encompassing and we will not find ourselves in disagreement. ;-)

I do not mean to condemn all TV on principle, but I think that on the whole it has proven to be a much poorer method of educating people than books, mostly because most of it was not intended to educate or inform anyone...it was intended to pull in ratings, because high ratings mean that more people get to see the ads...and the ads are paid for by the commercial sponsors to sell their products.

And what are the products? Soft drinks, which are no good for anybody. Junk food which is no good for anybody. Luxury cars. Designer clothing. A great variety of drugs which promise to eliminate your troublesome symptoms, but not to address the health problems that they are evidence of. A host of feminine fashion and personal care items which play upon the insecurities of women who are worried that they aren't attractive enough. Deoderants.

There is almost nothing advertised on TV which we actually need to hear about, because we could find it quite readily on our own if we needed it...as we do when we resort to magazines or the Internet to look for things we think we want or need. That way, YOU have the power.

TV doesn't give you the power. It renders you into a passive receiver of advertising that you did not seek out, and did not tune in for. It uses the program you actually DID tune in for as bait to sit you down so you can have advertising foisted on you.

No other medium does this to you, because YOU are in control of the other mediums...such as books, magazines, and Internet.

TV is the foremost tool in creating a passive and addicted populace.

That doesn't mean there is NOTHING of value on TV...but it does mean that TV (and radio too) have a more pernicious effect on people than do the other mediums...because of the way advertising is delivered via TV and radio.

They steal a large piece of people's time and their attention. It's ideal if you want to create a lobotomized and addicted populace, and if you want to screen out troublesome types like Mr Kucinich who might threaten the established order.

Now I know you all know this, so what are we really arguing about? Sure, many of us are smart enough to see through the commercial crap. It's the people who aren't smart enough or who are just young and impressionable that I am worried about. And there are many such people. They are being affected on a daily basis, and it dumbs them down. It does them no favors.

There are also trashy books out there to read, of course...there always have been. But even THEY do not have advertising in them that leaps out in your face every five minutes in booming ultrasound and DEMANDS your full attention before you can even be allowed to read the next fucking page of the book!

I have not acquired any of my rhetoric from reading books. The books I read as a child were mostly about historical fact and some historical fiction, as well as a lot of the classic literature of the 19th century (H.G. Wells, Mark Twain, H. Ryder Haggard, Conan Doyle, C.S. Forester, Dickens, etc.). What I got from those books was a worldview that was not USA-centric for one thing (though some of it was certainly UK-centric!), and none of them had anything to say about TV or present-day mass marketing, since it didn't exist back then. They simply made me very aware of the possibilities of society being utterly different from what it is now, and that made me question things as they are now.

I developed a profound sense of the past and its importance from the books I read while growing up. My schoolmates read books too. As I recall, the most popular ones in general were by Jacqueline Suzanne (and many others in that genre) and Ayn Rand and Ian Fleming and Mickey Spillane! Heh! Those didn't interest me back then, and they don't now either.

I just don't give a damn about the lives and love affairs of rich, spoiled jetsetters in California or New York for some reason... Why? Because there's nothing to admire there, and nothing I would wish to aspire to.

As you say, Ron, seeking information is up to the individual. It all falls back on the individual. Correct. Now take an individual who grows up with parents who regularly tune in to the dumbest of dumb TV shows....and who never encourage their children to read a book, and who have no books in the house except the latest issue of People Magazine and the latest Danielle Steele novel. How will most children end up, given those influences? What choices will they make? And what choices will they be unaware they ever had? It's monkey-see, monkey-do, you know. Most kids imitate their parents' lifestyle pretty closely.

That's my point. TV has become the modern babysitter, and I believe that that is pretty much tantamount to child abuse, and you are seeing the evidence of that in a lot of the terrible news stories of the present day...like school shootings, for instance.

I can't change any of this, and I don't expect to. I am simply commenting on what I have seen occur around me in the last 59 years, accomplished very effectively by mass marketing, most particularly through the medium of television...the most effective propaganda tool yet invented by man.