We’re living in a ‘Network’ worldDate: 5/27/2016 Those of you who have read these newspapers for a while know I’m a movie guy. The most prophetic film of the last 50 years has got to be “Network.” Have you seen it? Oh, you need to.
The movie was shot in 1976 and set in that time. A failing TV network is saved when its anchorman Howard Beale snaps under the pressure of learning he will be fired. He delivers an on-air tirade urging his viewers to open their windows and shout “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”
Seeing the publicity and ratings from the broadcast, network programmers devise a schedule of reality TV, before such a thing existed, that plays on the anger and ignorance of the audience.
I won’t give away more of the plot. It has one heck of a finish.
More and more, we’re living in a “Network” world. Too many of us make decisions not based on research and thought, but on what someone else tells us and what they tells us is simply affirmation of our own beliefs.
We boil down complex issues into small bites that are circulated on social media. We consume a media that is obsessed in getting a story first rather than getting a story right. Organizations that call themselves “news services” are just opinion services. The line separating the two is increasingly blurred.
We are angry because so many entry-level jobs are gone, manufacturing jobs, jobs that a generation ago could actually support a family. Yet, we allowed this situation to happen over the course of the last 50 years.
The difference between the rich and poor is increasing and the middle class is decreasing and yet we’re fascinated by the lives of the wealthy making them reality TV stars.
The pundits choose issues that will whip segments of the population into a frenzy, the most recent, transgender rest rooms, thus obscuring much more important ones and people fall for it time after time after time.
A large part of the story of “Network” was based on the TV network capitalizing on the anger of the American people. This presidential election cycle is already making history – and the candidates have yet to be officially chosen – as the one in which the Republican and Democrat presumptive candidates have the greatest unfavorable ratings since 1980.
This is the year of the angry voter.
There may be great anger in this nation, but there is also great blindness, great ignorance and a stupendous inability to translate anger into positive action.
Why aren’t people angry with Congress? The inaction of the bulk of the last eight years has been inexcusable. Why aren’t we considering term limits to keep politics at that level from being a career?
Why aren’t more people crying out for banking and investing reforms to keep what happened in 2008 from happening again? Did you lose your home or job? Shouldn’t that be motivation to have this issue be at the top of the list?
People become angry when infrastructure fails, but are they calling for investments in roads, bridges and more?
Most people complain about the costs of healthcare and prescriptions, but what progress has resulted from that anger?
We are kept in a permanent status of agitation that has no benefits to us. We are told not to ask questions but instead to point fingers. Let’s blame illegal immigrants. Let’s blame the poor. Let’s blame the “others” in American society, whoever they might be.
Don’t look at those in power whose maintaining the status quo benefits only them. Buy a “Let’s Make America Great Again” hat that isn’t made in the United States. Let’s support a “liberal” who makes tons of dough from lecture fees from Wall Street.
Look at me. I’m doing my own version of Howard Beale. And like Beale, there are probably plenty of you who view this as the ranting of an old man. Oh well, even ranting old men are right every now and then.
This column is the opinion of its author and does not necessarily reflect the position of the owners or advertisers of this newspaper. Got a comment about this story? Go to http://speakout.thereminder.com and let us know.
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