Ya ever notice what sorts of issues are kept at the forefront of the political debate by Alternet and similar American Left media organs? Race, gender, religion, and partisan politics (especially the demonization of the other side). The really important issues like progressive taxation, universal healthcare, and the flooding of the labor supply by mass immigration are usually given little play in the American Left.

Why is that so?

Could it be that the American Left is funded by nonprofit organizations that are used by the rich and the large corporations to divert leftist activism to areas that are less detrimental to the wallets of the wealthy?

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Entertainment is accessible, people can understand it and it won't make you feel bad and say "well, crap what can I do about that!?" People care about Desperate Housewives because it is easy. If politics, the economy, community development and science were available for the participation of American society just as fashion, reality tv, and hogging at Chili's is then more people would care. It's simple. The general pop is intimidated by the complex world we live in and it is more comfortable to watch baseball. As fast as things are changing, it is enough to scare off even the most persistent soccer mom. The media aren't responsible for the education that is required for people to pay attention to Darfur. Open up opportunities for the citizenry and the new city water project will become just as important as Chris Daughtry getting kicked off Idol early. We Americans like to get behind things, we just need the opportunity and the information. Undoing the consumption haze means new places to plug in and new skills to participate. Don’t get mad (we all do), just organize a community issues talk at the mall.

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Well, investigative reporting costs money, as Greg Pallast points out. It takes time. And it can be dangerous.

I am living in Germany this year, and I saw Hurricane Katrina coverage on CNN International, which is every bit as awful as CNN. What they love to do is have the international correspondent interview someone like Wolf Blitzer live from the "situation room." This is deemed "breaking news." (Incidentally, what could be more creepily dystopic than calling a series of superimposed graphics and video images the "situation" room?) But my favorite moment was when someone interviewed a minor reporter who'd been up in a helicopter surveying damage to the levees. They talked to this nonentity for ages, killing time--which should be the CNN slogan, "We kill time, so you don't have to"--and at one point it struck me: "Did no one think to send a camera up there with him so we could have a visual?" You know, just an idea. Of course, I don't run a news agency.

Some may say it's all a big conspiracy to deprive Americans of real information, but I honestly believe a lot of this is just sheer laziness. In the absence of oversight, they cut corners. And because only a few people complain, they think they're doing a great job.

Meanwhile, our culture is cannibalizing itself at such a rate that only the fingernails will be left soon. Our news and entertainment, now indistinguishable, are as redudant and derivative as the background in an old Warner Brothers cartoon.

Forget about morally relativistic, xenophobic, short-sighted, alienated, and geographically isolated. Don't Americans even realize how bored we are?

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This "problem" has been around for quite a while; it's known as "bread and circuses". It's the wholesale pacification of the masses essentially. Why was so much attention paid during the Clinton years to a stupid blue dress and what was done with a cigar? Totally irrelevent, but it titillated the masses(and likely the reporters who wrote about it in the first place). It's easier to write about fluff, and easier to digest it as well. Needing to actually think about the state of the world and your role in it is sobering. Most people don't want to be sober. Do you think the majority of people really want(or are able) to read an in- depth analysis of world events be it Peak Oil, the ecconomy or Darfur? They want sound-bites of garbage- pre-digested pablum.

So as the fiddler fiddles while the world is burning, we'll just continue on as we have been. It would take too much intellectual effort to do otherwise. The sad thing is how suprised people are when events transpire- are they now only hearing about oil, climate change etc for the first time? Well if they they get their "knowledge" from "People", "Sports Illustrated "and "Family Circle" magazines, they probably are. How much time does Martha dedicate to the impacts of frenzied shopping and decorating on oil use and climate change anyway?

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While I am reading this article, one of the stories on Alternet's frnot page under the heading of From the Wire is this story: Saved By The Bell" Star Sues the National Enquirer For Libel... Do I care about a star and his/her libel suit? No. I don't even know what Saved By The Bell is.

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The media has found the method for mass appeal; target short term memory, instant gratification and the illusion of a perfect life. The reality of daily living as has evolved in this society has created a population that is detached from nature, ignorant about their own inner self and have little meaningful contact with each other outside of very structured and superficial interactions (that are dictated by the pervasive and unrealistic "politically correct" and "social expectation" standards). The media then exploits this cumulative misery by offering mindless entertainment, advertising that promotes the idea that if a certain product is purchased, a specific medication is ingested or a flawless appearance is acheived then life will be the perfection of happiness and contentment. The vast majority has become a part of this now delusion in spite of the fact it is essentially offers only short term relief and is empty of any long term satisfaction or contentment. On the other hand there are those people who see through this and live their lives with maturity and responsibility towards nature and all of life. They will be the ones who will save this societ from itself.

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Yup. Bread and circuses indeed.

I do the layout for one of our local papers and do the sorting of AP wire copy to boot. I have been continually amazed that the AP and I understand Knight Ridder etc. have all been making Idol results part of their general/national news feeds. They do have side stories on Idol properly categorized under Entertainment and I've stuck some briefs about it on my entertainment/people pages... but on deadline when combing the latest wire and watching such slugs (story titles) as Iran-UN, US-Iraq, Darfur Talks, WhiteHouseShakeup suddenly interspersed with American Idol is rather disconcerting.

Who the hell is relying on their newspaper for Idol results? Who thinks Idol results are news items worthy of people's attention anywhere near stories about international deficits, genocide, wiretapping, bombings in Iraq etc.?

Are Idol results on a front page supposed to sell papers? If so, should anyone lamenting the decline of the newspaper be surprised reader faith in newspapers has faded? The perceived traditional value of newspapers as sources of analysis and insight is obviously endangered or extinct if Idol results are on the front page.

I tend to believe that in terms of news readers, you are what you eat. If you feed your customers pablum and absolutely irrelevant content that you think directly matches their appetite, don't be surprised when they start considering your paper and others, to be pablum and irrelevent in content.

If you want to sell newspapers and keep newspapers relevant, then create real NEWSpapers, not scandal sheets, full of Idol and Survivor recaps, the latest on Brangelina spawn or actual news dumbed down to the equivalent of junk food. Build a NEWSpaper no matter how big the temptation to snag a quick dollar from the easily entertained instead of cultivating the patronage of a more faithful well informed reader.

Idol results on front pages?? I'm nauseous at the thought of it and I've seen it done. My neck is getting sore from shaking my head.

If papers wouldn't push Idol results to the fore, they wouldn't seem to matter as much to Joe Q. Public and we could get back to discussing real problems.

Related tangent: I was equally horrified by the number of national news wires carrying pieces debating the news acumen and gravitas of Katie Couric, Meredith Vieira and kin. They might as well have been arguing over who could win in a fight, Mighty Mouse or Mickey Mouse.

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If Idol is not real news - is the Haditha slaughter news.

Our Commander in Chief has been finally informed by Time Magazine that some of his troops murdered innocents in Haditha. His own Pentagon and his officers decided that this little problem might cause him a problem. The axis of evil could be assigned to Bush- Cheney- Rumsfeld.

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I'm getting so sick and tired of someone on the Left having a halfway decent argument about the erosion of intellect by "infotainment" and then screwing up their own argument by somehow linking that to being fat.

Listen, honey, just because you look like Calista Flockhart does not mean you are morally or intellectually superior. It means that you're probably a lousy cook.

I think that argument is part of the "clownification" of America as well. I'd rather have 5 friends who are smart, funny, and fat than 500 who are smug, self-absorbed, and skinny.

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I agree with everything you wrote save for your comment about Barry Bonds. Bonds is not cheater. He has never failed a drug test and steroids were not considered an illegal substance by Major League Baseball during the period in which he has been accused of using steroids.

A good example of the clownification of our country was Congress jumping into the steroid controversy and calling baseball players to testify before them about steroid use in their game. Talk about an exercise in triviality.

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Ya gotta love the image of a nation of fat, overfed clowns - not the jolly, vibrant kind - but the dull, stupid "I am America's last, best, hope kind. Then one goes postal on American Idol, but he's still not smiling because this isn't just a fat, malevolent clown with no future, this is a stupid, fat and malevolent clown with no future (or substitute American citizen for clown ad lib as they are the same).

They've been groomed to live unfulfilled lives and to fill the factories and fast food joints (between stints in foreign wars) and having no better hope than the lottery or Amerikan Idle (sic). What a waste of carbon.

Can't you see a dozen or so of them shirtless and painted up at a ballgame, drunken to the point of being guilty of even more stupidity and violence, and then drunkenly belching out a "We're number one" to the camera while wearing an extremely clever, oversized foam rubber hand and extended index finger bearing the same Neanderthatl message.

The envy of the world.

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Why not watch fictional clowns? We get a daily dose of a real First Clown spread all over Fox news.

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Just as egregious as the non-stop media circus about American Idol is the vast amount of newsprint and TV time devoted to Katie Couric. You would think she's America's senior stateswoman retiring from the Senate. She's just a witless, worthless pretty face offering us no-news day after day, and all she's doing is getting a slightly different platform on which to parade her vacuity. Though this time she may be better scripted. Who cares about her, her career, her private or public life? But she (and American Idol) are relentlessly covered because they are cheap stories that demand no more research than a quick Google or two. Anyone can write them and cover them. If only we had the kind of journalists who spent years digging into Whitewater now working on the monthly scandals of this Administration. That would be news.

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Rome had its circuses, so the bad news about its decline was hidden from its citizens. Today more publicity is given to American Idol, The Da Vinci Code, and Brittany Spears' pregnancies. Why is that? It's so that the bad news about global warming, the Iraq war, the rape of our environment, millions of Americans losing their jobs and falling into poverty, our declining health care, and the enormous profits taken in by the likes of crooked corporations like Adelphi and Enron can be pushed to the back pages. Rome fell to the barbarian hordes because of its excesses. We seem to be taking the same path.

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Though I probably would have used a different word than clown.

Since the Media giants own the studios, the TV, and the papers, its not surprising that they use their full powers to promote their own shows.

Face it. A show on Darfur won't bring ratings, it will drive them away. A show on Paris Hilton will bring ratings. So that's what they do.

But it's been a while since I noticed that most people would rather just do their job, raise a family, go to church, see a game and live in their little cocoon world.

Heck, even Faith Popcorn was predicting that 20 years ago.

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I like reading your comments on this blog in my spare time. It reminds me of the good old sixties. You people are entertaining to me. However, you atheist liberal lefties (the smallest minority on this planet) need to stop bashing everybody else. You are just a clown if you think you have some “divine” knowledge, which will change the world. Knowing and doing are two different things. I hate to disillusion you, but the truth will not set you free. If you were president list three things that you would do in three sentences without any explanation. Stop pollution or create universal health care these goals mean nothing, get the picture. I bet it will be a three ring circus.

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Is not just the "news" coverage of American Idol...

But the fact that all entertainers receive standing ovations on talks shows like Ellen and Oprah.

I can't think of any other phenomena that speaks more loudly to a shallow culture--stand on your feet for the people who pretend to be other people.

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Thank you Steven Pizzo for saying what I've been grumbling about for years. I'm sick of the stupid news items that aren't news nor are they worthy of news. Who cares what the Hollywood and sports people are doing - I want to know why Bush and his crimes aren't front page news and why we aren't impeaching the lot of them. Why aren't we hearing about our loss of privileges or the government's spying? What on earth has gotten into this country and all the people in it? We should be outraged that "they" give us garbage and call it news? What is hiding behind all the entertainment? We're hearded like sheep and no one seems to give a flip. What's wrong with us? Wake up America before it's too late.

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Exactly how does Darfur sell newspapers? Who wants to buy ads on the genocide hour? But give me pseudo-talent, and I'm all ears and wallets!!! Some brain parade who posted above me tried to make this a left/right issue. Dumbing down America is an American issue.

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It applies here because you don't have to rely on the newspaper's format. I have RSS feeds that pipe in info from the NYTimes Intl, Natl and Regional News, LATimes, BBC, Guardian and Independent. Likewise, if I check a periodical only, I can pick and choose the stories. I haven't purchased a newspaper in years.

Of course, this requires that one be marginally proactive in following current events.

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Couldn't have said it better....

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The clownification was carried to a righteous peak this morning with the tear drenched exit of celeb Katie 'Gag me' Couric plastered all over the generic media as if the Almighty itself had just given up its key to the executive washroom!

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...and the larger points that other Alternet readers have made, which is that this article will most likely be the most read and most commented on this week (or perhaps month), even though it says nothing of substance, nor is its subject matter worthy of column space or discussion.

But since the Liberals who populate this site (full disclosure: not a Liberal, but not a Conservative either - there are other philosophies, you know) love to hate and bitch and whine about pointless minutae like this, here is some perfect hate crack for them.

Pathetic.

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It's not anything new, it's been going on for a long time. Ed Murrow dressed down the TV industry in 1958:

"...if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live. I invite your attention to the television schedules of all networks between the hours of 8 and 11 p.m., Eastern Time. Here you will find only fleeting and spasmodic reference to the fact that this nation is in mortal danger. There are, it is true, occasional informative programs presented in that intellectual ghetto on Sunday afternoons. But during the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live. If this state of affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read: LOOK NOW, PAY LATER.

For surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communication to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities which must be faced if we are to survive. I mean the word survive literally...

One of the basic troubles with radio and television news is that both instruments have grown up as an incompatible combination of show business, advertising and news. Each of the three is a rather bizarre and demanding profession. And when you get all three under one roof, the dust never settles. The top management of the networks with a few notable exceptions, has been trained in advertising, research, sales or show business. But by the nature of the coporate structure, they also make the final and crucial decisions having to do with news and public affairs. Frequently they have neither the time nor the competence to do this...

This nation is now in competition with malignant forces of evil who are using every instrument at their command to empty the minds of their subjects and fill those minds with slogans, determination and faith in the future. If we go on as we are, we are protecting the mind of the American public from any real contact with the menacing world that squeezes in upon us...

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.

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Here here! Talk about the dumbing down of our citizens. Personally I believe the Bush administration loves this kind of crap. They can't have the people smarter than the Pres because then they'd all see what a useless pair of tits on a bull he is.

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You're damn right I'm embarrassed for what this country has become; and I, like most who read AlterNet and other thinking-person's alternatives to MSM crap, feel like Patrick McGoohan in "The Prisoner" every single day. Just this morning I was treated on all three networks to the rerun footage of "Bradgelina" parading with one of his/hers/their kids in a bunny suit as we heard - for about the ten-thousanth time – the Earth-shattering news that "-gelina" had a baby. This wasted five or ten minutes of precious news time. And the "news" is just choc-a-block, wall-to-wall with similar "Lifestyles of the Filthy Rich and Uselessly Famous." Honestly, I can no longer distinguish between supermarket tabloid garbage and what passes for news in the "legitimate" media. Makes one feel like one is living in an insane asylum. The worry: how long can sane people live in an asylum before it makes them crazy?

If it is true that all empires and nations go through the same phases, then the "moronification" of America, our "fat-n-happy-n-stupid" phase, shows that we have started down our oil-greased slide to oblivion. To me, this makes the current media circus sideshow even more onerous. As the public purveyor and exibitor of our zeitgeist, the MSM holds the key to stopping this slide – but, not only do they refuse to use it, but they've turned it into plastic and tinsel and hidden it up the butt of a cupie doll.

There's no one else to blame more for this mess than a public media which puts its own self-congratulatory and self-amusing cynicism above the truth. It's not just about profit (although that is a BIG part of it); it is also about the "news" media thinking that they can invent the news.

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I must say, I do not agree with a single word etched in this flatulent diatribe. My God... It has been YEARS since I have read anything so blatantly off the mark. Yes, we live in a dangerous world. The only way to retain even a shard, let alone a semblance of sanity in this world out of whack, is to leaven the sour and toxic news with a tinge of sweetness. Most editors understand this. The writer of this screed does not.

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It is what it is, and some of the things about it simply amaze me. Look at the total number of votes people send, for instance. More than any elected official gets. I can't help thinking what could happen if that many people cared about something else.

Look at the mind-boggling amount of money those votes represent to whatever phone company it is that gets paid for the text-messages. I also can't help thinking how much money could be raised, a buck at a time, if people were motivated by something else.

Look at how everyone involved drinks, drives and wears the corporate logos. What if we did that with other emblems that meant more, for reasons other than corporate ransom?

That being said, again, Idol is what it is. It's some of the only TV I watch, outside of movies and an eclectic bunch of strange stuff like Penn & Teller's Bullshit. Put aside the corporate strongarm machine, and it's pretty honest. Nobody eats bugs or drops trou, and you can watch people grow, even taking into consideration the tender ministrations of the best handlers in the business. I'm a real cynic about this stuff, but that's what appeals to me. It beats hell out of the 99% pure horseshit that passes for entertainment the rest of the time.

As for it's being on the front page--TV sucks so much, why shouldn't it be right out front in the fatally flawed, biased, bought-and-paid-for media marketplace? It doesn't displace the real news. We don't get real news from the papers, or from tv or radio, what with corporate suppression, flawed or dishonest reporting, embeddedness and down and dirty partisanship.

The NYTimes has fired three reporters recently for making things up, and that's just one paper. You have to scrounge less to find the honesty in American Idol.

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Pizzo makes the point, even if he's unctious about it. We're a long way from the world depicted in "Good Night and Good Luck". Even in that world, 50 years ago, Bill Paley whined to Ed Murrow about the commercial pressures CBS faced every day, pressures to not offend sponsors with controversial attacks on Joe McCarthy, and Murrow, THE legend of objective TV journalism, was forced to do fluff interviews with Liberace (in which he asked the closeted gay entertainer, with a straight face, when he would marry and what he looked for in a wife) and other pop stars so he could get to do the hard news pieces he is now famous for.

After three or four generations of transition, we've arrived at "clownsville", an apt image for a nation besotted by mass entertainment so dumbed down that you really don't even have to watch it or read it or play it, because the formula is hard-wired into our collective psyche.

Every summer, there's a succession of flat, humorless "romantic comedies" coming out of studios, to go along with the lifeless, boring action films, and the lifeless, flat animated sap...they all look, play and sound the same. Cary Grant and Carole Lombard are spinning in their graves in perpetuity. The occasional exceptions---"Shrek" or "Something's Gotta Give"---only prove the rule.

On TV, the heavily scripted, tightly produced "reality" shows continue to mawkishly unfold in such predictable melodrama that they've become the visual equivalent of eating jelly beans until you have a sugar stroke. On radio, the shock jock formula honed by Limbaugh, Stern and Imus has been copied ad infinitum around the country, to a point of limitless repetition and vacuity. You listen more to the rhythms and sound bytes of transitions than to the actual spoken content, which is often like white noise in a factory. With some exceptions (Rachel Maddow, Amy Goodman, Mike Papantonio) vitriol and bile in place of ideas and insight.

Behind all of this razzle dazzle is the tragic real world reality that all mass media has been branded, commoditized and consolidated into one spinning mass of vapid crap, the sole purpose of which is to sell virtually any product with tits and ass. Ratings are the holy grail. To paraphrase a recent comment by one of Hollywood's top execs, in a rare moment of candor, the infotainmentsphere is no longer "executionally dependent". In the BS lingo of the biiz, this means that quality is no longer job #1 (believe it or not, for some it used to be). All that matters is who's watching, and how many?

In this methamphetamized climate, Pizzo's clarion call for newspapers to put only hard news on page one is like asking women to go back to bustles, floor-length bathing skirts and the rhythm method. Sorry, Pizzo, the train's not only left the station, it's already across the Rockies. We can wish for the halcyon days (the reality is they weren't so halcyon for a lot of us) of Ed Murrow, Walter Cronkite, JFK's Camelot, the Pentagon Papers in the NY Times, Woodward and Bernstein and the Watergate Hearings, but what we've got is Fox "News", Bill Frist, Rita Cosby, Bill O'Reilly, "American Idol", "Daddy's Spoiled Little Girl", the New York Post and Katie Couric anchoring CBS News.

Not much of a trade-off. In terms of how it's reported and absorbed, Washington has become "Hollywood for ugly people". Britney Spears latest dropped baby incident is injected with enough fake gravitas to make it appear earth-shaking to the eyes and ears of the bubblegum nation, while the Marine murder scandal in Iraq, which has more than enough real gravitas on its own, is reported like another yawn filed under "outrage fatigue" in the information morgue.

If Ed Murrow were working today, he'd be sandwiched between Van Sustern and Zahn. Then he'd be cancelled. My advice is read non-fction books, except the ones that are fiction.

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Move over "American Idol",
The Pitt basterd takes "center ring".

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Not just what it said, but what is it trying to tell you? I hear it loud and clear... brace yourselves.

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Why all the surprise? Cream doesn't rise to the top, whatever is paid for in America gets the most exposure, whether it be in the MSM or anywhere else. It wasn't always this way; there used to be SEMI-independent news departments and organizations, but when the networks were bought by defense contractors and multi-national media conglomerates, the transformation of all media into a whore tool of those who could afford to buy them was complete.

Simon and his fellow producers and FOX-TV throws around several million bucks in payola, and ALL YOU WILL HEAR ABOUT IS AMERICAN IDOL FOR AS LONG AS THEY WANT YOU TOO AND AS LONG AS THEY CAN AFFORD IT.

The government welcomes and facilitates this, because the ravenous whores in the MSM come running when the government has decoy issues they want to create out of thin air and lies they need to spread and taxpayer cash of their own to spread between the legs of the wanton writhing MSM.

You want fame? You want power? You want stardom? Everything in this world can be bought AND IS BOUGHT except real talent and true inner beauty... ask Paris Hilton.

The majority of Americans aren't consuming the majority of trash produced by the MSM, aren't reading tabloids in supermarket checkout lines, and aren't worshipping celebrities at the altar of Inside Edition, ET, and Access Hollywood; it just appears that way because NOTHING OF ANY REAL VALUE OR IMPORT can COMPETE in a phony unreal society created by ready cash and INSTITUTIONALIZED PROSTITUTION driven by THE BOTTOM LINE.

But such a society absolutely needs to exist to support and enable the fascism and "Endless War" crimes of its Nazi leaders.

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The American idol corporate star making machine robs genuinely talented musicians the opportunity available to previous generations. I mean, how long would a young Neil Young have lasted on the program? Corporate music is sanitized for your protection.

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With all that we think we know, we remain incapable of wrapping our minds around the depth and scope of it all.

Bush told Rwandan officials today that he would help them to track down those responsible for the genocide in 1994 ... while he does nothing substantive about the genocide in Darfur today.

The new Treasury Secretary nominee is called a 'Wall Street Whiz" with 'integrity' without mention that his company,Goldman Sachs paid tens of millions in fines and penalties to the SEC to settle fraud violations.

Senate Majority Leader Frist has killed more progressive legislation in less than 3 years than most of his predecessors have done in their entire careers, but this summer he will pander to his conservative base --- some of whom remain without healthcare coverage, all of whom are being price-gouged for energy and fuel, most of whom don't really understand the disaster of Iraq --- by focusing on Gay Marriage, Flag-Burning, and other at best peripheral issues to mainstream America.

The freedom to bury oneself in American Idol, Wife Swapping, Fear Factor and dozens of other mindless television programming is not the fault of broadcast networks. Nor is it their fault that people choose to be lazy, to not vote, to avert facing political and economic realities, to engage in counter-productive behaviors, and to fail to use their minds or opt for common sense.

People want to trust their government. The Vietnam generations did too and they learned that trust must be earned; it is not an entitlement of elective office.

Whether the current generations are vulnerable to education remains to be seen. It isn't looking good. They simply don't connect to the compelling need for a tax-supported electoral system, which prohibits private contributions. At some level, many of them have a vague sense of the relationship between corruption and campaign funds, but it doesn't register on a personal impact basis.

Accountability is feasible, but there are far too many agendas and diluted support for change. Fundamentally, the foreign and domestic policy disasters we face could not take root if we financed our politics on a more rational, less-corrupt basis. Until this occurs, we will keep fighting exhaustive battles and losing overall.

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Tha author is correct about the American Idolization of news . Entertainment has dominated the front page and lead broadcast of most news organizations.
Since I work in the news media I saw that my paper ran "American Idol" stories for two weeks ad nauseum. I could care less who gets a record contract.
But what drives the news media is ratings (that's why American Idol has higher ratings than 60 Minutes).
Advertisers who sponsor a show want to reach the 25-49 age group. Hence most of AI's audience will be in that age range. Same with most programming on cable, like ESPN and MTV, prime-time programs such as Grey's Anatomy and Desperate Housewives. Advertisers know they'll watch these shows and probably buy their products.
Meanwhile most Americans don't have the finances to run a network or buy a newspaper. So therefore we ARE subjected to the programming and news articles which appear in the daily news. This causes us to have a reactionary relationship to what we see and read. YOU are a consumer of what is on the airwaves and in print.
If you have a few million to BEGIN a news organization you'll understand how difficult it is to fill a paper with articles but unfortunately we seem to be more interested in entertainment than the news in Iraq-well, maybe not all of us. And then you have to deal with advertisers (the business community), irate readers (subscribers) and the publisher. I deal with this everyday.
It is hard for media today to separate the genres from the front page. But this is what "the people" want. If you want entertainment, you'll get it until you're amused to death.

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Unfortunately that has become reality. When the biggest news stories of the day and the most covered and talked about is American Idol (I must be one of the ten or fifteen who has never seen and never plan to see this update of the Ted Mack Amature Hour), Hillary Clinton's private life (never mind the issues), and some movie star having a baby.
Oh gee, I really care about this garbage...
right
Actually, now that I think about it, it should be the National Enquirer gossip obsessing of the media!!!!
If they are too lazy and stupid to do actual news then maybe they should go to work for the gossip rags and give us some relief and keep Edward R. Murrow from turning in his grave.

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that we know American news outlets are a joke, so we need to get our news elsewhere.

If you want to know what's really going on, go to Al Jazeera, the BBC, The Guardian, Asia Times--there are fifty good sources reporting the news of the world without American corporate interference.

Get a shortwave radio, and a magazine with schedules, and listen to English-translated national broadcasts firsthand.

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Amen!!

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... with your analyses.

http://justiceputnam.blogspot.com/

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Being born in 1945, as a "Boomer" it seems that the best of times from the 50's through the 90's were our's. With the arrival of the 21st century, it is poignant that we will not be around to see the havoc that the Bush Administration & Republican Majority in Congress have wrought on the US. To paraphrase George W., we will leave it to future generations to sort out the serious problems of Iraq, global warming, and our nation's financial collapse.

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A couple weeks back I attended one of those marketing focus groups where they pay housewives and the unemployed $75 for 90 minutes, ostensibly soliciting their insight and opinions. To qualify, a person was required to be rabid television viewer, which I'm not, but hey, its 75 clams.

The drill required watching 5 or 6 local news anchors from around the country and comment on their presentation and how well they connect with the viewers. Really tedious stuff, since the news selections they presented from major cities all appeared to be identical - a shooting in Philadelphia, really, really awful traffic in downtown Atlanta, high gas prices in Portland, drug bust in San Diego, and such.

During the "feedback" session I managed to keep silent for most of the time. When I appeared to be the only one left, I was called on, "And which newscaster did you find most appealing? Who was your favorite?"

I unloaded, "Geez-iss, are you kidding me, they all suck! Who cares about local talking heads anyway. The local news is such crap! I Tivo'd a news broadcast three months ago, and none that has changed a bit - 3 murders, traffic, and high gas prices! Why don't you just turn the local news into the Home Shopping Network? Hey, if you want to really be edgy, how about dragging some babbling, stumble-bum off the street and have them try to read the teleprompter. Or maybe some drooling idiot. Now that would be entertaining. And they would be completely undifferentiated and non-threatening too, much like the parade of clowns we just got through seeing..."
Hey, I felt like I got to vent, and got my $75 too.

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And it's all happened before. Hearst used these tactics to start the Spanish-American war in order to sell more papers. If newspapers have been outright lies and crap during some periods of history and not others, we have to ask ourselves what the differences in place in the dominant culture were at the time. In other words, if we have periods of Hearst and Fox News, and we have periods of Murrow, Wallace, and Rather--what were the prevailing conditions that lead to those periods being so different? (gut says it has something to do with the effects of education on the public's tastes). Meanwhile, this culture has not, in most cases, been exposed to death and its results. Therefore, some people find things like Rotten.com and Feces of Death just to satisfy their curiosity about the natural results of living, others pretend it never happens. The fluffy news does not show images of death or sex, arguing that they corrupt young minds and disrespect the dead. This allows the soft and fuzzy show to not show the natural results of war. We get bodies wrapped in blankets, not screaming pregnant women dying as they try to give birth while peppered with machine gun fire. A little visual honesty would go a long way in steering social policy.

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The braindead rule here in Australia as well . We also have Idol, Big Brother , X Factor.. whatever inane piece of crap that comes out of America will be copied over here for the equally moronic Aussie suburbanites.
no better example is provided than that of the trolls submitting their rants here. Anyone notice how they seem to be coming out of the woodwork more and more on this site. Maybe they are getting sick of backslapping each other in the face of rising debt, higher mortgage payments and an out of control big government . It must get frustrating constantly talking about taxes and big government , they probably bore each other to death.
I especially love the ones who dont claim to be conservative then go on a rant about taxes and big governemnt. Hey guy, that is a central conservative tenet you freaking numskull!

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It's all a bit too surreal for me. People are dying on the other side of the world in a war WE started, the President is stealing, cheating, spying, and lying, and the front pages and magazines here in the good ol' US of A feature primarily fluff pieces and tales of celebrities.

When in the store, my mind reels at the number of magazines dedicated to tracking every single little move made by celebrities. Who are they dating, who did they tick off, what are they wearing, how much do they weigh this week, who are they screwing, what are they working on, how much money do they have, how much money were they offered, who do they like, who don't they like???

WHO CARES?!?!

I see the papers and news focus on Natalee Holloway and various other "human interest" stories, and I wonder "Where are the stories about our government's rotten deeds?" or "Why is the Diebold story STILL not in the papers?"

...And then I remember Winston Smith. Not the actual Winston Smith, but the "Winston Smith" that is working for every newspaper and TV news show. The many Winstons who are most certainly being paid questionable wages to clip, edit, snip and reshape the news. Story about the NSA's wiretapping? SNIP! We'll just replace that with a sympathetic piece about missing white girls in Aruba. Story about the President's shady dealings? CLIP! We'll just toss that in the incinerator and replace it with a fluffy feel-good story about the government cutting back on the restrictive searches at airports (and increasing the chocolate ration, no doubt.)

People getting upset with the President? Doubleplus bad! Pay no attention to the President's approval rating... Look! It's time for the two minutes' hate! We'll just slap a video of "Osama Bin Laden" on the screen and you can get all that aggression out by directing it at the enemy.

Millions of them. Obedient, party-line Winston Smiths. Maybe they doubt what they're doing, but they keep doing it. They keep protecting the Inner Party, and they keep regarding the proles as incapable of detecting the deception. Perhaps they're right; Most of the proles don't know what's what, after all.

I used to read William Gibson and Phillip K. Dick's cyberpunk-genre novels and think, "Wouldn't it be cool to live in that dark cyberpunk future?" And then it dawned on me; I realized that we are living in a dark future with high technology, computers in every home, cybernetics, robotics, corrupt all-powerful mega-corporations, and a deep-rooted corporate plutocracy controlling everything, including the wars and the profits from them. We're there, baby. We've been there for a long time, now.

Spying on us. Wars for profit. Elections stolen by computers.

We love you Big Brother.

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Am I right Mr. Nero....

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It seems that very soon giant sales for cars/appliances will be headline news in Amerika!

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Intersting that the author should use this incredible series to draw parallels with today's TV fare.

Especially considering that McGoohan was originally contracted to produce 30 episodes, after the first 13 a halt was called and after renegotiation a final 4 episodes were created to "clear things up" (ie: to try and help the public make sense of the convoluted story arc).
What we are left with is a flawed masterpiece.

BY THE WAY: The Prisoner is taken to "The Village" which was on the coast, not on an island.

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Well said Stephen!

The distraction and ad nauseum of celebrity based entertainment or the latest rich white blonde woman crime victim contributes to the numbing down of the American citizenry. The real goal is to sell products and services to consumers at the lowest marketing cost, at the lowest common denominator, and at the lowest program content cost. Entertainment is rarely about asking the hard questions and demanding answers. Distraction as such serves corporate and right-wing interests.

Visit my blog "People For Progress"

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to gain insight as to why the American Media tends to do the things they do. i spent 5 years at the NBC network, and i gotta tell ya, GE calls the shots, ultimately. GE, as you all know, also has *more profitable* contracts w/our government making things that kill people. think they're gonna bite the hand that feeds em? this goes across the media board, and to my knowledge, ratcheted up with the Great Telecom Deregulation of 1996. 'Buzzsaw' illustrates this corporate influence over the 4th Estate (and most things media) with depressing factuality.

and as far as clowns for citizens, couldn't agree more. of course, i'm biased.

i worked on a soap opera.

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Thank You for writing this article.
I started noticing the craziness of the "idol phenomenon"
when my son was in IRaq last year. I remember sitting at my desk at work and becoming nauseated from overhearing hours of conversations about American Idol from co-workers on the other side of my cubicle. I thought to myself, what is
all this talk about how the "troops are heroes and fighting for our freedom?" I thought, you mean, my son is risking his life
to protect the freedoms of people like my co-workers? The one's who know more about the latest american idol contestant than they know the latest american casualty in Iraq? Oh, hell no. That's when I told myself, these people are not worthy of whatever our government says our troops
are over there for. The troops are alone. We have abandoned them and the government loves it. The government loves how americans are being distracted with these worthless, mindless shows while they send our troops
to Iraq to be sitting ducks. The troops are in Iraq trying to stay alive and protect each other, they don't give a rats ass about anything else, they don't have time. They have no other choice.
They have no say.
Listening to my coworkers spend hours discussing, debating, and predicting the outcome of the next episode of American Idol, was crazy making for me. I kept a photo of my son in Iraq holding a weapon on my desk and as my co-workers gathered for the daily ritual of discussing Idol crap, I was choking back tears for my son, the one that was dodging Bullets and RPGs in Iraq.
If you ask me, the only "American Idol" is the "American Soldier". Can you imagine the discipline it takes for a soldier not to choke his commander? Now, that is talent!

By the way, the day I quit my job I quit early in the day.
When I got home I turned on the TV to watch the news and guess what the top story was about?

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I am an English teacher who has been living in Taiwan since May of 2001, and when I go home I see these faces staring at me from the cover of People, Us Weekly and other such publications which line the supermarket aisles and I always think to myself, "Who are you? Why are you there?" I really notice a gap when I try to have a conversation with my sister, she uses words like "Survivor," "The Apprentice," and "Idol" like I should know what she is talking about; she name drops celebrities like they are someone whom I went to high school with. This is a woman who cannot name five world leaders, past or present. What is wrong with this situation? I would be more than happy to ignore the McMedia, I successfully do everyday, but it is sucking my family away from me. You know what I would like, to be able to talk to my family and friends back home without feeling like we were living on a different planet and not a different continent.

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this clown metaphor is pretty damn handy! i'd add a "lol" but it's just too damn scary!!! thanks for the good read pizzo. cheers!

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Yes the author has a point, but really is making a mountain out of a molehill.
News media is a business, and the more mainstream they are, the more important the bottom line. Rupert Murdoch may well have the mark of the Beast hidden somewhere on his body, but he's a pragmatist. He'll keep churning out bullshit as long as there's money in it. The wonderful misnomer that is Fox News is, after the Murdoch, the most popular 'News' channel in the US. That says more about the viewers and current legislation than anything else. Don't get me wrong, I think that Fox and all the other vapid news organs are a very dangerous thing. Repeatedly twisting the truth, and in many cases, perpetuating untruths that an undiscerning public wholeheartedly believe as fact. This is after all a news channel/-paper; and the common (mis)perception is that they don't lie. Even if they do, there's no consequence. Or at least there doesn't appear to be.
In the majority of European countries you have a politically independent Press Council and governing TV body both of which have the power of censure and extensive fines. As an ignorant European, I have to ask if such a thing even exists in America, and if it does, are they in hibernation like the rest of the mainstream media?
The fact is that the majority of the US media has been sitting on it's hands for nearly six years, letting a corrupt government repeatedly off the hook. The real news stories haven't been reported. It's going to take a lot to ween Mr. & Mrs. US back on to actual news again, as opposed to touchy, feely, safe stories about Taylor et al.
I've got off the point and rambled a bit, but the long and the short of it all is this; if the author doesn't like what he's reading, then change your newspaper. How hard can it be? And if enough of the papers other readers have the same view and take similair action, then the paper will change course. There are loads of examples of papers altering political slant, format etc. to comply with a changing reader demographic.
The author is complaining about the quality of the news he's receiving, when it's really the readers he should be castigating.

Oh! please don't think that I'm just taking the high road here - all American media is shite. Lucky that good ol' Europe can figure this out. The number one newspaper in UK is the Murdoch run The Sun, and most sold in Denmark - where I live - is a similar rag called Ekstra Bladet. These papers may well be the most sold, and suffer from the same populist and vacous storylines. Where I think the difference lies is that the majority of readers know that their paper is shite, but are quite happy to read tittilation and local exposé stories (No International news longer than a paragraph here), taking them with the prerequisite pinch of salt. They'll get the real news on the BBC later that evening at 6 or 9 o'clock.

Just a side comment. It's interesting to see that the mainstream media in the US repeatedly goes for the lowest common denominator, whereas in Northern Europe the common perception is that the way forward is the opposite. Free newspapers, either on public transport or delivered to your door, Internet news media and Bloggs have led a lot of papers to come to the following conclusion; we're going to sell less papers, and they'll be at a higher price. For that not to become a vicious circle - higher prices leading to even less sales etc. - these papers are going to have a USP. They will become more 'magaziney' (sic). Expanded in-depth articles, more colour, more culture, more foriegn news. We will get better newspapers with better reporting, complementing the soundbites we've ingested from the freebies. We'll all have more opportunities than ever before to get newsed-up. We, the reading/seeing/paying public, will just have to get better at disseminating what is relevant, and what is not.

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The coercion by the so-called media:
Wouldn't 'Stupification' be a much more descriptive tag?

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Not stupid - just ignorant.

Our school system was dramatically altered in the early 1900's after some rich and powerful industrialists decided to use their influence to shape the quality of education received by the masses in this country.

They saw the benefit of producing a class of under-educated worker bees who lack the knowledge to understand or question who is truly ruling this country.

Why is our school system broken beyond repair? Why does America have the highest illiteracy rate among industrialized nations? Why don't even literate Americans ever take the time to pick up a book and read? The answer: it's by design.

If you don't believe me, read The Underground History of American Education by former New York City (and State) Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto.

This is about the wealthy controlling everyone else. All of this "left vs right" garbage is meant to divide us, while preventing us from noticing who is really ruining America... the corrupt international banking cartel.

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american idol receives more votes than president

JACQUI GODDARD
IN MIAMI
RONALD Reagan set a record when he received 54.5 million votes to claim the United States presidency in 1984. In 2004, George Bush broke it with nearly 62 million under his belt.

But in a new indicator of just how seriously America takes its elections - or, perhaps, how seriously it takes the post of president - a grey-haired soul singer from Alabama has eclipsed both by scooping an unprecedented 63.4 million votes to claim a far loftier title: the new American Idol.

The article speaks for itself.

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