Perish duh Thought
There was a movie a few years ago called "The Truman Show" by director Peter Weir featuring Jim Carrey in which everyone else -- wife, neighbors, retailers, etc. -- were all actors on a set of a television program that was broadcast live all the time, essentially chronicling his life. I clumsily raise the issue because sometimes I feel that so many people I encounter today are reading from scripts, scripts that make little sense. Indeed, both in public and in the media, it's hard to believe some people actually believe some of the things they are saying.
For instance, our tokenesque Secretary of Labor. Feeling a need to comment from her exalted if impotent position, Elaine Chao declared at a news conference Monday that the dockworkers' lock-out was costing "millions, if not billions" in produce rotting away in trucks. Does it not strike you odd that she doesn't know if the produce losses have reached a billion dollars yet? And if she doesn't know, why read a statement that makes her look so stupid? She's just like O'Neill, Whitman, the others whose names we don't remember, and even -- or especially -- Colin Powell. Like the president hisse'f, for that matter.
Or like the anchors who deliver what's supposed to be news. They read mindlessly from teleprompter not having a clue about what they are reading. The media is rife with ill-educated reporters, like the NPR reporter and anchor who three times referred to Dick Gephardt as the House Majority Leader, or the CNN bimbette who expressed concern about things "terroristic." Just the word is frightening, let alone that it should get by the editors.
Truly, it's getting dangerous to tune in today, not just to the news, but to the programming. With few notable exceptions, most of the shows on television today are salacious, brutal, insidious, and otherwise ugly. The producers and programmers opt for a visceral pitch to the broad gut of the lowest common denominator. Like "The Practice" which featured the defense against murder charges of a man who said he merely pulled the dead body out of the dumpster and had sex with it.
I remember a time when movies didn't need ratings.
It's not just to the programs, but the commercials, maybe especially the commercials, since the commercials are the only reason the programs exist. In one such, a national sandwich chain is offering beef sandwiches with au jus on the side. Excuse me, pour all the jus you want, but drop the au as it is a preposition. Au jus has been stumping food servers for a long time. At a prime rib restaurant in Chicago 25 years ago, a waitress asked if I wanted some au jus too. She was so pretty, I had to say yes. But what about the food chain execs, and the advertising people, and the production staff. Did none of them take French, or eat in a quality dining establishment, that they might learn the truth?
Finally, and this is truly the bottom, I happened to see a commercial that featured a lot of shots of people from behind, while hearing the message "Get clean where it really counts." It was a spot for toilet paper.
Simon and Garfunkle sang that "the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls." Maybe back in the delicious Sixties, when that song was written. The words seemed a lot more thoughtful than the garrulous graffiti that blight the subterranean landscape these days. If you're looking for short-form philosophy, you can't do better than bumperstickers. Fittingly, to cap it all off, today I passed a car with a bumpersticker that read "Don't believe everything you think." Perish the thought.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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