An Empire Burlesque
Driving home listening to Sirius Satellite Radio channel 134. NPR Now. The program called “On The Media” had an interview with a media critic from NYU. He quoted a book by a gentlemen who passed away. His name escapes me but the book was called “Amusing Ourselves To Death.” It piqued my interest because I thought of the Roger Waters album “amused to death.” The book was a commentary on the News. Specifically the media news of the modern era. It seems in history people paid attention to news that was specifically related to their town, their community, their state, or their trade. One recalls the many publications which addressed writers, artists, plumbers and smiths of all backgrounds. But it seems with modern times the news has come to be presented in a manner which the author suggests is not only disjointed, illogical, and unethical…It is presented in a way that does harm and even violence to the listener or watcher. This theory can best be summed up by the phrase “And Now this…” A change of gears so rapid, that there is no earthquake, accident, or tragedy that is able to live on in the minds of the listener any longer than until the phrase “and now this…” has been spoken. It is a desensitizing and self centered callous mindset which is left in its wake. Perhaps it is understandable for in old times a person never HEARD of an earthquake miles away killing 100,000 people because it was not needed to be known for in reality “How did it affect them?” There is an element of human drama perhaps but as far as a genuine interest and affect on their life…Not really. It is stories and presentations like this that breed ignorance rather than knowledge. Confusion over clarity. A smokescreen of pity rather than education. These dissociative facts and images that are reeled off,not only nightly anymore, but in a loop through out the day thanks to Cable TV have created an overall collective mess. The commentator then blew me away when he said that this mess “if it was labeled by the field of aesthetics would be called Dadaism, by philosophy would be called Nihilism, and by psychology would be called Schizophrenia. In the parlance of the theater it would be simply called Vaudeville.”
