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The
Warren Adler E-Sheet 49
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The Medium is Indeed the Message
Remember
Marshall McLuhan? He was the fellow who
said, "the
medium is the message." I think his use of
medium has morphed over time to mean media.
Either way, it looks to me as if he was right
on target.
It is the
media, that vast conveyance that assails
us from everywhere, literally. It arrives by
paper, sound waves, light waves, electronic
bits on computers, cell phones, PDAs,
television, and what not. It penetrates all of
our senses. It is relentless, washing our
brains, assailing our minds with giant waves
of content uncontrolled by the force of the
moon or anything else.
Combating its
effects requires enormous self-discipline. The
massive attempt to keep your mind on
skepticism alert is almost impossible. A
feeble solution might be to allow your mind to
start the absorption process with total
disbelief. Believe nothing at first that
comes to you by way of the media.
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Every
word, every image, indeed, every sound,
every lyric is contrived to persuade you
of something. What to think. What to buy.
Who to love. Who to hate. |
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Build a
strong wall, and when that is penetrated, build
another wall, and another. Make it hard for the
real truth to penetrate the ramparts. It may
never. The media is in control.
I know this
is an
abstraction, but those of us inveterate
and perpetual content-absorbers will know what
I mean.
Every word,
every image, indeed, every sound, every lyric
is contrived to persuade you of something.
What to
think. What to
buy. Who to
love. Who to
hate.
Understand
that you are being manipulated by the media
itself. The media not only gives access, it gives validation. Everybody uses it for its
own purposes, some devious, some benign.
Beware.
 The
manipulation business is the biggest one on
the planet. Billions are spent by governments,
industry, and individuals to persuade you
through the media to do something or think
something. No one is immune.
Every
government employs hordes of
people to tell you what they want you to
hear or read. But that's an easy one, far from
subtle. We all know that. Politicians tell you
what is needed to get them reelected. Their
media speeches are the product of other
people, speechwriters, who fashion the
speeches through committees to persuade you of
their sincerity and to get your vote.
In the
selling game, watch out for superlatives like
"acclaimed," "unprecedented," "amazing," "fantastic,"
or "approved by." Beware of endorsements,
especially by so-called "celebrities,"
which implies that the people who endorse for
money are "celebrated."
For what? Watch out for the popular approval
ploy like "bestselling" and "bestsellers."
Best is a word that should arouse suspicion.
These words have become media words, designed
to persuade. Popularity is a passing phase, a
temporary condition, and needs constant
replenishment and perpetual recycling.
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The media
is designed to capture your mind. |
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Certain paper
media, hangovers from the past, like the major
newspapers in the three big media cities;
New York,
Washington and
Los Angeles, have become the fount of
media confusion. They employ anonymous
sources, usually people who believe their
manipulated truth is more honest than the
manipulated truth of the official
manipulators. It is simply closer to the truth
of the people who control the media, none of
which is the real truth. The papers need to
employ anonymous sources to keep their
declining public titillated and energized so
that their advertisers will get the eyeballs
they pay for to persuade you to buy their
products.
They explain
an anonymous source as "a spokesman who spoke
on condition of anonymity because they are not
authorized to speak publicly on the issue."
Why then, do they speak publicly on the issue
they are not supposed to speak publicly about?
Talking heads
on television tell you what they believe,
trying to persuade you that their insight and
brilliance is the real truth. It is the
media, the media itself, which gives them
credibility. They are prepared to confront
you, made-up and polished. Arm your mind
against talking heads.
 Especially
arm your mind against images that show vast
numbers of people demonstrating in unison,
protesting this or that for whatever reason.
These demonstrations are contrived for the
media. The contrivers and organizers want to
show you that their crowds represent the will
of the contrivers. Only the media gives them
access to your mind. Are they really the
popular will? Beware.
Arm your mind
against the terrible drumbeat of violence, the
suicide bombings, the random killings, and the
glorification of violence in fictional media
efforts like movies. They are all contrived to
keep you watching and listening, to persuade
you about something, to hold your interest so
that you can be sold a product, an idea or a
point of view.
McLuhan
understood that above all else the media must
keep people listening, watching, and reading.
When they discover through their polling that
people no longer listen or watch or read, they
discard their programming to come up with new
programming to keep people watching, listening
and reading. Media contrivers know the
transient nature of life on this planet and
the media must continue to replenish their
wares if they are to continue to persuade.
The media is
designed to capture your mind. It must exploit
human nature to keep us in its coils. We are
all
slaves to pleasure. Look how
sex and
food fascinate us. Something inside of us
is mesmerized by
violence, which is why we see so much of
it in the media. It perpetuates our
instinctive curiosity about the nature of
ourselves. The media is the mirror of
ourselves.
Now comes the
invasion of the
bloggers, certain that their truth is more
truthful than the bigger, older, more mature,
established media. I plead guilty. I am part
of it. What is now transpiring is the "war of
the media," but it is all the same, people in
the persuasion business convinced that their
persuasion is more persuasive than the
persuasion of the traditional media. Their
goal is notoriety and celebrity, perhaps even
treasure.
It's like a
round robin of futility. But I am trying
to explain as succinctly as I can what McLuhan
was driving at. Did he see it as a danger? I
think so.
So here I am
trying to persuade you that McLuhan, in
attempting to persuade us that the media is
indeed the message, has, I confess, committed
me to the object of his persuasion. Is what he
has persuaded me about dangerous to my health
and safety? Dangerous to your health and
safety? Is that why I have told you to arm
your mind against the onslaught? Is it
possible to do this? I hope so.
Have I
persuaded you?
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Warren
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