w ant—overw helmingly—is commercial-free television. Do you see
commercial-free television? Of course not. In U S television, big
corporations sell audiences to other businesses, and they’re not
interested in providing us w ith other options.
In an article titled The Strange Disappearance of Civic America,
Robert Putnam named T V as the culprit.
Putnam is a sociologist at Harvard w ho’s quite mainstream. He
found about a 50% decline since the 1960s in any form of
interaction—visiting a neighbor, going to PTA meetings, joining a
bow ling league. One reason children w atch so much T V is that
parent-child interaction has dropped 40% or so from the 1960s to
today—at least in part because both parents have to w ork fifty
hours a w eek to put food on the table. T here’s little day care and
few support systems available, so w hat are you left w ith? T V baby-
sitting.
But it’s a little thin to blame T V itself. It isn’t a force of nature—
it’s the core of the marketing culture, and it’s designed to have
certain effects. It’s not trying to empow er you. You don’t find
messages on T V about how to join a union and do something about
the conditions of your life. Over and over again, it rams into your
head messages designed to destroy your mind and separate you from
other people. T hat eventually has an effect.
W hat’s happening w ith T V is part of something much broader.
Elites alw ays regard democracy as a major threat, something to be
defended against. It’s been w ell understood for a long time that the
best defense against democracy is to distract people. T hat’s w hy
19th-century businessmen sponsored evangelical religion, people
talking in tongues, etc.
Kids are w atching T V forty hours a w eek. It’s a form of pacification.
It is a kind of pacification program.