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03/03/2004 Archived Entry: "Just so we're clear..."
Just so we're clear...
CNN is doing a recap on Super Tuesday, and Carlos Watson (whoever he is) compares Kerry's pending decision on picking a VP as 'kinda like a reality show.'
CNN makes my head hurt.
Replies: 2 people speak up
I just read this a few minutes ago. I love the way Mr. Gillers' mind works...
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/03/opinion/03GIL.html
Posted by The Tater @ 03/03/2004 10:44 AM NY
"As culture becomes completely commodified it tends to become the star commodity of spectacular society. Clark Kerr, one of the foremost ideologues of this tendency, has calculated that the complex process of production, distribution and consumption of knowledge already accounts for 29% of the gross national product of the United States; and he predicts that in the second half of this century the “knowledge industry” will become the driving force of the American economy, as was the automobile in the first half of this century and the railroad in the last half of the previous century.
The task of the various branches of knowledge that are in the process of developing spectacular thought is to justify an unjustifiable society and to establish a general science of false consciousness. This thought is totally conditioned by the fact that it cannot recognize, and does not want to recognize, its own material dependence on the spectacular system.
The official thought of the social organization of appearances is itself obscured by the generalized subcommunication that it has to defend. It cannot understand that conflict is at the origin of everything in its world. The specialists of spectacular power — a power that is absolute within its realm of one-way communication — are absolutely corrupted by their experience of contempt and by the success of that contempt, because they find their contempt confirmed by their awareness of how truly contemptible spectators really are."
-Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle 1967
sounds about right to me. And yes, CNN, the news is sort of like a reality show. What do you want? a blue ribbon for self awareness?
Posted by justin @ 03/03/2004 11:11 AM NY
