You're throwin' rocks today, Dude! Mark it 10!
Thankee!
Fuckin' A, your summary really pulled this thread together. Kudos!
Thanks some more, Dude.
I've known some of the folks who make the decisions about what gets on the television, and they know that their job is to give you the feelings you want to have so you'll stay glued to the screen. They don't give a shit what it takes to do it -- the content is not the product;
you are. The broadcasters don't sell programming. They sell market share. I used to party with a guy who was an A&R guy for MCA, and he put it this way: You don't have to like the taste of the bait as long as the fish do.
In
the immortal words of Peter Finch's character Howard Beale in the movie
Network: "We'll tell you
any shit you want to hear. We deal in
illusions, man! None of it is true! But you people sit there, day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds... We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality, and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you! You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even
think like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing!
WE are the illusion!".