[TheForge] Re: [EKMetalsmiths] Knife insanity

[Andy Vida]

Ries Niemi wrote:
> 
> >       Completely agree.  The only way to stop this shit is to hurt
> >       them where it hurts most: the wallet.  Make a big enough
> >       stink and they will begin to listen as the advertisers start
> >       making the real noises.
> >
> 
> Andy- the only problem is, the reason they do this sensational
> reporting is they make MORE money doing it than not.

	That is probably true, but I think there may be a more
	sinister element involved as well.  The media, especially
	the news media, plays a VERY critical role in the control
	agendas of power.  It is THE principle mechanism by which
	political will is bent this way or that.

	Do you think this lowatt, dimwitted Fiandaca bimbo came
	up with the idea for this story?  She MAY have, but more
	likely it was fed to her by an editor upstairs.  Who can
	say where the motivations come for airing tripe such as
	this and what plans they serve?  I do not believe for a
	second that these are in any way innocent, which is to
	say the trends.  Individual reports may well be, but
	starting the trend, that I hold with great suspicion.

> All tv news these
> days is one end of the world story after another. And it gets ratings,
> and sells ads.

	They would be selling ads almost no matter what.  I am not
	at all convinced that ratings for news shows are in fact
	considered important by their respective establishments.  Were
	news just news and nothing more, then by all means I would
	hold a diffent opinion,	but news media serve so critical a 
	political function that I firmly believe one would have to 
	be naive to the point of nonforgiveness to believe that 
	there was not something far larger than ratings and money 
	at stake here.

> Every storm is the killer storm, every product recall is
> going to endanger YOU!

	Again, I do not believe this is a matter of money,
	but ather of psychological conditioning.
> 
> People love this sensationalistic crap.

	The love it because they have become ADDICTED to it.
	Read "Four Arguments For The Elimination Of Television"
	and you will learn why this is so.  It is rooted in
	the deepest cognitive mechanisms of the human brain.

> Now personally, when I think about companies endangering their
> neighbors, my thoughts run more to the poor chumps who live down the
> street from where Boeing makes cruise missiles, or next to the
> refinery. Or next to a military base, which for years were exempt from
> all environmental regs, and just dumped everything on the ground.

	Or downtown Bhopal.
> 
> There is serious journalism occasionally in America, but not much of
> it, and not on network TV. One of the last bastions of real journalism
> and investigative reporting is the Wall Street Journal.

	And even they skirt the uncomfy issues these days, which they
	didn't do twenty years ago.  They, too, are afraid to say certain
	things.  That says a lot about what this nation has become, and
	it isn't very pretty.