On 2002-08-16 16:17, The Weekenders wrote:
And I didn’t say that I don’t NEED to know important things. And there is a huge difference of a two-person car crash and 3,000 dead from a national attack. ]
I couldn't agree more. I remember when Di died a local grade school (Dallas area) had *grief counselors* come in for the kids, for cryin' out loud! Of course some talking head had to go down to film this so we could enjoy it over dinner. There was the grief counselor going on and on in front of these kids and it was obvious that they were utterly bored, completely clueless to what was even going on, and about as much in need of grief counseling as bozo the clown!
I'm sorry, but I can't help but feel that feeble-minded pantywaists are taking over my country when some idiot decides that kids here need grief counseling over the death of a total stranger in another country -- and the talking heads are dumb enough to think it's a wonderful idea deserving publicity.
John, we had an earthquake up in Petrolia about 10 or 12 years ago which knocked down some houses and damaged Ferndale, a nearby town.
The State of California sent my cousin (a therapist) out to do “grief counseling” there.
Its a remote place out on the coast surrounded by mountains characterized by homesteader descendants, retirees, pot growers and government officials (King’s Range is nearby, a national wilderness area).
She joked to me later that she had “no takers.” Our taxpayer dollars at work.
Somehow, someway, we have to stay practical , especially urban dwellers. That was the source of my rant on this subject.
Television, despite its ability to show you very real events, takes you away from the world you should care about, right in your neighborhood..
I also think a little perspective is good. I remember a few years back a plane crashed in Pennsylvania, and it made national headlines (for days). I did a quick calculation and realized that as many people died in the plane crash as die in Pannsylvania every day or two in car crashes.
I’m not saying it’s not a tragedy, but tragedies like it happen everyday that go unnoticed by the media because they’re not spectacular.
On 2002-08-16 16:08, gemm84 wrote:
My birthday: Madonna’s birthday and Elvis Presley’s death-day. What a red-letter day.
Is THAT what made everyone think of Elvis? gemm84’s birthday?
Really, I agree with whoever said that celebrity worship is a bad sign culturally. ust think of all the stupid people with a fair set of pipes (and a large beak, hint hint) who think we care what they think. Important things happen in the world and we don’t know what we think about them until they’ve asked Keanu Reeves what he thinks.
“Bogus.”
Oh! We don’t like it, then.
Anyway, I’ll fire one more shot and put the rifle down. Why does everyone take the opportunity to celebrate someone’s life on the anniversary of their death? And we see the anniversary of our birth as a reminder of how close we are to death. I know a lot of people mourn a loss on a death-day, so it’s not a total thing… We just don’t need a whole new funeral every year once we’ve had one. And I view a birthday as just that… Glad I was born. I have 8 older siblings so believe me, the fact I’m here at all just says, “Party!” to me.
And I, too, have no use for the dead obsessions club. All those folks like James Dean who got plastered… all over t-shirts, I mean.
Why does everyone take the opportunity to celebrate someone’s life on the anniversary of their death?
Aren’t these sorts of things pretty much American things. You’re always hearing/reading of Elvis, Bigfoot, and other strange sitings in the tabloids here in the U.S. where we hope that dead people really aren’t dead. While in Europe they just report ghost sitings. At least they seem to be able to come to grips with death while we can’t.
Dewhistle hinted at it, and Paul Harvey said it (today), that Elvis is the only person who people celebrate his deathday. Does it matter? I haven’t a clue. But I’m sure it matters to someone. All I know is that he could sing, seemingly in one style only. But (off topic), when I look at him, I see my brother, who looks like Elvis did during his younger days. Maybe that’s why my brother always attracted the girls, especially at the beach. Shucks, I didn’t look like anybody, well, at least not the heart throbs.
Elvis was a “rags to riches” story. Poor makes good and has everything, materially, that he could ever want. Yet, he wasn’t happy.
Maybe some of this fascination with Elvis has to do with wishing for that “rags to riches” success and being content with not getting it because maybe we really wouldn’t be happy either.
On 2002-08-16 18:15, The Weekenders wrote:
Somehow, someway, we have to stay practical , especially urban dwellers. That was the source of my rant on this subject.
Television, despite its ability to show you very real events, takes you away from the world you should care about, right in your neighborhood..
So true. I think the reason that this country is in the sorry state it is can largely be attributed to television. The US was the first country to be widely "served" by TV and we probably still have the dubious distinction of having more channels of useless garbage available to the average person than any other country.
You wonder why Korean kids (for example) do so much better in math and science than American kids? I think it's because the Korean kids aren't spending 40% of their young childhood in front of the square-headed babysitter.
You know your nation is in trouble when a significant part of your population can "bond" with people with whom they have never had an actual, personal, two-way communication of any sort... When huge numbers of people would rather tune in and peep on someone else's "real life" than live their own... When more of your population wants to be spoon fed little snippets of titillation than will read a boring old history book... When parents will spend a small fortune to have every sports channel known to man on the big screen TV in their living room but they can't spare thirty minutes to go out in the back yard and toss a ball around with their own kids.... When teenagers (and adults, for that matter) can recite the statistics of this week's baseball hero right down to where he went to high-school, but they can't tell you the capital of the state where he attended school nor can they point that state out on a map of the US.
Well, enough of this ranting, y'all might get the idea that I'm some sort of crazy conservative Texan or something...:wink:
Well put, John but you don’t have to be a conservative to feel this way, I think.
Many liberals have carried the standard against tv as well for the reasons you stated.
About the math and science, and achievement:
You know, its just the ability to micro-focus on something that tv destroys. Worse than time spent watching it, is what it does to powers of concentration. For music teachers trying to get students to practice and practice in a quality fashion is the challenge. I think tv makes us all a litte ADD or ADHD…add the sugar from diet and ya got a nation of squirmers, unable to process effectively in nearly everything…
On 2002-08-17 17:50, JohnPalmer wrote:
Gee, it sounds as if nobody can do anything. Then how come my kids can program a VCR and my parents can’t?
ROFL! But one should ask one's self, can't, or won't? It sounds to me like your parents just have a much better handle on real life than your kids :wink:
I think in many cases the difference between our kids and our parents is that the latter have never been conditioned to let technology run their lives. How many of us have watched our kids hunt frantically for the remote for ten or fifteen minutes (in fact, some of us have probably done it, too). What do our parents do? They look around and if they don't see the remote they drag their arthritic bod's out of the chair and change the (**&^ channel manually (or blow it off completely and take a nap!)
But for perspective: Princess Diana idolization was/is pretty similar, but without any comparable accomplishment as Presley, as far as I can see.
Weekenders - are you serious? Elvis was a great pop singer who self-destructed after his sell-by date, Princess Di did tireless work for many charities. There is a massive difference.
That’s why the UK was in so much grief about her death - however, it’s all over now, and now she is fondly remembered (even as we write they’re building a memorial to her in London, which is well in keeping with UK attitudes about such people, as there are many memorials to various people dotted around London, including JFK, BTW).
I agree with that point about the difference between US and European attitudes - the US seems to idolise the famous in a different way to Europeans.
Regarding what fame can do to people, yesterday I met for only the second time the 2 year old niece of a friend. I work for an advertising agency, and last summer was used for a spot in a cable TV advert. My small role required me to say 4 words, and lasted less than a second of airtime. The advert ran for over six months, and was played A LOT.
Anyway, this little girl was in the habit of watching TV with her sisters & mum, and everytime the ad came on, they watch avidly & say the words along with me. The mother knew me, and would say “What does Martin say?” and they’d all chorus “No Tax to Pay”.
So when I met little Isobel for the first time in over a year, she came over calm as you like and said the words, and then happily played with me for half an hour until the family had to go.
I’m sure there’s a lesson to be learnt here, but I’m not sure what. Maybe that today’s toddler watches too much TV.
When my pumpkin head shrinks back down to it’s normal mere fathead size, I can assure you that I will try to remain…
First of all I need to apologise to Weekenders, first for attacking so visciously,(after re-reading my post it was a bit offensive). Second for letting that post hang for so long (I left for vacation that next day).
In response I never said you need to know everything, what I said was every bit of information that you receive about the world and humanity should be applied to your life in order to better our existence as a whole.
And yes you should care about things what happen to others, even if it’s beyond your control, not because it’s “ACCORDING to TV” but because people have a responsibility to do so by virtue of elevated reasoning and emotive response. In the same sense that one should be happy about a kidnapped child being found and returned to their parents. It may be idealistic to think that you can change The World, but empathy is something that can help change your immediate reality and by extension others’.
As for being “undignified” in reacting to things beyond my control, let’s not start casting stones. Everyone reacts to things beyond their control.
Finally I guess the only reason that I reacted so “viscerally” was that I hear this type of apathetic reasoning all too often, Why should I care?, What can I do about it?
Possibly and probably nothing, but you should be Aware, in the the event that you can.
I didn’t intentionally target the response to Weekenders in particular, and I doubt that this attitude is pervasive throughout your life, or over-all thought process. But the response was targetted at the over-all lack of empathy which seems to infiltrate people’s response to the saturation of bad news in the media.
I fully understand the reaction, I just can’t abide to see people loose their sense of humanity because they hear so many “Bad” things. If nothing else rejoice in the fact that it happened to someone you didn’t know (silver lining).
I’ll step down from my soap-box now as well.
P.S.
“No Elvis is not dead, he just went home.”
Agent K, MIB
He who hurries cannot walk with dignity.
[ This Message was edited by: Sean on 2002-08-19 16:00 ]
Hi Sean:
Thanks for note. I mentioned the “with dignity” thing in reference to your signature amidst your rejection though I do feel that a sense of composure amidst elevated media pressure was pertinent to my point. i think that being a media sop is very undignified and the word “compassion” has been contorted beyond meaning by various political factions, especially by those musical extravaganzas that seemed to emanate out of an old Coke commercial.
As for empathy, I can’ t expect people to be mind-readers and often my opinions come from within a context known within my life circle, so to speak. Even if it seemed somehow apathetic or heartless to speak as I did, its coming from a person who has done and does a lot of volunteer work for the betterment of this area (where I live).
In fact, my observations in some part emanate from wishing more people would join in the neighborhood groups, disaster-preparedness teams, PTA and Site Councils on which I have served. So I am with you about empathy but I have sometimes felt that people will not get involved in their own neighborhood yet cry crocodile tears for distant tragedies as seen on tv as they sit in their living rooms behind closed mini-blinds, shutting out the kids on the block. It’s hard to give them credibility for that reason. We have many needy kids here in Richmond, CA, homeless, drug damaged and so forth and I tell ya, its a small group who does most of the work for them. I know most of em by name.
As for Princess Diana’s work with good causes(Nick T), I do not think her charity work was what so affected people and I think you alluded to that difference. I wish her impact was for her charity rather than her celebrity but I don’t believe it. So yes, I was serious.
Also, the charity usually follows the success of the achievements of the celebrity in question. Diana married well. Elvis was a great singer even if he became a drug-addled bloated parody of himself. That was my point.
Best wishes,
The Weekender
[ This Message was edited by: The Weekenders on 2002-08-19 18:03 ]
Shucks, I didn’t look like anybody, well, at least not the heart throbs. 
JP