The Ascent Begins: Fighting the Static

A static filled television screen: a well-known image of meaningless noise and light, and the repeated theatrical cause of groans as the pesky neighborhood pre-teen cuts the cable wire outside. Most people can’t stand the glaring digital “snow” or the nonsensical “cccchhhh” that emanates from the speakers and rush to fix the cause of the problem. However, maybe the biggest problem, the greater static, occurs when that cable is plugged back in.

Let me stop you before you assume that I’m about to advocate more Americans going to take a hike in the woods instead of setting themselves down in front of the television every night. In the words of Edward R. Murrow television “can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire…There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance, and indifference. This weapon of Television could be useful.” Yet in a country where 99% of households own a TV and the average kid watches 600 more hours of TV a year than they spend in a classroom, only 37% could find Iraq on a map in 2006 and 20% think Sudan is in Asia. OK so maybe kids care more about cartoons than Khartoum, but they’re only kids.

But things don’t get much better with age, as the Networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC, whose nightly news viewership falls mostly into the 25-54 category, offered a total of 126 segments on genocide in Sudan, compared to 8303 for Michael Jackson, Tom Cruise, and the Runaway Bride in June 2005. Don’t get me wrong, these channels and those like Fox News and MSNBC do a fairly decent job on hot American issues such asthe Presidential Campaigns and Supreme Court rulings. However, it is nearly impossible to find something on international issues or a piece backed by the grinding investigative journalism that it takes to independently flesh out pertinent issues in today’s environment of talking points and stock answers.

Now, please allow me a moment to reflect. It was in my freshman year philosophy course I learned of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. For those of you not familiar with it, essentially Plato creates a metaphor for society where individuals are chained in the bottom of a cave, forced to watch shadows on a wall cast by a fire behind them. These shadows were all they knew and therefore that was what they believed was reality. However if one could break free, they could find his or her way from the cave where they would be immediately blinded by the daylight but eventually see the true world. (For more on the Allegory, Youtube has tons of vids, this one narrated by Orson Welles) In a nutshell, Plato said that what we know of the world is merely orchestrated shadows and one must free oneself of their chains to journey to truth.

Fast forward a few months and I’m in my Sophomore Political Science class, writing a research paper on the Deregulation of the Communication industry and learning how 5 companies; Viacom, owner of CBS; Disney, owner of ABC; AOL, owner of Time Warner; GE, owner of NBC, and News Corp, of Fox Networks, own just about everything that comes through your TV screen. (You can read that paper here) So we have 5 money-making corporations controlling everything from ESPN to Sesame Street to what news you watch. Given the overwhelming amount of television people watch and recent studies showing how viewers absorb just about everything they see on TV, and I’d say we have an entity that has the ability to cast some shadows on the wall.

A few weeks later I turned on my television and sure enough there was Mickey Mouse, that little mascot of a company I now look at with the slightest skepticism. It was the Apprentice scene from Fantasia, and I had what my old English teacher would refer to as an “Aha!” moment as I watched that cunning little mouse work. In that dark dungeon, he dons his wizard cap and brings to life a broom to do his bidding, having him retrieve water from the outside and then pour down a well, as his shadows dance on the walls. Disney it seems, provided their own modern adaptation of the Allegory of the Cave, with their mascot controlling the broom in the cartoon and his parent company perhaps doing a bit of orchestrating of their own.

But can TV and companies like Disney be solely blamed for the issues Americans pay attention to? Of course not. After all, they are entertainment companies who are giving the consumer what they like best. Even though TV has a great power to influence, those geography statistics are inexcusable in a country with as many other resources. If one is compelled, good information and statistics on issues that matter can be searched out through libraries, the Internet, journals, etc. However, not even our elected politicians, who we entrust to make it their profession to guard our society can follow through. So for instance, when Colin Powell stood before The United Nations in 2003 and showed pictures of aluminum tubes that Iraq was to “use as centrifuge cylinders for enriching uranium for nuclear bombs” as part of his case for War, nobody on either side of the aisle within our government cared to check to see if he was right. Which is too bad, as even my college Poli Sci prof correctly identified them as plain old rocket tubes, incapable of uranium enrichment.

No, I fear that there are more people casting the shadows on our walls than Mickey Mouse, Rupert Murdoch, or Colin Powell. And I fear that unlike the prisoners in Plato’s cave, Americans, from kids to the elderly have no chains to hold them. I fear we are mesmerized by the static TV, from staring at it too long. From our daily jobs or studies, to our video games or our magazines, we do not have the time nor inclination to investigate and help issues that matter most, and the news companies and politicians we trusted to help us with these tasks have proved inadequate. Somewhere, Plato and Murrow are turning over in their graves. However, if you remember that Fantasia scene, after Mickey slashes his unruly servant to pieces he falls asleep at the switch for only a minute. But when he awakens an army of thousands has sprung from the splinters, fought back, and is filling that dungeon with water from the lighted world outside. Through this blog I am taking up my buckets of water and washing out the dungeon, and instead of wasting my time perusing Facebook or catching up on Britney Spears’ latest antics I will try and dig into the truth of some of the most pressing issues today. Are China and Global warming really a threat to our future? Is it McCain or Obama who is talking the straightest? Is there light at the end of tunnel in Iraq, or is the battle lost? Which sources can we really trust to help us? These questions mark the steps of my Ascent out of the cave, and I hope by posting my findings, it will help U journey too.