good night and good luck
“We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.”
--Edward R. Murrow
I just watched Good Night and Good Luck. I really liked it. I didn't see any of the Oscar-nominated films besides Crash, so I can't comment on that debate and it's already over anyway. But the heart of the matter in this film is critical to a lot of things going on today in our world. There are so many political parallels that it's scary. I've said it before and I'll say it again--we have entered a new era of McCarthyism, except now if you're not with us you're a terrorist. Terrorism is the new Communism. The Patriot Act sounds pretty, but it lets our government spy on us without telling us that they're doing so. Our civil liberties are being stripped away and we are so terrified of being labeled as "anti-American" that we go along with it. We're being terrorized by terrorism. To say nothing of the television news. To watch the news, you wouldn't even know that this country is at war (did you forget?). There is no footage of coffins being unloaded as there was in Vietnam, rarely do they speak of civilian casualties, hardly ever does the war make the late news or cause anyone to bat an eyelash. And yet this war is, by most accounts, vastly unpopular with the American public. Why do we settle for news that isn't news at all?
The rest of Murrow's 1958 speech is here: http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/commentary/hiddenagenda/murrow.html
"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine; and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular."
--Edward R. Murrow
I just watched Good Night and Good Luck. I really liked it. I didn't see any of the Oscar-nominated films besides Crash, so I can't comment on that debate and it's already over anyway. But the heart of the matter in this film is critical to a lot of things going on today in our world. There are so many political parallels that it's scary. I've said it before and I'll say it again--we have entered a new era of McCarthyism, except now if you're not with us you're a terrorist. Terrorism is the new Communism. The Patriot Act sounds pretty, but it lets our government spy on us without telling us that they're doing so. Our civil liberties are being stripped away and we are so terrified of being labeled as "anti-American" that we go along with it. We're being terrorized by terrorism. To say nothing of the television news. To watch the news, you wouldn't even know that this country is at war (did you forget?). There is no footage of coffins being unloaded as there was in Vietnam, rarely do they speak of civilian casualties, hardly ever does the war make the late news or cause anyone to bat an eyelash. And yet this war is, by most accounts, vastly unpopular with the American public. Why do we settle for news that isn't news at all?
The rest of Murrow's 1958 speech is here: http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/commentary/hiddenagenda/murrow.html
"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine; and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular."