A Toe Tag Response
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This comes in response to a recent email I received from a reader on my alternative and more personal blog toetagdiary.com JKdeG
My Dear Friend Patrick
Thank you for your kind and thoughtful comments to my Toe Tagged thoughts.
Which merit a reply in kind.
So...
Where to begin...?
First, I suppose with my Toe Tag blog interest in the likes of shit, tits and ass.
After a half century of writing for a wide range of audience demographics, I'm down to writing my toetagdiary.com for two people: my niece and grandson (actually, I'm not interested in my grandson reading toetag until he is in well into his 20's.)
But more to the point, my goal is to tilt reality in such a way as to get my two young readers to consider points of view totally different than the madding media mainstream (the dynamic here is not all that different from what a an artist does when she views a work from a different angle to learn something new about the integrity of the work's design.)
However...
Sadly and even very much MORE to the point, I fear shock is all we have left --- thanks to mass media --- which gains audience "traction" by increasing the shock value of its content and message over time.
Thus, as one who worked in mass media for most of his life, I've found that the end game of mass media (where “reach” is all) is to generate an emotional response from its audience --- which is more or less what McLuhan was messing around with a half century ago.
Now...
At the risk of mind-raping the obvious, I've found mass media “work” by giving their “consumer” audience a bigger emotional and/or visceral jolt this year than last – be it television, popular music, radio, blogs, politics, etc.
In short, Western mass media work very much like the drug dealer who “helps” his customer along the downward path of addiction by increasing the strength of his product.
For example, on TV:
Fifty years ago, married men and women always wore pajamas to sleep in separate beds.
Today semi-nude people of the same sex happily exchange body fluids to a pre-recorded laugh track – in between commercials for anti-depressant drugs and erection aids.
And so it's gone.
It's like a current TV ad for a high priced German car which assures a potential buyer:
“We don't just make cars … we make feelings.”
(Would have loved to hear McLuhan's take on this one.”
Anyhow...
It's been cultural light years since Paddy Chayefsky wrote the film “Network” – which starred a TV news anchor gaining overnight fame after going Prime Time berserk by urging his audience to race to throw open their windows and scream “We're madder than hell and we're not going to take it anymore” into the night.
That said....
What's the difference between Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and the madder-than-hell American Tea party and the outraged Howard Beale?
But here's an even better one?
Question: What's the difference between Huey Long and Sarah Palin?
Answer: Palin had tits and no track record as a governor, while Huey didn't and did.
By the way...
Hope you read Bly's the Sibling Society where he writes of a culture easily duped into confusing a non-event with the real thing – ala Kierkegaard's “dangerous” ice skating exhibition, or the Washington's so-called Health Care Reform Debate which shit sure isn't.
Oh yes.
Again, as one who earned a dubious living string words together as a newspaperman, I'm increasingly fascinated by the steady dilution of the English language as an intelligent means of communicating.
Like how can we understand each other if the word I used yesterday means something totally different today?
France and Spain, as you know, maintain institutes dedicated to maintaining the power and meaning of the spoken and written word.
But then France and Spain also believe in the importance of an educated and enlightened intelligentsia.
But not so here in good old market driven America....
Which is how and why I chose to play around with totally meaningless nouns like “shit” and “love.”
Yeh. I know others have nailed it way better than I...
But still.
It's a frightening trend I'd like to get my niece and grandson to at least NOTICE.
Which is how and why at some future point I hope to do a toetag lexicon from hell on words that have become totally meaningless like:
Change, progress, peace, war, new, old, improved, progress, debate, God, liberal, conservative, truth, God, news, young, good, evil...
Which is how and why I've been reduced to shit, tits and fuck.
Sort of like a guy detonating giant bombs in a boiler factory.
Bottom line?
You and I are products of a totally different culture than the one driving my niece and grandson's world.
What's worse, while we had it pretty good --- that ain't how it's gonna be for them and those they love.
How so?
One - The "myths" of Judeo/Christianity that enabled Western society to “work” for some 2,000 years no longer lend any meaning or purpose to the life of an average person.
Two – For the first time in the history of Consumer American, the next generation will have it worse.
Three – Mass media is creating a culture of sensation seeking addicts.
Four – The law has replaced ethics.
Five – We're no longer Number One
Six – We're running out of enemies
Seven – The mass media may have become a substitute for reality.
Eight – Interesting trumps meaningful every time.
Nine – Some villages must be destroyed to be saved..
Ten - Feeling bad is never good.
All of which, often moves me to blog mutter holy shit and mother fuck!
Wishing you a blessed black history month,
John de Groot
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