Choose your poison: Television and the mainstream media

Jon and Kate Plus 8 and 18 Kids and Counting are two of the DUMBEST FUCKING TELEVISION SHOWS to ever plague cable. The mainstream media has betrayed the public, much like how Democrats have betrayed liberals. TV is full of misinformation about the issues and nothing more than cultural conditioning to worship the corporations (not to mention keep us from thinking critically). I have lost faith in television and feel dirty on the rare occasion I do watch it.

So, what sort of cultural conditioning is our general public being subjected to? What are some of the lies being told to the public on a daily basis over network news? One only needs to pick a channel. Choose your poison. Pick a venue to rot your mind.

ABC Family
Category: Cultural conditioning
Mind numbing index (0-10, 10 being fucking stupid): 6
Poison: The most prominent poisoning that this network injects into the public is probably the mindless show The Secret Life of the American Teenager, a program about a teenage girl getting knocked up. With teen pregnancy experiencing an increase, that sort of mistake is not something that should be glorified on television, but lo and behold, it is. Increased breeding is something the corporations love to no end. It means more consumers. On top of that, teenage parents usually don't get a higher education, so that means less people learning the critical thinking skills they need to see how much the general population is getting raped by corporations. Teenage pregnancy opens a whole can of worms of sociological problems, and the bourgeois benefits from the decline of the poor. So, it should come as no surprise that corporate media is glorifying teenage pregnancy, making it look like something that is obviously challenging, but exciting. Of course, this is seen in films, too. Movies like Juno are into the pregnancy craze, meaning more cultural conditioning to make people think pregnancy is "cool". The teenage girl getting the abortion she needs and preventing many problems with her life would be a good ending, but it doesn't infect our minds with propaganda.

Fox News
Category: Misinformation
MNI: 10
Poison: At least there's one network out there that makes its worship of corporations nakedly apparent. I could nitpick at several of the commentators on that network that tell half-truths or just bold-faced lies to the public, but let's look at Bill O'Reilly. This man's debate style, when he debates people that disagree with him, is to usually get his ass kicked in the debate, and then claim victory when it is over. Victory is not achieved by simply claiming it, but evidently this is something that hasn't occurred to old Bill. If all they did was support dipshit commentators, I wouldn't have too much of an issue with them, but they have also shown their bias in news that is supposed to be unbiased. Fair and balanced my ass. Before the war in Iraq, the show did a great job of brainwashing the public into approving of the war, using emotional appeal from 9/11 as well as graphics and dramatic music to drum up support for the war for oil. Sadly, other networks followed suit (FoxAttacks.com for more information). Fox also did a good job of prematurely declaring a Bush victory in the rigged 2000 election, when they said Florida was for Bush even though other networks were projecting a victory for Gore. The eight year nightmare caused by Bush may not have ever happened if Fox News wasn't around.

CNN
Category: Misinformation
MNI: 7
Poison: The event that made CNN a member of this list was probably their bastardization of the excellent Michael Moore film SiCKO. Dr. Sanjay Gupta misrepresented the film in numerous ways, using outdated statistics to refute Moore's movie. He should have been fired from the network for this, even though he was not. CNN is just as worthy of the spanking I just gave Fox as it played up the drama for support of the oil war after Fox did, showing it lacks morality and integrity.

MSNBC
Category: Misinformation
MNI: 3.5
Poison: MSNBC is not safe from this list. It is not near as bad as Faux Noise, and it does in fact show some accurate information. But like all other networks, it has abandoned good journalism. It is a far cry from Walter Cronkite, who traveled to Vietnam and did a report on how much the war effort was failing. Cronkite did what was right, and drummed up anti-war sentiment nationwide. Even though liars like LBJ and Nixon continued the war, they did it with very little popular support. The public was ignored, but at least aware. MSNBC, indeed all news networks, have gotten into the craze of doing reports on fingers in chili and Michael Jackson rather than exposing our government for how truly evil and corrupt it is. MSNBC has decided not to be different, demonstrating its lack of integrity. It also continues to glorify the Democrats, in spite of how much they have caved in to lobbyists and betrayed liberals.

TLC
Category: Cultural conditioning
MNI: 9
Poison: This is a perfect example of an "educational" network that has abandoned education. The programs Jon and Kate Plus 8 and 18 Kids and Counting glorify mindless breeding to an extent that even surprises me. Now, a truly educational network would try to educate the public on how environmentally irresponsible this behavior is and how it is blatantly immoral to breed to get a television show. They could do a special on the racist cult the Quiverfull Movement that Jim Bob Duggar (the Duggar patriarch) is a part of. It could discuss how Mr. Duggar indoctrinates his children with his mindless, religious ideology through compulsory homeschooling he provides them. It blows my mind as to why Mr. Duggar doesn't let his children watch television. It contains the same shit he's brainwashing his children with. Of course, this channel doesn't stop at glorifying breeding. It contains several reality television shows with the sole purpose of turning viewers' brains into soup.

The History Channel
Category: Cultural conditioning
MNI: 7
Poison: When this channel isn't glorifying religion, it is glorifying war. Many of the documentaries it has aired about war are highly dramatized and don't show any of the lies and evil behind war, or give a perspective of American history through the eyes of the general public. This channel could alone rescue the general public from the brainwashing it has been subjected to over the past century, maybe doing a special on the reasons behind the decline in public education. One show that really disillusioned me with this channel was a special it did about the apocalypse as described in the Bible, crying wolf about how the signs are everywhere that the end draws nigh. The details in the book of Revelation are so vague, though, that any moron could make any circumstance look like the "end is coming". The fact that the History channel played a role in this chicken little nonsense is sickening. People have been crying that the end was near since the Bible was written. How much longer will they cry wolf?

Cartoon Network
Category: Cultural conditioning
MNI: 9.5
Poison: Children are not safe from mind rotting television culture, as this channel does an excellent job of demonstrating. The shows on this channel today are so mind numbing, I don't see how children get a laugh from them. It is no wonder the average IQ of our children is dropping. Channels like this, and Nickelodeon (another channel meant to brainwash children) are owned by companies like Viacom, whose greed is nakedly apparent. Viacom is one of the largest copyright bullies around, and has gone as far as stealing the work of others and then slapping their copyright on it.

Who owns the media? Companies. Companies, by design, are without morality. The one rule of capitalism is that profit is good. Concerns about the public's capacity for critical thinking as well as knowledge of issues are irrelevant, and in fact are harmful to the bourgeois elite. If the general public was capable of critical thinking, they could not maintain their grip on the working and lower classes. This is why our culture is up its ass in mindless television and pop culture. It keeps the average person naive and unaware, and therefore a perfect drone for the bourgeois. If the public were to awaken, and abandon the "drugs" that are forced on it by religion, sex, alcohol, and television, our corporate rulers would fall, and America would go back to being a democracy, NOT an oligarchy.