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CDOTs #5 ANSWER: Creating Personal Currency

Contributed by: Francis Miller on 5/1/2006

Mike Rosen's Daily Column & Talk Show
Rosen systematcially picks issues that inflame passions. His listeners can call in and blather to the world. Other commentators comment about his comments. He makes money, advertisers sell products, listeners get stroked.

Janet Elway's Party for the Poor
Janet Elway allows herself to be interviewed sitting in a gold gilded chair in the parlor of her 17, 000 square foot house, talking about her depression, spiritual awakening and return to normal life. The reporter dances around her ex-husband's new punch-bunny and life without a John. The reporter walks away with a teary eyed photograph and a story; Janet Elway gets free advertising for her coming-out party for the poor.

Tom Tancredo and Mike Litwin's Bus Trip
Tancredo and Litwin take a bus trip together while Tom demagogues to outraged and incensed citizenry about immigration. He has seized upon a single issue to keep his congressional seat secure. Litwin gets Tancredo to let his hair down and give a personal interview about his troubled childhood, hero mom and deadbeat dad. Both walk away with something of value.

Sean Hannity and Alex Baldwin
Hannity and Baldwin insult each other, walk out of shows, and the phones ring off the hook. Baldwin's fans are outraged and defend him and Hannity's fans do likewise. Both end up with higher ratings, more viewers and hits on their websites. Advertisers love the frenzy.

Greta Van Susteren and Natalie Holloway
For week after week Van Susteren hammers away at the death of the week. The cuter the victim and the more desperate the mother the better. Viewers are addicted. The mother of the victim keeps the story alive and Van Susteren doesn't have to go back to chasing ambulances in Appleton, WI.

Jessica and Nick
Two talentless, total losers with dyed hair and an aversion to monogamy entertain us week after week with their breakups. The news programs relentlessly talk about it, convincing us it must be important. It fills at least one time slot in that vast media wasteland.

So, What is Going On Here? What is the Pattern?
My take on it is that both sides, the press and the personality are creating a form of currency and capital that they can exploit. None of these people are really important, genuine or authentic. Otherwise, their story could be told in a respectful way and we could move on to more important things. The fact is that the press desperately needs to hype and create a frenzy. Without initmiate details of Janet Elways sad story or Tancredo's childhood, who would bother to read the paper with its advertising. If these reporters had to go out and dig for real news, analyze data, be profound in their findings, it would be hard work. And if Tancredo had to talk about his congressional record, obessive tendency to focus on a single issue because he knows nothing about anything else, he would be back to teaching high school history.

What all of these people have in common is that they have a dependency with each other to generate current, the way a dynamo generates electricity. Out of it comes news and entertainment. It appeals to our purient interests and is one step above the thrill people get from public stonings and hangings. If all of this was erased we would conclude there is very little of importance happening in the world that should really concern us. We are so numbed out that this provides soothing background noise to keep us anethesized while subliminal messages about which products to buy are implanted into our subconscious.

I know there are people who will say that the Denver dailies and cable news programs are orders of magnitude above the tabloids and pornography on the newstands. But are they really? Showing a woman's breasts creates currency for the woman, who wants her career advertised and for the magazine who wants readers. It also creates currency for the advertiser who wants to sell products. So a transaction is created. But someone does pay. The woman pays by being exposed and devalued. Do you think more highly of Janet Elway for making a spectacle of herself? She may have engendered your pity, buy you could hardly come away thinking more highly of her because she is a victim. What if your daughter did pole dancing to get through college? It's for a good cause isn't it?

We as a society are wired into the stimulus generated by the current of these transactions. They are created out of the ether by people being willing to give some essential part of their soul, self-respect and integrity in return for a dollar, exposure, notoriety-ie. some psychic payoff. The pecuniary benefit that accrues to the advertiser and the publisher is no different in my mind than the benefit that accrues to a pimp or pornographer who benefits by using someone in his transactions. The capital that is accumulated by politicians, the press, celebs and mercantilists comes at the expense of someone's intelligence being insulted, someone's self-respect, or the truth or integrity.

I have always believed that the most dangerous people in the world are those who believe their own hype or con game. Does Greta Van Susterin get up in the morning and look in the mirror and see someone who fulfills the promise of the law or does she see someone who trades on pain. I suspect she is in denial and rationalizes what she does; the money is too great to go back to the hard work of the law and she is inebriated with the ambrosia of being a star. But, you could say the same for Sean Hannity. Does he want go back to hammering nails? Do Bill O'Reilly or Tom Tancredo want to go back to teaching kids? Does Norma Anderson want to go back to boarding horses? Does Mike Coffman want to go back to managing apartments?

None of us wants to be who we really are, unless we are forced to. If we can accumulate the currency and capital to buy our way out of life's trouble pit we will do it in a minute. So what if we have to flash a little cleavage or reveal we were molested as a child. So what if we have to seize upon the desperate plight of Mexican mestizos. We can rationalize it because they broke the law to feed their families, we can inflame passions with people afraid of losing their jobs or having mud children attend their schools.

There are a lot of ways to accumulate capital and generate currency. You can raise food, make clothes, build houses, teach kids, care for the sick, or you can turn the world into one big circus, public hanging and exploit the raw side of humanity for yourself and the sponsors who pay your salary. That's why Darwin titled his book the " Origin of Species" and the "Descent of Man"




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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Francis Miller

Parker , CO

Francis Miller has posted 699 stories and 9 comments since joining on 11/17/2005. Francis Miller's average story rating is 4.2.
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