On Tuesday, December 3, 2002, at 10:03 AM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> <snip>
> It's the literal control which comes with literal ownership that
> counts the most. It is not that the (broadly defined) left in the
> United States lack potential TV show hosts and talents that can easily
> compete with Reagan and O'Reilly in mass appeal. Reagans and
> O'Reillys get to dominate TV discourse because those who support them
> own and control networks, stations, bandwidths, not because
> left-wingers are less attractive than them.
i'm not sure this is true. i'm not discounting ownership, mind you, but i'm also not sure (a) that those progressives/leftists who can't even hold their own against the likes of bill o'reilly can succeed with their own shows, and (b) that it's impossible, given such leftists, to affect the dominant discourse. personally, i would love to see a james carville, on the one hand, or, say, jon stewart, on the other, sit down and embarrass bill o'reilly. stewart's a laid-back kind of guy, but, to paraphrase kierkegaard, the laughter would be on his side.
>
> At 8:32 AM -0600 12/3/02, Jeffrey Fisher wrote:
>> otoh, i'm still not sure that money and work are so mutually
>> exclusive that it's impossible. i begin to wonder if mediaphobia is a
>> symptom of leftist purism or of a fear of the responsibility that
>> would accompany actually winning.
>
> You can't accuse me of mediaphobia or "a fear of the responsibility
> that would accompany actually winning";
sorry. no accusing. just musing, but the train of thought that ran through my head between those sentences you wouldn't know about from what i wrote . . .
> <snipping stuff on resources and a liberation news service>
part of the issue here, though, is *mass* appeal, not Yet Another Revolutionary Rag. seriously, it's like confining ourselves to a ghetto. it's what "the enemy" wants us to do, don't you think? that's one of the problems with a network like pacifica *in principle*: it's the progressive radio ghetto.
another example to tack on with moore, and in many ways a more successful one: the twilight zone. rod serling had very progressive politics, and after getting shut down repeatedly, came up with a way to deliver a lot of the same messages, as kierkegaard, again, might say, indirectly.
i obviously don't have any objection to unabashedly leftist/progressive discourse, reportage, etc. etc. not at all. on the contrary, it's a good thing. but it's not what we're talking about here, i don't think.
j