>(Let's take this independently of the ongoing sniping between me and
>Doug.)
<Bewildered look> Of course. How else should it be taken?
>First a fact: The enemy owns, and will _always_ own the TV stations.
and Yoshie continued in this vein:
>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.
So? You two make it sound as though no left voices ever get on TV, implying that station managers or owners have 100% control over every piece of news that goes on the air, and they censor absolutely everything as it crosses their desks (as if they don't have better things to do than micro-manage censorship of their broadcasts).
>Were it possible in theory for leftist voices to "grab the TV audience"
>it would remain impossible in fact because that TV audience would never
>be informed of the existence of those voices, which would remain
>trapped on videocassettes and available only to audience specially
>recruited to view them.
This is a little too conspiratorial to believe.
>That recruitment could not, of course, be by >TV.It would have to be mostly
>recruitment by direct one-to-one >relations.
>That is how it has always been on the left; that at least will remain >so
>in the future.
Who said recruitment? I said, "Go out and grab that TV audience and things will be better than if you had remained isolated." I wasn't talking about conducting a membership drive for this or that group. I was talking about getting the "Left" voices heard by a broader audience a la that Chomsky debate a few months ago. And I framed the comment by contrasting it to not doing anything of the sort. Should leftists eschew trying to get the message out to the masses via a mass-media device as a matter of course? Nonsense again.
>
>Secondly, Reagan and _all_ bourgeois politicians use an invisible >jargon
>in which the public has been trained by the totality of our culture.
Well, this is one member of the public who's broken that training. So have others, not neccessarily because of one on one interaction. Why can't the TV media be used as an adjunct to reaching people or even just to plant a few seeds in the hopes that something might happen? I'm not talking about some grand strategy for TV use, just not passing up opportunities due to pessimism.
>The
>language belongs to them, not to us, and whatever we say will either
(a)
>be intterpreted with _their_ meanings or (b) seem strange, "jargonish,"
>opaque, counter-intuitive. Chomsky has focused on this from the
>beginning. "The US military action to arrest Noriega was a terrorist
>attack on Panamanian people." Nothing abstractly difficult about that
>language, and it is easy enough (if someone will sit still for, say, 20
>minutes listening to the recitation) to provide the facts -- but the
>proposition is fundamentally unintelligible, because in the language of
>public discourse (the language used by Reagan & the Washington Post and
>even, for the most part, by the _Nation_) combining "US" >and "terrorist"
>is a misuse of words. By definition the U.S. is for peace and liberty
>and freedom, and that definition cannot be violated by any rhetoric.
What you seem to be talking about is the suturing of reality into a totality via TV, a reality that isn't questioned. You seem to be just throwing up your hands and conceding defeat: it's a fait accompli, so there's nothing we can do, so there's no point to trying. Why can't we try to throw a fly into the ointment when the opportunity presents itself?
>
>Now this barrier of language _can_ be broken through in one-to-one (or
>very small group) extended conversation. I have done it myself many
>times over the last 37 years. BUT . . .
Two totally different media. Apples and oranges.
>
>>
>>that presumes that you can appeal to people without pandering to >>them.
>>apparently, some people don't think that's possible.
>No, it's very possible. But leftists have to do that in an entirely
>different framework from that in which the DP & the RP work. (In fact
>left discourse that panders to people as Reagan or for that matter
>McGovern is self-defeating. No one listens.) And the first great
>difference between their framework and ours is that theirs exists, >while
>we have to create ours by out actions before we can speak to anyone
>within it.
Ok, now you're talking about a "framework". Is that another word for context? If you're arguing that TV is a "hot medium" that doesn't lend itself to reasoned discourse very well, I'll agree. But that just means you use it in such a way to get a "message" out that meshes well with the medium.
I'm not sure what you're talking about wrt to the last sentence. Explanation, please?
>
>(Rough Draft of Paragraph 1 of a 10,000 paragraph unwritten document)
>Carrol
Lemme have a look at the galleys some time.
Yoshie said:
>Well, but how do you get on TV and manage to deliver a longer message than
>Osama bin Laden's video communiqués without committing any crime? Few
>LBO-talkers have made substantial prime-time TV appearances that I know of;
>and I don't expect even the most right-wing members of LBO-talk to ever get
>their own TV shows like the O'Reilly Factor.
>- -- Yoshie
What gets lefties on TV in the first place? And again: you're just addressing the first part of my critique. What about the second half ("things will be better than if you had remained isolated")? Would you rather be isolated or take a media opportunity to get a point across?
>Doesn't it take money, rather than work, to own the TV stations, though?
>WW/IAC/ANSWER seem to be able to get all the anti-war rallies they organize
>covered by C-Span. Work does pay off sometimes, but the payoff is still
>tiny, and getting covered by C-Span doesn't even compare to owning
>networks, stations, bandwidths, etc.
Wasn't Marx and Co. up against this very sort of opposition? I don't think he advocated throwing in the towel or eschewing from contact with the media; he gave at least one interview in a British paper.
>Those of you who are sanguine about your ability to make the corporate
>media -- especially TV -- serve your left-wing purpose might reflect upon
>Venezuelan experience.
Not at all what Jeff or I have been arguing.
Todd
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