RESPONSE To NADER

---and what does it all mean"
Who is that gloomy carcass in this
frothy black stucco?
--Maybe a monk in a landfill?
---Protruding from our civilized hedgerows are
heads of dung and beaks of herons.
Someone is gargling in the forest (with
sacramental wine) and there are
gigantic old tubs filled with turds and crepe.
---Platonic porcupines wander among them.
The TV news is sluggish--our culture is full of
Tit fiends. The U.N. is an asylum for the
distinguished, and the universe is a
personality, a gravedigger with an amazing
bag of revolving polka dots an
---on each polka dot lie many graves of puff pastry.

Since Ralph took time from his busy diatribe for a "shout-out" to The Simpsons, he should realize how similar he sounds to a snooty, frantic Sideshow Bob exhorting us to "fell the chattering cyclops"!

Mr. Nader may consider the rest of us miserable and lowly -- after all, we are "willing to dwell in bad taste" -- but he sounds like a doddering oldster here, bewildered at the very idea of a commercial that features hamsters *and* automobiles, and utterly failing to recognize that television is like any other sugary snack: too much of it will kill you, but those of us who are adults internalized that lesson long ago. Maybe he should be reading his lectures to tots.

I recommend C-span, also C-span's Book TV which is on every week-end.
Also, Jeremy Scahill is often on Democracy Now.
See, it's not all bad - just 99% is bad. You have search out the other 1%.

actually, i will miss amy and jon and a few occasional amazing documentaries, but little else....certainly not the adverts and abundance of vapid programming that makes this a culture more interested in american idol than in the hearts of our families and friends, the health of our local community, not to mention the afghans or africans or amazonians --or entire species dying to preserve our precious 'way of life'.... it is no 'life' to be so unaware of our own watersheds that we think nothing of watering vast lawns and sidewalks during a rainstorm, so ignorant of our fellow creatures that our eating habits destroy entire ecosystems, so attached to our suvs that we turn a blind eye to the impoverishment of oil-rich countries held hostage by our military and so flabby in our thinking that sitting in front of a tv (or even a computer.... i didn't say i'm fully recovered.... i am in RECOVERY from this insanity and will be for the duration of my life i'm sure) has any merit beyond filling up time we could be spending with our intimates, learning to be more self-reliant and ALIVE and getting off the consumerist treadmill/trance. we let our set go dark as well and i'm hoping it'll mean leaving behind electronic screens (including this one), going outside and reconnecting with the sun, rain, soil, plants, birds, and other humans who are trying to wean themselves off of the idea that we actually need an overpriced (in oh so many ways) electronic intermediary to communicate with one another.

What is TV??? It sounds alien, does it send invisible rays into your home then inside your mind like viruses? HaHa, JUST kidding, THAT, would be beyond the pale.

And of course then any sane soul would 86, execute, extirpate and eliminate these agents of infection.

But no, "Dad, I'm safe, I won't get anything." Shoot me.

Wow, I didn't know Ralph Nader was a fan of the "Stuff White People Like" blog!

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/26/28-not-having-a-tv/

Anyways, it sounds clear to me that Nader has not been watching TV in a very long time if he actually believes "The Simpsons" is one of the few shows on TV worth watching. That show hasn't been worth watching since the end of the '90s!

In all seriousness though, the television is just one more medium (alongside radio, newspapers, the Internet, movies, books, etc.) that has its benefits and drawbacks. Yeah, a lot of what's on TV is full of crap, but then again there's also a lots of mind-numbing things on the Internet, the movie theater, your local radio station, books, you name it. It's not the medium, it's all in how you use it. Singling out TV as more "toxic" than other forms of media is disingenuous, unfair, and short-sighted. I notice that some of the comments here are full of the "Kill Your TV!" rhetoric but then seems to dial it down with a qualifier like: "Well, except for maybe HBO and Animal Planet and History Channel and PBS and..." I'm surprised no one has caught on to this irony. I guess it's cool to throw away your television until you're faced with the prospect of not watching Jon Stewart anymore...

TV along with substandard education is very important in keeping the public ignorant. An intelligent and well informed populace is a threat to the government.

I can't believe some people pay up the butt to have a gizillion worthless channels, just to say after searching, scrolling and bleeping their way through, "there's nothing on."

This latest episode of TV "transition" is just one more proof of the level of lying and deception foisted upon us.

Just COUNT the hours of the nation being told the importance of being "prepared" for disasters and spending untold millions on police and military to that supposed end. How many times have you heard and seen the "emergency broadcast system" being tested?

NOW, these idiots have made it impossible in times of hurricane, flood, or other disaster when the electricity is off, to tune in to news and information with a battery-powered tv.

They are nuts, and by accepting their turning off a 60+ year old system without a whimper, we are, too.

Sure, very little of relevance has graced the airwaves in decades. I'm with you on that. But it can have it's place, and now the potential for a better use in the future has been severely diminished.

They lie through their teeth. They don't want us safer or more secure ... they want us more SECURED.

TV is the coporate-funded and state-sanctioned WEAPON OF MASS DECEPTION - is it any wonder they made such a big deal of reminding us how important it was to "stay in tune"?

Newton Minow's "vast wasteland" has become a half vast wasteland.

I have been preparing myself for this historic moment for more than a year now when I unpluged the propaganda box.
No more '10 minutes of hate' and 20 minutes of insulting lies twice an hour. No more Faux News and myth information. I find that I feel better and stronger every day. Life goes better without TV!

The best on tv is Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman.

The number one way to increase your intelligence is to minimize television watching because the two are inversely related.

I've travelled the world and was initially surprised to find that the 'vast wasteland' is commonplace over the whole globe. Now I realize it's part of "globalization", industry friendly agendas to keep us ignorant and apathetic.
It's funny, now that I can buy a 60" HD plasma TV for a weeks pay, I find that I have lost complete interest in television except when researching TVs audiences to find out why they're so entranced by this low grade garbage.
Unless the public can somehow seize back their rightful ownership of the airwaves, corporate misinformation and fluff will continue to lull us into a false sense of security associated with pro-corporate consumerism.
The majority of the people will still believe that drinking Budweiser and shopping at the GAP makes you cool, that McDonald's sells 'healthy choices', that we need to spend a trillion dollars a year on the military to keep us safe and that public healthcare is a secret plot to turn us into a Stalinist state.
TV also suggests what's 'relevant' to us by spending endless hours creating mass interest in stories that have no appeal to any individual. Instead we are told that everyone is really interested in O.J. Simpson's trial or the latests daily struggles of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.
We hear about all of the possible threats to us emerging on the other side of planet while ignoring the distrust, poverty and pain of our citizens at home.
We're told by 'financial experts' that the crisis is almost over and that all we need to do is to borrow and spend more.
The media exagerrates the differences between gay and straight, black and white, American and foreign, Muslim and Christian while ignoring the the similarities and shared interests.
We watch the glorification of mental illness in shows like Jerry Springer and Maury Povich. Their mega-corporation networks entice thousands of ghetto denizens with only a few hundred dollars to appear on national TV for 15 minutes of national ridicule.
Then there's the violence. God forbid that we ever hear a bad word like 'shit' uttered on the TV set or that we are exposed to a 'naked person', but no problem showing the benefits of vengeance and mass murder against anyone who stands in our way. Bullet to the head, severing body parts, beating people into submission or slaughtering tons of dark colored skin types because your government told you to do it, is perfectly acceptable Sunday afternoon television fare.
Everyday our children are reinforced by television programming that violence is endemic, that society's preferred choice to conflict resolution is to fight it out. We're also led to believe that most of this violence is perpetrated by armies of 'madmen' who just roam our neighborhoods, hell bent on murder and mayhem for no other reason except that they're evil. (or "hate our freedom!"?)
Fear, consumerism, artificially created special interest stories and corporate allegiance. What's not to like about T.V?

There's a lot of invective here. Let's try to remember some achievements:

Before "wireless" communication, it was darn near impossible to learn of the world beyond stories told in sailor's bars and train stations, save for the papers and pamphlets of the time, access to which was intermittent and random, save for anything produced locally. In a small town, one probably had difficulty gaining access to a wide swath of books as well.

Radio and TV introduced mass communication. Place yourself in the 1850s in a small farm town in the midwest and you wouldn't have even known to give a crap about the rainforest, human rights abuses as they happened or advances in technology.

People in broadcasting quickly learned to apply older forms of art into wholly new forms of art. The theatrical play turned into a radio drama, with emphasis on voice acting, sound manipulation and timing. Photography started to move--the stills came to life, a sweeping shot or a pull from a close-up could dramatically alter one's emotions in a second. A new form of art indeed.

Thousands of people became engaged as a new class of artists whose medium solely depends on the use of technology. They have shaped advancements in multiple fields electronics and industry.

When we moan about TV we are wont assail the idiotic ads, the horrible formats and the general feeling that a brain sucker is sitting on top of one's head when the box is on. But let's not forget that even though it was perhaps conceived in a corporate meeting room, Hamsters driving cars is very creative. Two dozen people went to art school to make that ad. They now have a livelihood in arts, whereto before there was not much work for artists. Even a news cameraman uses art in his(/usually not her) photography of a cop car or a crying woman.

That said, there is no obligation for TV to be the gold standard of intellectualism, altruism or even high art. It's all commercially funded, whether the public owns the airwaves or no. Socializing all media would mean bad things for the people who work in the industry.

There are still avenues for the public to get on the airwaves themselves, without this industry. But to people who decry TV ask yourselves this: how often do you watch public access and what do you think when you watch it? It's horribly produced to the point of being unwatchable, and while you might get a feed from Democracy Now, it still comes off as a bunch of random crap from crazies. People should have access to cameras, editing systems and the airwaves. But damn, people who study it are best at producing it--and what they produce is of great value to our society.

Dropping the feed is one thing. But everybody loves a good movie or an excellently made documentary. Campy TV or movies are like campfire stories. We can even learn from Jerry Springer. Nobody makes anybody watch anything they don't want. You can find anything on the web--even Iraqi Public Access if you so desire.

It's all about choice, folks. Nobody is standing over you with a cudgel demanding that you watch the Deadliest Catch.

We learn about our own culture and those of others through the moving pictures on the box. Don't discount it all because Chevron provides some money for the production of a PBS show. That, in itself, is something we learn from as well.

"The Plug in Drug" or "Why do you think they call it Programming?"

I've pulled the plug on this media completely. There are worthwhile programs occasionally if you are willing to separate the wheat from the chaff. The most insidious thing about it is the god awful advertising, especially the Big Pharma propaganda. Most countries don't allow this "ask your doctor" crap. It is to the shame of Amerika that a high percentage of media time is devoted to pill pushers. These are the same people who brought you Vioxx remember.

I can "stay tuned" to the spirit of the masses by watching the occasional clip of a few shows on the internet tubes. Overall, I would rather watch my plants grow than be tube fed sophomoric drivel by the media elites. At least the plants are contributing oxygen to my environment!!!

for over a year, or is it two, the tv stations have been breathlessly warning all of the change--and even then they had to push back the deadline from february to june. imagine if these warnings were of actually something important--like say, perhaps, impending climate disaster. but no, must keep the sheeple molified and sedated....

im with ralph--kill your TV

Over the last 5 years or so I've made a decent effort to at least get rid of most advertising from my life, which is the most pernicious aspect of TV and other media, in my opinion.

On the web I use ad blockers. Yes, this disrupts the income stream of some web sites and may help cause them to fail, but I decided that my right to not view toxic advertising trumps those concerns. I played that game for 40 years already.

On the TV I record many programs now and FF through the commercials. Same rationale as above. And a high percentage of the programs I watch now are on PBS, HBO, or other channels with no commercial breaks.

On the radio I have 4 or 5 stations on presets, and flip when commercials come on.

Some DVDs have unskippable commercials. Ah, but not so if you copy the DVD first using certain software.

If a video on the web has an embedded "premercial", I either won't watch the video, or, if it's important to me, I'll flip to another web page tab for a minute while the video plays.

Billboard advertising is always there, but you get exposed to it less if you drive less. Staying away from family- and shopping-oriented parts of town cuts down on it too.

Ads in magazines are hard to defeat, but they're also some of the most passive, and sometimes fun to deconstruct.

Some of the worst increase in advertising is at movie theaters. But I very infrequently go to theater chains now; indie houses often have no commercials, and then there're DVDs. One can also avoid getting into the theater before the sequence of previews starts.

The main problem with T.V is that it's advertiser-supported. Apart from that, the problem lies with the audience. The medium itself is basically the same as film. I have enjoyed "The Simpsons,""Futurama,""Twin Peaks,""The Colbert Report" and a bunch of other cool shows.

Every tool must be kept out of elite hands.

I like Gay USA on Free Speech TV, Amy Goodman, reruns of Nash Bridges, some of Animal Planet, The History Channel. Disappointments: PBS, Bravo, most of Animal Planet. I used to get the Sundance Channel but now that I have options, I don't pay for that. Most of TV is hideous. It makes me physically ill. Even having to get through the commercials on Animal Planet and the History Channel is difficult. TV is so obviously a tool to sell things. They should be paying us for TV sets and Cable and dish.

Thank God for Netflix! Oh, and my local Library, which has a comprehensive DVD collection.

Did someone mention slime?

I am gross and perverted
obsessed and deranged
I have existed for years
but very little has changed

I am the tool of the government
and industry too
for I am destined to rule
and regulate you

I may be vile and pernicious
but you can't look away
I make you think I'm delicious
with the stuff that I say

I'm the best you can get
have you guessed me yet
I'm the slime oozing out
from your TV set

You will obey me while I lead you
with the garbage that I feed you
until the day that we don't need you
don't go for help no one will heed you

your mind is totally controlled
it has been stuffed into my mold
and you will do as you are told
until the rights to you are sold

that's right, folks
don't touch that dial

well, I am the slime from your video
oozing along on your living room floor

i am the slime from your video
can't stop the slime, people, look at me go

Very prescient huh? Written about 35 years ago.

Television is a tool that is used now from infancy on to cultivate consumers. Advertising lore is that if you hook a little one on a particular brand of cereal, Cheerios, for example, early on, he/she will remain loyal to that brand just about forever.

Chilton Pierce, in his marvelous book, "The Magic Child, describes how the developing brain networks itself from the free imagination, trial-and-error learning to success or failure, increasing communication, reasoning, and social skills, handling emotions in the kind of interactive play that most children who are not plunked in front of a TV develop automatically.

The time of The Magic Child is a short time frame when all life ... for most ... is viewed with wonder; when the sight of the flight of birds or leaves falling from a tree, or the sounds and smells of crunching through leaf piles in the fall or making mud pies or sand castles that are tactile, reasoning, creative activities ... all of these things ... heighten and hone sensitivies and leave impressions that eventually are part of and translate into deep thinking. Add other children to the mix and there is a sense of community, sharing life, sharing the world's offerings, and so much more.

Since the 1950's when TVs became available and affordable, families now stayed at home to watch various programs together, and the frequency and quality of direct communication ceased within the household and with friends and neighbors outside the household. "Gee, that was a great show/story." "Yeah, I really liked it." ... "Shhh ... look at that /or/ what's on now?" Dial turns and settles on the new offering. End of conversation.

Gone were the interactions with neighbors, with other kids playing all kinds of games in the street after supper [city kids such as myself at the time], biking with friends to the local library, and going to all kinds of activities connected with churches/temples, local schools, local organizations or just hanging out together.

TELEVISION is a TOOL. Once it was considered wonderful for educational purposes, and a few shows still fullfill that purpose. But over-all, TELEVISION has been hi-jacked. People live their lives by it and its featured products, and which particular celebrity or newscaster says or reports this or that.

Interesting that quite a few people just on this post have already given this DRUG up.

My TV broke four years ago, and that's fine with me. When I visit particular friends, the TV is always on, and I am in culture shock. In four years, the speed of changing images in commercials, the number of breaks, the noise, the insipidness have increased. It is total bedlam. Thinking is shut off, emotions are jerked around, and because I know what I know, when news analyses on CNN or other "news" programs by the hyper, talking heads begins, I freak out because these people are blowing smoke, have no depth, and don't know what the hell they are talking about.

Bill Moyers is one of the last who tries to tell it where it is, but most folks are not watching or listening to Bill Moyers.

Mostly, however, I am appalled by the apathy and the ignorance of those I encounter when I go to town ... [from the city kid to rural community from mid-life on] or talk with distant friends on the telephone. Mostly, they are ten or more years younger than I am, and for most of them, it is apparent, that they became the true TV generation and that crucial time of "The Magic Child" ... 2, 3, 4, maybe 5 ... was fragmented or completely missed.

Instead of Nature and the vibrancy of LIFE as teacher, instead of direct and frequent interactions with grown-ups and kids as the stimuli for increased brain networkings, and the same for even the silent moments curled up in a corner with a picture book or story book with time to dream and imagine, the TOOL OF TELEVISION, with its black-and-white screen and then dazzling colors, and pictures coming and going controlled by others, LIFE ... the WORLD became framed within a box and distracted one from thinking, feeling, reasoning, deciding, developing ... mind and soul force.

Such people remain in their little ego mind, their little, local selves and are easily propagandized and manipulated, and their own visions are framed within a box and are boxed in. Thus they are comfortable with AUTHORITY ... churches, schools, government ... telling them where it's at and what it's all about ... and they believe it. The curiosity of the Magic Child died just shortly after birth.

Stringent conditioning of whatever kind early on is a form of soul murder and magic-child murder.

So many of the dull TOOLS who now lead us reflect this. They do not seem to be able to understand the consequences of their actions, not only for themselves, but for the rest of us out here and for the whole earth itself, but if they do at all, it is likely they don't care because they have opted for their own instant gratification ($$$$/re-election).

Their current ages tell the story, as above.

The good news is there are always the Mavericks [not the Sarah Palin variety], but true Mavericks who lived the Magic Child time and their mind and soul force are intact. And with them lies the hope and possibilities of all kinds.

If you are one, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

peace, cm

Oregoncharles

We have a tv but never cable, so for us, it was PBS and one crappy commercial station, fuzzy and hard to watch. So when traveling and staying in a hotel, we were excited to finally be able to see all that we were missing .... the first time, hmmm, must be a bad night for tv. But again and again, the same thing happened. We said to ourselves, "So that's it? That's what people watch day in and day out." OMG!

I will miss Bill Moyers and NOW but can't we get these on the internet?

Public Broadcasting is a shadow of what it was in the 1970s. The difference between what is and what could have been is very sad indeed.

They have time for this, but no time to end our role as world cop.

I got over the TV a few years ago and haven't bothered watching much if at all ever since. I'm afraid the public has been getting hooked onto TV since the 1970s. Analog or digital, none of it matters. If people had quit relying on the TV to tell them who to vote for, Nader would have had no problem making it to whatever office he chooses to run for, presidency or any other. I already have enough to do most days at work getting couped up and having to watch the screens all day. I'd much rather continue to enjoy quality time with my wife without the TV. Why watch a lousy sitcom or another toxic hour of political stupidity when one can go out for a walk and talk to one another. When my wife made me take my blood pressure, weight, and a blood test, after the disasterous results one of the culprits she thought was my watching and shouting at the stupid political shenanigans and even turning to war and action movies in anger thinking I'd make myself strong. I cannot tell you how much less terrible I felt after at least going for a walk or at least working out at the gym for an hour after getting back from work.

TV? What's that?

I know this is a green site and I agree with Nader's policies but progressive strategies are important. It's OK to be wrong-some don't vote at all and think they're making a stand.
Not all Obama voters were gullible. Naomi Klein was just censored because she is a reformer, like Chomsky and Zinn. If Dennis Kucinich was clearly out-polling other democrats and yet still being excluded I'd support a third party.
If however the electorate was conservative and the dems were simply reflecting that; a third party would not help.
So the question becomes how to convert conservatives.

What took you so long Ralph? My TV - and commercial Radio, for that matter - have been "dark" for 30 years. THe only way to beat corporatism is to NOT support it in any way - don't Buy, don't Watch, don't Work for... just say No!

The content of television programming is controlled by the corporate owners who own the licenses. They in turn are largely controlled by the advertisers.

The cultural and political biases of television thus promote the cultural, political and profit interests common to network owners and advertisers.

Thus there is never any programming to reflect the perspectives of the labor movement or of the economic interests of working people in general.

Even the so-called "Public Broadcasting System" PBS has degenerated under a similar corporate and capitalist control. PBS should now stand for Privatized B*** S***!

Through the corporate funding and supplying talking head experts for panel shows, the bias of public affairs programming is forever controlled by interests such as the Wall Street Journal and the American Enterprise Institute.

There are no guests seen with the level of critical expertise and speaking ability to counter the unending stream of corporate and capitalist propaganda.

What to do?

For PBS, ban corporate money and intersts from controlling PBS. Increase their budget sufficiently to add programming, locally and nationally, that reflects the economic, cultural and political needs and expressions of the people.

PBS programs, often aimed at middle class and college educated viewers, who have an absolute "need to know" in a supposedly "democratic" country, but are kept forever in ignorance. Why we are always at war? Why don't we have affordable and universal health care? Why is public education being destroyed? What aren't the polluters and destroyers of the environment forced to stop? Critical discourse is forever "framed" to favor corporate and capitalist interests.

The decline and collapse of U.S. capitalism since the 1970s has created the many human crises today. The "vast wasteland" of capitalist controlled television has been around for generations. Capitalist control of mass media has meant not only lousy entertainment. It has created a totalitarian system of continuous political indoctrination of the people.

The television "wasteland" is a reflection of the economic, social and political wasteland and destruction ultimately caused by this decline in U.S. capitalism. Read the World Socialist Web Site http://www.wsws.org daily for an alternative perspective. Socialism is now essential for the survival of humanity.

There is a gadget called "TV-Be-Gone" - a small key-fob sized universal infrared remote control on-off that will discreetly turn any TV off (or on) with the push of a button.

We have turned off annoying TV's in completely inappropriate restaurant locations and no one notices.

Go here: http://www.tvbgone.com/