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interesting essay on Counterpunch today - my favorite paragraph:
Some researchers in recent years have attempted to draw a parallel between the psycho-physical effects of excessive TV massage and the socio-political effects of the rise to power of certain TV “news-clowns,” so-called, that act as entertainers-cum-activists on the left end of the political spectrum. The parallels are not to be discounted. We may single out as a promising evidentiary exhibit the work of multi-millionaire news-clown Jon Stewart in his organization of the recent “March for Sanity” in Washington DC. The march was arguably the culmination of years of prior work softening news-clown viewers on the political left to accept certain odd definitions of “sanity”: that, for example, political activism should be reduced to watching Jon Stewart. This massage of the political left, it has been argued, is achieved through mockery of real-world activism, whose adherents are dismissed by implication as earnest, that is too serious for massage, and are vilified openly as “the crazies on the left” – as opposed to the “sane” news-clown viewer. In that nothing is to be taken seriously in political action beyond the paralytic act of watching the news-clown “in action,” the effect on the mass of viewers is not unlike that experienced in the case of TV toxicosis described above. The mood is briefly lightened, but the long-term damage is devastating: The news-clown viewer, massaged into complacency, does not rise from his seat to engage politically, having been told that to do so would render him a laughing-stock.
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