Lost Highway Times...Paths in Oblivion

I wouldn't.

Another article touching on a theme that pops up here on a regular basis....liberals who deny that anything could be bad about the content of television while paying lots of attention to the corporate control of television.

Or more specifically the idea that corporate television dominates us totally with advertizing but that when it comes to seeing things we don't like we can just turn it off and should take all the responsability for the filth which is on the tube.

It doesn't work both ways. Either the TV industry has inordinate power over us, including dictating cultural tastes, or we have control over the media, and I highly doubt the second is the case.

Yes, liberals in general talking about limiting advertizing, not mentioning free speech, will suddenly cry free speech when a corporate conglomerate like Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, which hosts Fox News, which is dedicated to destroying liberalism, decides to program filth.

I happen to think that American life is in a crisis which has cultural, political, and economic aspects.

Free speech aside I think that a heck of a lot of the things which are being put out there are symptomatic of greater problems.

The cultural dysfunction of American life may have economics at its base but that doesn't take away from the fact that it still is dysfunctional, and the fifties, for what it's worth, were indeed times of good jobs and stable employment and opportunity. They may have had a non-interesting culture, but that changed.

Now we have a dysfunctional economy with a dysfunctional culture, which is trying to do two things at once: make itself interesting and fix itself. I don't know if they both can be accomplished at the same time, looks like they might be pulling the country in two different directions.

Maybe interesting should take a backseat to stable for a while.

Because being a bohemian is no fun when the country's falling apart around you.