Coming soon on The Apprentice.
By Dave Read, Lenox, MA, Nov. 21, 2024 – Nothing good will result from a discussion of fake news because it’s champion doesn’t play by the same rules that govern polite conversation, which otherwise would produce equitable solutions of public issues.
So, let us instead discuss paid news, which is news, information, and commentary produced by people and organizations whose operations are monetized or supported by way of advertising, subscriptions, and/or underwriting.
“It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld my man completed …” Opening line of Frankenstein, or The New Prometheus by Mary Shelley
Until radio entered the American household during the 1920s, news was the property of a literate minority; literacy didn’t become commonplace until school became compulsory the same decade. With public schools such a volatile political issue today, it would be foolish to take literacy for granted.
I can imagine the Apprentice leading a stadium full of fans chanting, “Loyalty is fundamental, reading is socialism!”
Has Mother received her last handwritten Valentine?
In fact, since the ubiquity of the electronic device has removed handwriting from elementary instruction, how long before looking at electronic devices replaces books as the principle means of personal education?
Education is not instruction or indoctrination but the unfolding of a person’s unique genius. It is, therefore, a profoundly personal, not public, responsibility. Compulsory public instruction should be designed for the formation of a healthy citizenry. What is a healthy citizen, but someone with sufficient curiosity and drive to become all that they are capable of becoming?
Recognition of the facts of life, knowledge of human and general nature, are the fruits of education and the substance of a healthy, united society.
Dependence on word processors, instead of proficiency with handwriting, is a bad idea, except for people who make and sell them. All voluntary dependency is a bad idea, as addiction always is. The object of reading is liberation from ignorance. Liberty from electronic machines is as important as liberty from political machines.
What distinguishes, and makes sacred, the American revolution, is its promise of personal liberty. The promise of America, as found in The New Colossus, the poem by Emma Lazarus inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, is freedom from the oppression of social class, caste, and sectarian dogma. Those operating principles of monarchy, theocracy, tyranny, and despotism are what the Constitution and laws of the United States exist to protect us against.
Already, the facts on the ground indicate that most Americans prefer to be shown and told the news, passively, rather than do what it takes to inform themselves for the formation of their own opinions.
The phenomenon of radio-TV-Tiktok has made politics the ultimate spectator sport, but without the pesky try-outs, physical and mental conditioning required of athletic sports. Today, every American belongs to Team Red or Team Blue. Government so infiltrates our lives that there is no out-of-bounds, no sidelines, no place for someone to be undecided.
For many, membership on a political team is superior to membership on the retail and/or military teams that compete for their time. Somehow, the team metaphor feels attractive to them, even though teams are top-down dictatorships, the precise opposite of bottom-up republican democracy.
Everybody knows who Team Red is subservient to; Team Blue is in receivership.
“republicans buy sneakers, too”
Whereas literature is a creature of language, radio-tv-tiktok is a creature of marketese, the value-free version of language that upsets neither team. Whenever money is involved, the lowest common denominator becomes primary. Michael Jordan said it best, even if in jest, “republicans buy sneakers, too.”
This is the only law of the marketplace, and it is so old, it’s in Latin: caveat emptor – let the buyer beware. It means that whatever is said for pay comes with no guarantee of either truthfulness or usefullness. Marketing and advertising works by half-truth, exactly the way political speech does.
Both Ford and Chevy cannot make the best car. The best they can do is convince you that YOU need a ‘Vette more than you need a T’bird. The truth is that you need neither, and that there is plenty good and plenty bad about everything off every assembly line in history. An inconvenient truth is that society needs way more Ralph Naders than it does Elon Musks.
All social media accomplishes is the amplification and proliferation of words and images produced by people unqualified to work in either the journalism or the entertainment businesses.
Since literature is the product of people whose primary goal is a permanent place in the Pantheon, with subsequent hopes of better reviews than their peers and enough money to keep trying, literary works that stand the test of time are the most trustworthy sources of information on human nature, which is the inescapable dictator of life in the solar system.
Print journalism used to be regarded as the first draft of history. How shall we describe the boundless outflow of radio-tv-tiktok? Rather than being the first draft of anything, it more likely is a thing to be avoided, as one avoids industrial and domestic effluence.
Precious few Americans realize that honesty is the essential personal attribute that qualifies a person for public service. Indifference to that natural law will not repeal it, but only guarantees the calamity that dishonesty always produces.
If the typical American had read one respected literary work for every thousand hours spent watching TV, the Apprentice never would have transitioned from the vast wasteland into the White House.