I’m not really sure what you mean, are you saying that it is the media who are attempting to illustrate right and wrong to the viewers? Or, are you saying that the viewers themselves are formulating their morals based on the conduct of their idols?
Both to some extent. I don’t think there’s a responsible entity behind this, but more like this is a phenomenon in our society. Society moralizes itself through mass media. Sure, there are people behind the media who do stuff on purpose, or at least accordingly to their ideologies, even if they don’t realize they’re somehow manipulating information. And sure, there are people demanding reassurance of their own ideologies or (as I pointed out with the soap opera example) justification for their denial or external ideologies. It’s not really about who’s behind this, only it’s amazing (and somewhat disgusting) how the whole media is absolutely biased.
And now I’m not only talking about the mass media. I subscribe to the Brazilian Organized Anarchist Movement’s journal (I know—ridiculous), the “Black Petal” (once again, I know, sad but true), and boy you just can’t trust a comma in that piece of paper. Seriously, it’s scary! The way information is selected and manipulated before being delivered—the way we have this feeling that we know more than ever these days when we’re only accepting questionable information from evidently biased sources—everywhere!
I’m starting to sound paranoid here, let me once again reiterate that I don’t think Evil Bob has a conspiracy to brainwash humankind. I just think humans themselves ask for that and produce that on a rather subconscious level and it’s scarily obvious that no mechanism of mass media these days is trustworthy, at all.
That pretty much sums up how I feel about things as well 
It would be overly paranoid to say that there’s an actual person or group of people (ie; ‘The Man’) using the media as a big moralization tool. Rather, I think it’s just a byproduct of the type of media most of the world has, combined with human nature.
I think that people worship (and yes, I mean worship) celebrities because they themselves have no lives. Because they have no lives, they like to watch people who do have lives mess up etc.
Also, I think they are like the heroes of today, despite their stupidity. In the story of the Trojan War, the prince of Troy who caused the war by stealing the queen of Sparta, was Paris. When he was born, Paris’ mother had gone to an oracle and the oracle had said that Paris would bring about the doom of Troy. As any self-respecting king would do, the king took the baby out into the middle of nowhere and left it there. Then, as any self-respecting mother would do, the queen went out and gave the baby to some farmers to take care of (keep in mind that all people of that time knew as a fact that all prophecies would come true). So the boy grew up and blah, blah, blah. Then, being the son of a king, he becomes extremely handsome and returns to Troy and demanded to be acknowledged as the prince. The king is overwhelmed by Paris’ beauty and accepts him regardless of the prophecy. And so Troy is doomed. That shows that heroes back then too could be stupid, but as long as they were beautiful, no one cared. That may have been a tangent. Or it definitely was.
American media completely loses sight of what’s important. For instance I was watching the countdown the other day and #5 was about how Bush demolished the law of Haegus Corpus (sp?) Which essentially meant that he could take over the country because if someone opposed him, he could send them to jail without trial or explanation of why they were being sent to jail. So I thought #1 is going to be soooo important. No. #1 was something about some blond celebrity in a white dress. Probably a wedding.
It’s habeas corpus which is the British principle in the Theory of Law of the right to defend oneself against accusation and to remain free as long as there is no evidence of a crime—which today might sound like an obvious thing to have, but hasn’t always been like that. Basically, that means you can’t be arrested just for being accused of a crime, whilst there’s no evidence or legitimate reason for sustaining this accusation other than suspicion.
What W did (after claiming to himself the power of defining what is torture and what’s okay to do to prisoners of war—with the explicit intention of bending the third Geneva convention and legitimating torture in the special prisons of the CIA) was to decide that habeas corpus is not a fundamental right for immigrants, so Americans (theoretically) still have their habeas corpus assured, but an immigrant might be locked up in jail with no consistent accusation and held indefinitely. Of course, in a situation like that, in a country with such bureaucratic, indirect democracy on federal level as the US, W is gathering an astonishing, even outrageous, amount of power. Will he try something daft like a coup or the like? I don’t know, and quite frankly, I don’t think so. But you’re right: the fact that someone is distorting the fundamental principles of ethics, bending the constitution and the law and gathering power like that should be worth a bit more attention than Britney’s new marriage.
The media thing used to bug me…it doesn’t anymore. I just simply stopped watching TV. I laugh at the celebrity thing though and I laugh at whoever likes celebrities.
Well, I wouldn’t really agree with that. If so many were ready to jump into the fire that is war, I would doubt if they were ever all that peaceful.
Over 1,000,000 Canadians fought in WW 1 & 2. We have as much a history of violence as the next average-Joe country.
We are a country of Peace? What does that mean? That we are militarily weak and cannot defend ourselves should an aggressor arise? The US was attacked on 9/11, and we are righteous for attacking Afghanistan, the country that harboured the attackers, bin Laden and such. War is justified sometimes. All too many forget this. Unfortunately, a World War is coming pretty soon, unless we do all that we can to avoid it.
Ive often wondred that myself, I for one could care less. I think people just want gossip, and drama, because its what sales in America.
The stopped watching tv thing, I almost did so myself, rather be on ld4all than with TV 
But with the war of terror :
OK, the US had a reason to go into Afghanistan, maybe it was a bit over-done (a little more than needeed 
) but ok. Remember that when SOME does something you dont need to hurt all. If you kill innocents because youre innocents was killed you are nothing better than them.
Now lets have a look at Iraq ?
What exactly were found there ? Not exactly what expected, no nuclear arms (at least nothing to speak off), and a defence that were way harder to beat than expected. Yeah, the country was taken, but you havent taken a country when the entire population is against it and are ready to fight ! Now whaat was the reason to go into iraq, else than that you didnt like saddam.
Whenever USA feels like making the world better and have fewer nuclear weapons, they dont need to go outside their own backyard.
Regardless of whether it’s all justified or not, I’d rather hear about important events like the war in Iraq or in Afghanistan, rather than celebrity gossip when I turn on the TV…but here in North America, unfortunately the celebrity gossip probably gets a lot more airtime.
Petter, it’s a far more complicated (somewhat oil–related, but not only) issue, I’m afraid. No, I don’t think the war is justified, I don’t think any war is, but this particular one I don’t think it’s even legitimate to begin with. But I don’t think the US invaded Iraq and are now spending money and (in my personal opinion, doesn’t seem to be the trend these days though) more importantly: lives, they don’t spend that at “just felt like it” impulses.
And that would be Latin America.
No, bruno, they wouldnt need to go latin america 
There can IMO be good enough reasons to have a war, in defence against enemy troops in youre own land. But thats another subject
But back to the subject : No TV channels make the really big money in sending serious stuff i guess. Its kind of the same with some of the newspapers in norway VG and Dagbladet that is the biggest one, have "x celebrity does " or “look i got thinner” or “survived in this carcrash” etc. as titles too much for my liking 
I agree Josh, even though their bad, lets have the news! (Sorry for going off topic;) )
Ahhhh, this is just a whole can of worms itself, but to be honest, I’d rather have US hegemony rather than Chinese or perhaps Middle Eastern hegemony. The US are in a position of power, and people in power abuse that power. But it could be a hell of a lot worse with anybody else was in charge. This is just like democracy. It isn`t perfect, but it sure as hell beats communism.
Was the war in Iraq justified? Not in the least sense. But I still think war is justified sometimes. For instance, Iran is building centrefuges to build nukes. They will have 100,000 online in due time, and will be capable of building several nukes per year.
To be perfectly honest, I dont feel at all comfortable with Iran being nuclear. If the US doesnt take Iran down, then other Middle Eastern nations will begin saying, “hmmm, maybe we could go nuclear”, and then blam, nuclear Middle East. Recently, in the news, at least 7 Middle Eastern have expressed interest in this. The US must take down Iran as a means of scaring off the others.
A war to prevent future wars…sounds sort of contrary to logic, but human nature does that to ya sometimes.
This topic is about the media not political policy … let’s get back on topic again 
Just get over it. The US won’t get better it’s not much of a real country anyways. People do care because they are celbrities, the peoples fans like to know this stuff. if you don’t care then ignore it.
Hahahaha, if I start a topic about something, it turns into a flame war…I must hijack others threads if I wish to remain civil 
Amused, that’s not remaining civil, it’s avoiding breaking the guidelines by breaking the guidelines! 
But yeah, perhaps a moderator could split those posts about war and merge them into an existing thread on Iraq? (I remember at least two threads discussing Iraq specifically and a couple more from the Cloud on war in general…)
Back on topic, I just wanted to say, :shock: wow! These last few weeks I moved into my grandpa’s, and he has cable TV, so I decided to watch an Americaner channel and it happened to be broadcasting a documentary about Britney Spears’ life. I think I learned a couple new levels of futility with that documentary. :shock: If that’s what dominates your TV, then indeed you have a problem. I had no idea TV could make me feel so autistic…
hahaha, no kidding. Television is generally an extremely low level of entertainment. I only really watch it when Im depressed and need something to take my mind off of things. Because it requires such little thought, it helps while youre watching, but not really with the healing from the depression.
Television is thus basically like a drug or alchohol, to quell the pain temporarily but not heal it. To ignore the hole in the head rather than go to the doctor. Perhaps this is why people watch it, that they simply want to forget the materialistic drudgery in which they live. Heh, Im feeling pessemsitic right now about the human race. Ill never understand people…their priorities are so out of whack.
You phrased it beautifully. It seems people watch TV to turn off their brains (or perhaps to shut them up). I find that after watching TV for long enough to be actually paying attention to it, I often realize I’m numb and vegetating→ 
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Exactly. Internet in that sense too, perhaps not discussion forums that much, but stuff like Myspace or those games like Tibia and Renaissance Kingdoms… Although a forum can be seriously drug–like for a person with precarious social life and compensates on the friendly atmosphere places like LD4all can offer.
Addiction to internet (along with alcohol) have recently been found to be a national issue here in Brazil in a paper released recently by one of our ministries—exactly because such addictions are socially acceptable, people cross the line way before people start worrying. In both situations, the most alarming bit is the fact that the government found both alcoholism and addiction to internet to be normal to the younger layers (as in: the average young fellow is alcoholic and/or addicted to internet here). Funny to think how dangerous things can be when they’re socially acceptable.
I wonder what are the “addicted to TV” rates… There are more homes today with at least one TV set than homes with a fridge here nowadays.
I hear you. It’s amazing how much we’ve evolved, how much knowledge and wisdom we have produced and yet how— how ridiculous humankind can be. How we seem to have the wrong priorities, praise that which goes against morals and dismiss any possibility of a decent humane world with cynicism.
dude. i know u dont care and well, honestly neither do I, but ur looking at it from a different perspective, some people that are stressed lonely or maybe have relatives in teh war, Like this part of tv and media, and want to hear it because then they arnt listning to all the things on the news like, 5 people shot today in a drive by, Jhon whale killed in a sneak attack on isreal last night or w.e It helps people look away from real life, to get there mind of whats really happening, and thats why people like it
You’re thinking of the news. Daylight means pointless celebrity crap, which is correct. It is pointless. I am an avid watcher of the news though. I like getting multiple sources to see how they differ. Right wing sources rule! hahaha.