Protests Were Good Wake-up Call

hmm, I have a few workplaces, and in one of them I'm totally silent because a manager wears flag gear and will try to incite arguments over the Vietnam war and current war and stuff, and I really don't think that taking a stand is worth it in such a situation where it could hurt your job, plus you wouldn't necessarily achieve anything. You could only hurt yourself. In another place of work, a few of the programmers, when scratched, will easily come out with statements like that we deserved 9/11 or that any intelligent person should avoid major US cities after this escalation because terrorism will be imminent. I don't know that they would go to marches though. I'm always getting contradictory information about what the state of the typical person is with regards to politics - like is everyone really on the level of local TV newscasts, and Fox news which is so inane.--- but on the other hand, random people on Greyhound buses or AC transit can often prove to have great insight. I was going to college when MTV's 'rock the vote' bus pulled up on its tour, and me and my friends were insulted because we felt like it was infantilizing and was telling us 19 or 20 year olds that we needed to learn politics on the level of a 12 year old who doesn't even know who the vice president is or has barely encountered the big 'debate' issues like abortion. We made flyers, and we met another cool group of people who had had the same idea and had flyers calling the MTV bus a patronizing hidden advertisement for their channel. It pissed of the 'VJ' on the bus. But now, I have a different perspective. I have more experience now which tells me that some people actually do need to be lured into political thought with lollipops, because there isn't much consequence for living an apolitical life around here, and lots of people can perform jobs with complex tasks, and have lots of social skills and sports skills and so forth, but still couldn't find half the countries on a map.

ack..
continued.
One of my many many ex-housemates was a cultural studies major. The field is kind of vaguely titled, but it seems like there is a big justification for that area of study - the study of all sorts of aspects of culture, separate from study of history or study of big nationalities such as study of spanish or french. But Thomas Frank has a pretty good criticism of cultural studies as it is carried on. On the surface it seems like an egalitarian field, where it is considered very legitimate to study things termed 'popular culture' as a way of getting at the true culture and motivations of a group of people - so you will see courses on Madonna (the musician) and popular films and TV, or the simpsons, or hip hop. Because they are 'popular', that should mean that this is the true culture of a people, rather than the elitist 'high culture' which might be produced by artists educated through institutions who engage in modern art, theater, music. Cultural studies tends to be devoid of 'criticism' of the art and culture it describes.

On one level, this is a compelling argument, and I'd say it's accurate in the case of hip hop culture mentioned above. However, Frank pointed out that so much of this stuff called popular culture, isn't a natural expression of the artistic and cultural inclinations of people because it is all funneled through elite corporate controlled dispersal mechanisms - TV, radio etc. He also argues that it's fine to criticize popular culture and that doesn't make you a sneering elitist. So, can we say that Madonna (a few years ago) or Britney spears and the specific hip hop artists chosen to be on MTV are *really* the natural cultural choices of young people - compared to what they would choose if there really was a free choice. Clear Channel now owns most of the radio stations in the country and makes artists pay thousands of dollars to be put on the radio.
So... all the cable news stations have been pulled in the direction of Fox News style , particularly msnbc now- there is no generic or European BBC style option to choose from. All the local news formats are inane. I keep reading that they have to do this because of ratings, and using this egalitarian cultural studies type of argument, we're supposed to believe that really the 'typical americans' embrace this stuff and you'd be elite to criticize, but were people really given a choice in the first place?

I must agree with the sentiment that we, as a nation of citizens, are representative of a broad range of political awareness and opinion. I must also agree with the truthful assertion that incorporated business interests are in complete control of an astonishing majority of our media channels. But I wonder which condition-- corporate "control" of information or public "neglect" of alternative perspectives-- is more problematic?

I will certainly not laugh bitterly at a politically uninformed worker who is as beholden to the economic constraints of a competive economy (another popularized characteristic of the "America" fallacy: strong economy). I would choose instead to engage him or her in a discussion of what their views are, how they have formed them, and to what degree they might foresee themselves reconsidering them. Given cp's ideas that some workplaces do not enable such discussion, I would NEVER steer someone away from a protest unless I was aware of a possibility of strong paramilitary violence or knew it was a white supremacist rally, or some other blockade to meaningful progress toward unity and understanding of each other. But I am yet torn; if I am not informed enough, I am at fault. If I am informed improperly, mass culture has been allowed too much control over ideological value. And if I am informed and aware of the media/government's manipulation, I had better not steer others away from this knowledge and I had better not confront them with a hostile self-righteousness on par with the controlling powers I resent with so many others.

I must agree with the sentiment that we, as a nation of citizens, are representative of a broad range of political awareness and opinion. I must also agree with the truthful assertion that incorporated business interests are in complete control of an astonishing majority of our media channels. But I wonder which condition-- corporate "control" of information or public "neglect" of alternative perspectives-- is more problematic?

I will certainly not laugh bitterly at a politically uninformed worker who is as beholden to the economic constraints of a competive economy (another popularized characteristic of the "America" fallacy: strong economy). I would choose instead to engage him or her in a discussion of what their views are, how they have formed them, and to what degree they might foresee themselves reconsidering them. Given cp's ideas that some workplaces do not enable such discussion, I would NEVER steer someone away from a protest unless I was aware of a possibility of strong paramilitary violence or knew it was a white supremacist rally, or some other blockade to meaningful progress toward unity and understanding of each other.

But I am yet torn; if I am not informed enough, I am at fault. If I am informed improperly, mass culture has been allowed too much control over ideological value. And if I am informed and aware of the media/government's manipulation, I had better not steer others away from this knowledge and I had better not confront them with a hostile self-righteousness on par with the controlling powers I resent with so many others.