#226 Foxy Lady

With the WB and UPN networks folding into each other like so much whipped egg white, the great Fox Network stands alone as the alternative to the former big three, CBS, NBC, and ABC. In fact, between them Fox Entertainment and Fox News now have a significant market share of semi-recumbent Americans. Stretched out in their recliners and remote surfing back and forth from the tasteless comedy of the Simpsons to the tasteless tragedy of bombastic news. One might say, if one were so inclined, that the Fox is guarding the henhouse of American culture. Kind of scary actually. I mean, when I was growing up the pompous-yet-titillating, scandal-mongering commentators were reserved for the low budget channels. And the soft porn, well, you had to get that from the guy down the street, I think his name was Jerry Springer.
But our diversion-challenged society eats it up on Fox entertainment and when they’re done they turn to the “news” for their gossip. Most Fox News programs are kind of like the political version of Entertainment Tonight and Jenny Jones combined. High visibility personalities, combative guests, and everyone wringing as many emotional towels as an attendant in a group therapy session.
And now Fox has garnered some big sports contracts as well. More football next year, more baseball, Nascar is right around the corner. So they got the big three: Sports-slash-violence, Entertainment-slash-titillation, and News-slash-outrage.
The voice of reason is whimpering quietly in the wind. Or perhaps it’s the wake created by the masses on their loud, turbulent, and bombastic roller coaster of emotion. Hey, e-motion is the closest motion to exercise they get. Unless their Barcoloungers have a built in vibrator.
The Japanese, according to my father, who was in Japan shortly after World War II, printed their newspapers in three levels of their pictographic language. Only the really educated people could read the top level, the middle folks the middle and the not so educated the lowest. The Japanese promoted a caste system based essentially on literacy. They knew that if the maxim “knowledge is power” was true, the obverse, “lack of knowledge is lack of power” is even more so.
Caesar said the two secrets to keeping a population docile and manageable are bread and circuses. Feed em and entertain em. A modern day Caesar may have substituted Doritos and the Superbowl. But hey. The world’s burying itself under its own trash, where there isn’t abject hunger there’s crushing obesity, fanatics of every stripe are ready to nuke each other into oblivion, what the heck, let’s get the Stones for a half time show. Let me please introduce myself...
America, ya gotta love it.