Hi Ray, In your exchange with Harry there are two paragraphs where I think you make errors of judgement:
At 21:45 11/10/01 -0400, you wrote: (REH) >I'm sorry I got into this. It is so simplistic as to be errant nonsense. >Harry how can you utter such platitudes? Haven't you ever heard of >television advertising? We have been dumbing down the market for so long >with our ads that serious quality is possible only for the leisured. Why do you persist with the Galbraithian thesis -- a modern form of Gresham's Law and equally fallacious -- that the public are so credulous to be deceived by advertisers. Yes, most people are able to be manipulated all too easily when in times of stress. That's a product of our evolution as a social species. On some occasions whole populations can be led to lambs to the slaughter. But no, in settled, and generally contented conditions, most people are sceptical of the attempts of opinion-moulders such as politicians and advertisers to manipulate them. If that were not so then the tabloid 'popular' newspapers in England (superficial, quasi-pornographic) would have driven out the 'quality' newspapers a long time ago. In the TV world, the commercial channels in England are suffering badly because so many people now zap across to other channels when adverts or political broadcasts appear. BBC TV has been dumbing down its own channels in the last few years in order to retain large audiences. The result is that increasing numbers of middle-class viewers, hitherto law-abiding and the strongest supporters of public service broadcasting, are now refusing to buy their (statutory) licences and are now becoming the strongest force in wanting multi-channel commercial TV so that, as with newspapers, they can choose quality instead of being forced to watch what they consider to be rubbish. (REH) >Words are complicated Harry unless you know only one meaning and then they >only seem simple. On the other hand no one seems to know the way out of >the competition between TV advertisement sitcoms and Eugene O'Neil. Out in >bible land they still follow the great philosopher Mary Worth. I can >assure you that those magnificent young people who were sacrificed on >September 11th were not of that ilk. My students taught some of them and >they will be missed. I'm wasting my time here. Why do you get so emotional that in the genuinely free market of leisure time pursuits most people simply don't want Eugene O'Neil, or James Joyce or modern 'serious' music or so-called (non-representational) art? Yes, the mass of the people are seriously mis- and under-educated, and that is why we don't have a free market in jobs, but it doesn't explain why so many people refuse to be enthusiastic about the products that the intelligentsia offers them. Within the populist world of the arts and entertainment, enthusiasts of one specialism are as equally disdainful of the populist choices of other people as are the intellectuals who deplore them all. There's only a limited amount of time available to individuals to cultivate their own predilections. Can't we live and let live? Don't you believe in democracy? Keith ___________________________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org> 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________
