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Commentary :: Labor
Janet's Boob!!!!!!!!! Current rating: 3
18 Mar 2004
This one was broadcast the Saturday after the superbowl.
Play CD1, Track 1 - Working Man

Fade CD1 out on cue

Cue cD2 to Track 1 - The Star Spangled Banner

Dear CBS,

You were once the "Tiffany network" of quality entertainment and news programming. You are now known for exposing Janet Jackson's breast to millions of viewers. You are also known for running noncontroversial ads for erectile disfunction remedies. Oh wait a minute, isn't there a controversy about health plans that cover these medicines but not birth control for women. You ran a lot of beer ads. Aren't there controversies related to alcoholism and drunk driving? Aren't these ads also selling beer to the minor children watching? Fast food - obesity & other health problems. SUVs - safety, gas mileage, pollution. I'm sure that a controversial aspect could be found for almost every commercial run during the Superbowl.


However, an issue ad by Moveon.org about Medicare is too controversial, not for your viewers, but for your cozy relationship with the Bush administration. Let's see, CBS is owned by Viacom, a company that really wants the FCC to raise the station ownership limit to 39% of that national market because the corporation now illegally owns too many stations. Of course, Bush and his Republican cronies running for office next fall will have a lot of money to spend on TV spots during the campaign. Also, its just nice to have friends in high places anyway, so to hell with the people who belong to Moveon.org. They can't fix the law that you already broke and they're not a cash cow like Bushco.

I guess that if "issue" ads are too controversial for CBS, you'll forego selling time next fall to all of the "section 527" organizations who will be buying millions and million of dollars worth of time in lieu of donating now illegal soft money to the parties. Or will you only sell time to groups whose messages support your buddies in the Bush regime? What happens then if the Democrats succeed with their efforts at "regime change." Will you cozy up to them for special favors?



Like most capitalists and their organizations, you have no principles beyond increasing your profits and power. Your organization has no business owning station licenses that legally bind you to serving the "public interest, convenience and necessity" because like most capitalists you don’t believe in the public. We are just individual consuming units whose eyes and ears you sell to advertisers. In a true democratic republic, your station licenses would have been revoked as soon as you deemed any political speech too controversial. You have turned democratic communication theory on it's head.

In our legal system, commercial speech is subject to restrictions while political speech is cherished, protected, and promoted. Since this nation's founding, countless people have been jailed or otherwise suffered to establish our free speech rights. For example, well into the last century, distributing information about birth control was illegal in most of the United States. During the first decade of the last century, the Industrial Workers of the World held their famous "free speech fights" in several communities who passed laws to keep the IWW from organizing workers through public speaking.

There is another aspect of commercial advertising that troubles me. Every commercial urges the buying of products in the capitalist market and our television viewing experience is packed with messages telling us to buy things and that happiness is tied to our consumption. A trip to McDonalds isn't just the purchase of food, it's an emotional family feel-good event. A car isn't just a vehicle, it's the experience of riding around with your friends singing to the radio, a lure for sex partners, a status symbol, and a statement of personal style. You broadcast a world where a person is defined by his or her purchases and not by their intrinsic value as a human being, their personality, or the good works they do. In this world, everything, including intimate emotions is a commodity. You know, you don't really love that woman unless you buy her a DeBeers diamond ring. You don't love your children if you don't take them to McDonalds, and you don't love your husband if you don't serve him Stove Top Stuffing. Don't forget that your kids have to have Tommy Hilfiger shirts or they'll be laughed out of school because they're not cool. In CBS ad- land everything is commodified, including your closest relationships. Every commercial you show is indoctrination to the corporate capitalist system epitomized by your corporation and its actions.

READY TO FADE CD 2 UP UNDER BILL’S MIC

It's ironic that you are so perturbed about children seeing Jackson's boob, but you don't care about turning them into boobs with your commercials. I guess that you also don't care about the obvious flaws to Bush's Medicare plan and how it will burden today's children with tomorrow's massive debt. Fortunately for you, the Medicare plan should be titled the "Pharmaceutical Company Enrichment Act." The bill's provisions make sure that the drug sellers will be able to spend a lot of money on TV commercials from the completely obscene and unjust rapacious profits they will make from overcharging Medicare.

It's obvious that CBS and its owner, Viacom, are heartless organizations, concerned only with their profits and power. Your programming and the commercials you run belie any concern you convey for children or other people. You are complicit in turning every aspect of life into buying and selling. Your conservative pundits decry the loss of values in our culture and society while you do everything possible to turn every value they cherish into a product. Almost all products advertised on CBS have side effects destructive to our politics, our culture, our society, our environment, and individual users. Meanwhile, your so-called journalists, who are really lapdogs of corporations and politicians, are destroying our democracy with their limited and facile reporting. You and the rest of the commercial media have turned a nation of once proud workers into a mass of consumers who now get their pride from the products they purchase.

FADE CD 2 UP UNDER BILL’S MIC

Well, many of us aren't baffled by your BS and we will continue to build a society and culture that places people over profits and real life over consumption. Your days of cultural pollution are numbered because we are citizens, not passive consumers.

The fictional news anchor Howard Beal, played by Peter Finch in the 1976 film "Network," said it best. "We're mad as hell, and we're not going to take it anymore!

This work is in the public domain
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