Daily Show

[KyzrSoze]

This is a quote from John Stewart on the "The Daily Show". This guy never fails to make me laugh.

Quote:

PLAY DOUGH

"Hey kids! Think you've got the laziest, least socially
active lifestyle around? Here's your chance to prove it.
Video game company Nintendo of America is hiring 50 people
to play computer games all summer long. Nintendo will begin
accepting applications on May 13. Go ahead... go fill yours
out. This web joke will still be here when you get back.

From July to August, members of the "Nintendo street team"
will showcase the Nintendo Gamecube and handheld Game Boy
systems at concerts, malls and fairs across the country.
They will be paid about $100 a day, along with all the
Orange Juliuses and funnel cakes they can eat.

Candidates must be at least 18 years old, must fill out an
application and create a two-minute video explaining why
they deserve the job. Semi-finalists will then be called in
for an interview, during which they will be required to
storm a castle, stomp on a series of turtles and rescue a
princess from a large, horned dragon-type thing.

According to Nintendo executive vice president Peter
MacDougall, the program "is sure to be the best summer job
ever." That is, of course, unless you win a coveted spot on
the Bill Gates "sabotage Nintendo" team, at a salary of $2
million a week."

[Cheyenne]

Hi, Kyzr! Ah, yes, the daily show! Now, here's your moment of zen...

Isn't it "Jon Stewart"?

[Cheyenne]

Oh, just to add another post to my total...

I usually despise TV, and especially any "American" news, local or national or, (cough) "world". So the rare times I do glance at the "box" the Daily Show is a real treat. For news, Anything "American" seems very commercially driven, so I usually turn to the BBC for any world news.

[DC_Geezr]

:) Hi Chey!It's interesting to hear you,as an American,critisize American news reporting.I've often looked at CNN in amazement as they continue to beat non news items,like the Gary Condit thing, to an absolute pulp,whilst ignoring hard news events in the rest of the world.It seems to me that any news events happening in other parts of the world are only covered if they have a direct impact on America,or its interests,or if it's a disaster with many lives lost.Do Americans really want to hear non stop news about Monica,or Gary Condit,and their ilk?I'd be surprised if they do,IMHO.

Here in Canada,we are fortunate to have access to not only our own news sources,like the CBC,or CTV,as well as CNN and the U.S networks,as well as the BBC,and others,so we get a pretty good read on what's going on,from a number of perspectives.-^

Ric ;)

[Fast&Furious]

Whoa i thought i was the only person in the world that actually watches that show. ive been watching it for about 4 years and whenever i refer to it my friends always say "what are u talkin about?" It just suprized me to see other ppl watch it.

[Cheyenne]

Hi, Geezr!

Oh, my you have brought up just about what I consider to be "the" issue of modern western society, the "media". Or I brought it up. This could be a huge, textbook length post, or a university course, and still barely touch on the important points.

First of all, you say me, "as an American". Well, I'm not really an American. I was born here. I live here. I'm a citizen here. I vote (sometimes, when I'm not too disgusted in politics) in the elections here. I am semi-immersed in the culture here, but I am still something of an outsider. My personal "outlander" nature probably started with my Swedish grandfather Falkenberg who married a Whelan (Irish/German) of all things (well, she is pretty, so that's okay) and then my Swedish grandfather Eriksson/Ericsson (depends on which branch of the family you listen to, evidently there was a spelling change for some at some point) goes and marries a, Sojona (Native American) (okay, she is beautiful, but what was he thinking?!?). All this and growing up in the rather clannish Swedish-American society in Minnesota in my early years. Personally, I can "pass" for Swedish without question, and was largely accepted by my extended family. But this only made me more aware of the way my mother was treated - usually with respect, but as an outsider, as someone you had to be carefuly what you said around. There were often the awkwardly broken conversations when she would enter the room or hushed whispers sometimes. My mother was and is very beautiful and extremely intelligent, and she has used both those to her advantage both in society and our "family" (though, those two features also carry their own "alienation"), so she coped rather well with being an outsider. Graduating from college with a degree in psychology didn't hurt either.

Now, when my father began to change his career our nuclear family began to move around a very great deal. I think in my early education I had only two full school years at a given school (not two years at the same school, but full individual years at different schools). All the others were broken up by moves, often from state to state with very different local cultures. For me, this once again put me in the position of outsider. It was sink or swim - of course, I always tried to "swim". I believe what this did for me was gave me certain social skills where I could analyze group dynamics, discern local mores and customs, learn the faux paus without having to commit them. I learned an awful lot about the triggers and keys used within groups to govern "group" behavior.

Well, with background out of the way, sort of back to the point of all of this...

My first really definitive moment involving "American" news coverage was when I was about 15, oh, yes, High School. I was part of basically all the social groups in high school without really belonging to any specific one (the academics, the jocks, the cheerleaders, the gearheads, the bikers, the stoners, the shop kids, the Latinos, the Asian-Pacific Islanders, the whole gamut). The year was 1992, the time was April, the time of the Los Angeles Riots sparked by the Rodney King situation. I remember the local and national news in the United States just kept showing these same images, repeat, repeat, repeat of Reginald Denny being beaten and of looting and violence. I remember becoming sooooo angry, not at the violence that was happening and being shown on television - that was horrible and tragic, but there was something else at work - but because I really felt like someone was trying to seriously manipulate me, trying to force me to think a certain way. I knew that this wasn't the "whole" picture. I was being shown images that were designed to solely evoke an emotional response. "Why"? Well, if you can control people's emotions to an extent you can control the people. I have always keenly felt when someone is trying to use phsychologica triggers on me, whether they be social, familial, national, political, whatever - maybe because of my "outsider" perspective, sometimes I feel i can see the "forest for the trees" where a lot of others seem to not be able to. Anyway, I began flipping channels. It was all this same thing. These same scenes (four or five, in total, I believe, repeated ad nauseum) on almost every channel, until I hid PBS - Public Broadcasting System. I believe it was the McNeil-Lehrer news hour. They showed Edward James Olmos (the actor) working with neighborhood people to clean up and try and establish order and safety for those who were living there. Here was a station that was not showing "minorities" running around assaulting and looting everything in sight. My anger subsided a bit as I started to watch this "real" news program. I realized that the main US networks were using the known fear of minorities by the "white majority" to create an emotional response in the viewers to "keep them glued" to the channel. Few things in the world make me angrier than someone trying to remove my own judgement from "me" and replace it with theirs. I find "this" to be the main tool of US news agencies, whether local or national, to get you to "tune in". In order to accomplish this, they use demographics to select a fatherly "white" man, whom you can trust ("More Americans trust Tom Brokaw than any other anchor") or a pretty (but not too pretty) younger woman for whom you can lust, among many other tools and hooks all designed to get you to part with your advertising dollar. The news bureau that dies with the most money wins. That is about the "State" of US News, whether print, radio or TV.

Do Americans really want to hear about Monica or Gary and nothing else? No, of course not. What the news agencies operate on though, are just numbers. If something is announced as shocking and as having been "hidden" from the "population" news agencies play the "outrage" angle. "This politician you trusted did this behind your back! You should be outraged! And, here I am, Tom Brokaw (whom you trust!) to tell you all about it! Meanwhile, we must break for a commercial, so please go out and buy this dishwasher so that you can continue to trust me!" This sort of attitude, without hearing anything opposing or to counter that (the alternatives are far less glamorous and have much less power as they are not "money seeking" like the mega-agencies), can seriously convince people that they need to hear and see "this".

People, taken as individuals are individuals. But anyone who has studied statistics can tell you that if you start to take people as groups there is "group" behavior. This is what the news agencies in America shoot for. The news bureau executives those who do their research are frequently not members of social minorities, and are not tuned to minority issues, so they shoot for what they can understand, the somewhat "mythical" mainstream Amercian. This is their target. Everything they do is designed to manipulate this "person" into tuning in night after night to their news broadcast. To me, this is just so glaringly obvious, at least from my perspective.

I remember after the riots, many of my "white" friends were using such language against "minorities" in general that I just felt so lost and hurt by it all. Many of my "minority" friends were feeling just as angry against the "white" reaction because their "news sources" were putting a "minority" spin on the information being disseminated. To me it just seems that almost all American news sources, whether mainsteam or even minority (there ARE alternatives like PBS and a small but significant alternative "press" element in the US) are trying to divide up the population into controllable groups in order to just acquire wealth. The bigger "viewer share" the more money you bring home.

Money is not our god...

I don't know when - some learned person has probably written a treatise on this somewhere - but news in the US became sidetracked from reporting relevant information to simply trying to make money. If NBC makes a shocking announcement about a news story, ABC must outdo them, soon to be followed by CBS, and then FOX has to counter them all with something even more outrageous. Then CNN must follow the thing in a slightly calmer (as they ARE 24/7) way, but unceasingly hammering the same information again and again and again. News has become not about information but about entertainment. Does anyone remember Geraldo Rivera making up news? Yikes.

I'm ranting and probably wandering all over the place as I'm writing this in snippets while I'm working. But I do remember being out at a bar and seeing Tom Brokaw doing this thing on the "World News" and just remarking to myself that he wasn't saying a single damned thing about the "World", US, US, US. Then I got home and just for kicks, turned onto BBCA (BBC America) and watched a replay of the BBC World News. A Ship had capsized in the mediteranean sea and 100s of people were presumed lost. There were multiple nations involved in the rescue effort. There wasn't a single word about this on the US World News. I was disgusted. :mad:

[Spiderman]

That made me sit up a bit. I feel pretty much the same emotional barrage as you do from our side of the pond. The BBC aint all it's cracked up to be unfortunately. They seem to be moving in the CNN, SKY, ENTERTAINMENT direction. All we get is the 'crime wave' (crime is actually down 30%) and floods of immigrants' out to steal 'our scant resources'. It makes me and a lot of others sick to the stomach. I have yet to meet anyone who is outraged over crime or immigrants except the usual suspects yet the media keep banging this drum. There seems to be some agenda they are playing and it is a dangerous game.

I avoid 24 hour 'news' programmes because they can seriously damage your mental health. We tend to watch maybe one programme a night if that.

[Domagoj]

Hey Chey, you're not the only one with that "hey let's move every 2 years" family practice...yeah it does give you an edge on being able to see how superficial all the "movements" in social groups are...and making you an outsider is probably the best thing parents can do for a child (though for the child this is usually the thing they detest the most at the time, since friends are gone and you have to start from scratch, and if these kids don't get over the fact they simply are and always will be an outsider, {even if they becom "immersed" in the culture/group} then strange, unpleasant things can happen...).

Well, being Canadian (not "proud" canadian, I just live here...), it seems to me canada is not really a seperate country at all - it's just a "free state" of the US, pretty much. The UK thinks it owns canada - yeah right...that's what it is on paper, but gimme a break - the US will have it the moment it snaps its fingers (hey this is politics I'm talking about, not the american people, as you know). So, I'm basically in the same boat. I get all the benefits from cheap technology, gas price fluctuations and the rest being determined pretty much instantaneously by anything happening in the US, and the same old crap the news rams down your throat over and over again...

America just has it too good compared with the rest of the world - and I don't mean just simple "standard of living" or "opportunity", although that is undeniable. I mean all the things that are utterly taken for granted (and only experienced in a very small number of outsdie countries) - like downpayments on a car or something - in other countries you have to pay cash on the spot for a car, for this and that - no 0% financing, maybe 30% if at all. I mean look at all the crap on infomercials - 15 new ab-energizers every year, 24 "lose 20lbs" diets, 16 toaster ovens, tony little's gazelle platinum, more useless crap than you can ever hope to know about, and it's all tossed in the trash 5 years later - look at it all - the land of opportunity, yes, anything can make you rich like a dinky little invention that everyone suddenly buiys because it's actually useful (like the high pressure hose bit for cleaning eavestroughs and zip ties and other things), but most of the stuff is something that has a 2% actual use, with marketing as the filler. Look at all the other crap - how to do this - how to get ahead in real estate - it's all swindling in plain view, and people pay willingly for it - the person giving the secrets gives the lamest, most useless "secrets", and the real secret is how they made millions of people empty out their wallets with a smile.

So it's just boring after a while I guess, boring to have the same news about this or that happening in another country, so they get the Ted Turner syndrome and hype it through the roof. Look at Ted Turner - that's the definiton of the American dream. Have basically no money at all and buy a multimillion dollar company - then buy MGM for a billion or two - still not even being able to actually afford it - it's about who can talk their way into what they want - and hey that's what this system is there for - but that means the BSers will win every time, because one's word is all there is to a business deal. CNN tries to add different flavors to the news, making it near WWFstandards - almost pure icing on the cake and close to no actual cake - so that's what the image of America is to "those other countries". Hey, it's no joke. Think about it. Hollywood - same thing - total glam and self-hype - hey what do you think a movie star is? The same with WWF - the rock's little smirks, even though just a skit in an circus show, can be seen by someone from another country as BEING America smirking at them/their country. No laughing matter. This is how it is. Everything about America is becoming this way - because America is the market capital of the world, and rightly so - they are the king's of marketing - it's like the monarchy in the old times beheading anyone that brought to light one syllable of what was really going on behind the cloak of avoidance techniques.

What can any other country hope to do except catch up with the US? That's the only idol there is for any other country. "Look how good it is - look how fantastic it is". So people come here, settle in, and find out, "oh actually it's pretty lame, pure hype". So what's new? It's like the dork that wishes he could be part of a "cool" group of people. All he has to do is be a dumbass but he tries to produce a perfect image of himself, and the result is a perfect dork. That's what happens... So there's also jealousy from many other countries that the US has all the money, technology, whatever else, but it's a fact that the government has more power over its people than any communist regime, because there's no direct observation of what's actually happening in the backdrop, so CNN and the entire media marathon/sales-prop blitz is the perfect front for the largest corporations/government, as they can distract almost anyone's attention to anywhere they please. They could even be developing further advancement in the very thing they show on the news, and claim that thing is propagated by others. There's such a barrage of crap coming from all angles that there's no chance the "real thing" can be seen - it's the PERFECT form of dictatorship, because no-one even knows there's a dictator. Then the other countries actually see it is like that (again our "outsider advantage"), and of course they're written off as maybe jealous or terrorists or anything else that suits the "big dog" government's interests, or that sways attention away from the real issue, or, the "complete success", performing both of these techniques in one seamless, fell swoop.

So on the one hand there's the rest of the world wanting to come in and get a piece of the american dream, and then the ones inside the borders that see there is no dream except for the corrupt ones, and those ones are the reason for lawyers - the best bullshitters around, for success is directly proportional to bullshit - manipulation through illusions - and it works every time, because almost no-one will see it (at its deepest level), with an almost perfect extinction rate for those that do...

[Domagoj]

"extinction rate" meaning anything from actual elimination to improsonment for no reason other than political security, to deflection of stated issue and bringing in something else, to being labeled at this that or the other and letting the sheperds and sheep have their field day, blah blah...

[Cheyenne]

Hi, Domagoj! I just read your post and have to quite largely agree with it. I've been there before, and visit those thoughts and issues very frequently. They seem to be thrust on me sometimes, against my will, and at others, I seek them out and probe them for weaknesses and strengths. I have been told I tend to overanalyze things a bit (situations, society, politics, others, myself), I can't really argue with that. Something I try to remember though, through all of that, and especially the conclusions (frequently negative) that can be drawn about external forces trying to subvert individuality is that there is "life" here. Good people, intelligent people, kind people, loving and caring people go about their lives in this world and find peace between themselves and these forces. I know that America, like any place or situation, has it's middle and its extremes. Sometimes the extremes take our focus (yes, the news agencies definitely focus on those ^_^) and consume our thoughts as our "important" issues, but there are wonderful things about America too.

I know that prize recently posted a thread about "China", and like anyplace, like America, China has it's good and bad, it's normal and its extremes. I really appreciated that post of his and would like him and the rest of us to revisit it and maybe continue it. We have much to learn from each other. I have much to learn from you too, Domagoj. We all have a great deal of common ground, as living beings, and also great diversity. I enjoy very much visiting those issues and, even though there can be a bit of conflict when we do, I think it's very healthy for us. I know I have been thinking about posting some of my thoughts about America along the same lines as prize did with China. Not to glorify or defend it's actions, but just things that affect me as special. It's sometimes easier to focus on the "negatives" in life. Any forces on us that are truly "anti-survival" do indeed demand our immediate attention (that's exactly how news bureaus try to present "everything"), but there are beauties and wonders too, I think it's important for us to share those things with each other as well.

I was very happy when in the "worst movie" thread many were also posting things they thought as good that were worth sharing.

More on topic...

When Spiderman discussed that the BBC seems to be going the way of CNN, i'm reminded that when I used the BBC as an example against the American news bureaus, I didn't mean to suggest it as a paragon or any such thing, just to contrast with how truly bad and self-centered our news agencies had already become. As you say, Domagoj, about "the rest of the world wanting to come in and get a piece of the american dream", I am very concerned that American is being emulated as the proper route to commercial success. I hope that as much of the world becomes more commercial that places like this (TotalNFS), where thoughful people can share what is important to them as individuals and members of groups, that alternative ideas and information can be exchanged and hopefully allow us to live better lives. I treasure you all of you here, and even though we may disagree at times I deeply respect all of your opinions.

[KyzrSoze]

Hi, Kyzr! Ah, yes, the daily show! Now, here's your moment of zen... Isn't it "Jon Stewart"?

Suddenly and simultaneously the author realized - John Daily is the fat golfer, and the edit button is in the bottom right hand corner...

[Cheyenne]

Uh...KyzrSoze: John Daily is the fat golfer"THE" fat golfer? You mean there's only one?

"There can be only one..."

^_^ ^_^ ^_^ ^_^ ^_^ ^_^

[KyzrSoze]

Oh, yes. Even among golfers, John Daily (maybe Dailey) is a Kenworth in a sea of Suburbans.;)

[prize]

yes, Chey, have read all your post. It's much valuable. (from when i can read English? hehe)

you know China's TV news? It let the Chinese people angry. oh, but i think i cant say all the China, i say only my city. We genarally watch the HongKong 's TV news, because it's more fast and more perfessional, language is Cantonese, which i speak. HongKong TV news is impersonal views, (do you think it is go with saying? you see, the China's offical news is not like that).
yes, HongKong 's news maker is good, but , i live in China mainland, where 's news information is been "filtrate", you know I mean? When i watching that news, there could be a sudenlly " CUT"! This cut i not did by HongKong, it is did by ours TV station control. it's by manual. Because that news, is not suitable broadcast in the public in here Mainland, so there must be a CUT. ( I here can not watch that news, but HongKong people can watch that, because no one can control HongKong's freedom. That's the " One contry, two policy")
We are very angry about that goverment's behavior, we want know the news, want know the fact!
but no one shout for that problem, I said , that's dangerous.
I think there's few countries like that, people have no rights to know the fasts.

It it better in GuangZhou, if speak to the inside the mainland, other places in China, it's more not good . 1.4 billion Chinese people, 7/10 is farmer, they know what is internet? what is human rights? most of them is no school. Many Chinese people, can only have food to eat, what's news-free? have spear time to criticize the goverment?

anyhow, i can feeling that China is in its developing, everything, i can feel indeed in GuangZhou, things is changing every day. i very pleased about that.

China, developing ; US ,Canada, developed.
People 's thought is much different, for the past years, i watch many many hollywood's movies, i think i can understand American people's thinking. I know that's different, different world , China and US.