Subject:   Turn Off Your TV: part 5

Turn Off Your TV Set--Part V

The Programming of America by Television

by L. Wolfe

Reflect on the following for a moment: Suppose 
someone told you that they wanted you to take a large dose of a mind-deadening 
drug, and that after you took the drug, they were then going to suggest 
that you do things that without taking the drug you would probably 
never conceive of doing. And, they also told you that {you would 
not be held accountable for what you did, that you would have no 
conscious memory of what took place.} Would you take it?
   Definitely not, you say, no way.
   Yet, for the last more than 40 years, the majority of Americans, 
like yourself, have been taking a daily dose of a mind-deadening 
drug, one of the most powerful ever invented--{television}. 
With your mind in a deadened state, things have been suggested to 
you that, were you alert and reasoning, you would have rejected. 
And, {over time}, under the continual dosage of this drug, 
you have followed the suggestions, changing the way you think about 
yourself and the world around you. And, you never knew that this 
was happening and you may even yet, despite all the things we have 
already shown you, have trouble believing it. That is how complete 
this brainwashing process is, how strong is its power over you.
   People like Sigmund Freud, his direct followers in the psychoanalytic 
movement, and the neo-Freudians that split from him, as well as 
all {social pyschologists}, deny the existence of the universal 
truth that man is made in the living image of God and is therefore 
distinct from the animal.  They deny that man has been endowed by 
his Creator with the Divine Spark of reason, and that by the gift 
of reason, man can {consciously} perfect his knowledge. 
For them, creativity is fundamentally an unknowable, mystical, concept, 
an act linked to repression of carnal and sexual desires.
   By denying these most fundamental of truths, they deny the existence 
of any truth. They seek to impose on mankind a {paradigm shift 
that will wipe out 2,000 years of Christian civilization}, returning 
man to a bestial and primitive social order.
   Using television as their weapon, the brainwashers have launched 
a 40-year assault on the universal truths of Western Christian civilization 
and on the concept of universal truth itself. In place of morally 
informed reason, in the absence of universal truth, they have raised 
the false god of {popular opinion}. As we shall show, they 
have consciously targetted {the higher moral values} of 
society, and even the idea that there could be a set of true moral 
values, seeking to substitute {amorality} as the axiomatic 
assumption.

   Reality as Opinion

   Once the concept of universal truth is obliterated, reality can 
be redefined by internal ``perceptions'' or ``images'' of that reality. 
Those perceptions and images are then validated by {popular 
opinion}. Reality becomes a set of conflicting opinions validated 
by a mass consensus.
   Freud, in discussing this transformation in his 1921 {Mass 
Psychology}, identifies the process in masses of people as a 
loosening of the hold of what he calls moral or social conscience 
(the ``Over I'' or ``superego,'' as it is mistranslated in English) 
over a person's more infantile and hence, more animal-like nature 
(the I and It, or the ``ego'' and ``id'').  To use a term developed 
by the neo-Freudians, the individual becomes more ``other-directed,'' 
governed by the perceived opinions of others, and thus, more easily 
manipulated.
   Television brainwashing works through the manipulation of images 
and perceptions to cause a {paradigm shift} in the ``public 
mind.'' It does this through what the television people appropriately 
call {programming,} the content of which is shaped and fine-tuned 
by ``social analysts.''
   Let's see how Walter Lippmann, one of the earliest practitioners 
and theorists of the mass manipulation of opinion, describes the 
process.  Lippmann, trained by the British psychological warfare 
unit at Wellington House during World War I and a follower of Freud, 
was to become regarded as the most influential American social and 
political commentator of the first half of the twentieth century.
   In 1922, following the publication of Freud's {Mass Psychology}, 
Lippmann authored a handbook on the manipulation of the public mind, 
titled {Public Opinion}. In its introductory chapter, titled 
``The World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads,'' he describes 
the concept of public opinion:
   ``Public opinion deals with indirect, unseen, and puzzling facts 
and there is nothing obvious about them. The situations to which 
public opinion refers are known only as opinions.... The pictures 
inside the heads of these human beings, the pictures of themselves, 
of others, of their needs, purposes and relationship, are their 
opinions. Those pictures which are acted on by groups of people, 
or by individuals acting in the name of groups, are Public Opinion 
with capital letters.... The picture inside so often misleads men 
in their dealings with the world outside.''
   While television might shift some opinions relatively quickly, 
a {paradigm shift} involving the {axiomatic} assumptions 
that govern all individuals thinking in a society does not occur 
overnight; it occurs over a long period of time, in stages.
   Think about a profile of the American population, correlating 
it to the cumulative amount of television viewing.
   First, you have a generation which was born before the advent 
of television, the generation who fought in World War II; they had 
the strongest set of moral values, since they were influenced by 
the war experience and their parents' strong moral values. They 
were the most resistant to brainwashing.
   Their children, the ``baby boomers'' of the 1947-55 period, were 
the special targets of the brainwash programming, as we shall show. 
They have been subjected to television brainwashing all their lives. 
All succeeding generations have been totally immersed in the television 
brainwashing experience.
   Thus, you have an older generation which has been watching television 
since approximately 1950, and successive generations who have been 
watching for their entire lifetimes.
   Now, you have parents who were themselves reared by television, 
raising children, who were reared by television, who are now starting 
to have children themselves: three successive generations subjected 
to television brainwashing, without any conscious memory of anything 
different.
   With this profile in mind, focus on the following: The goal of 
television programming is to make each succeeding generation more 
infantile, more animal-like, more amoral, thereby {shifting} 
the value structure of the whole society. By the end of the process, 
the parents of the ``baby boomers'' have adopted all the fundamental, 
infantile assumptions of their children.

   The Lost Generational War

   The Tavistock brainwashers Fred Emery and Eric Trist, writing 
nearly 20 years ago, identify the crucial period in this brainwashing 
process: the point at which the pre-television generation tried 
to raise their ``baby boom'' kids, approximately 1949-69. They note 
the following scenario. Throughout the period, children's television 
watching increased, especially as the number of shows oriented to 
them increased; at the same time, adult watching increased.  Children, 
they say, learned from what they saw their parents doing: It became 
socially approved behavior to watch television.
   But then something interesting happened: The television, itself, 
took over as a surrogate parent. Children watched to amuse themselves, 
and were encouraged by parents to do so. They became habituated 
to watching.
   The images presented on the screen were more real, more powerful 
than the outside world. The messages presented in the shows became 
more important to the children than what they were told by their 
live parents.
   Children watched the same shows, often with their friends, and 
talked about the shows, socializing the experience. Emery and Trist, 
citing the work of others, report that television became the ``Pied 
Piper'' for the children, the {leader} that they followed.
   The whole process created an estrangement between child and parent, 
although not necessarily apparent at first, creating a crisis in 
the fundamental unit of social reproduction, the family. It was 
only as these baby boomer children grew into adolescence in the 
1960s that the conflict broke into the open. Write Emery and Trist: 
``a generation of children grow up on a TV diet, and the more affluent 
get sets, then multiple sets, the more likely to use it as substitute 
for a presence with their children. The children grow to adolescence, 
spend less time viewing, but have a different world view. They challenge 
the world view of the parents, face to face....''
   In previous generational challenges, Emery and Trist write, the 
disciplinary authority of the adult society ultimately won over 
its young-adult values. But this time, adult society had lost its 
ability to discipline; the adults had been infantilized by their 
own television watching. The generational war is lost, Emery and 
Trist write, as all society plunges to a new, {lower} infantile 
level. The behavior of the children--the drugs, the sex, the anti-social 
behavior--is excused or to use a brainwasher's word--{rationalized}, 
with the help of the messages contained in television programming.
   Emery and Trist reach a startling conclusion: The generational 
war between the so-called counterculture and the generation that 
fought World War II will be the last such sharp confrontation of 
values. Under the influence of television, each succeeding generational 
transfer of power will be smoother: When the adults are infantile 
already, it is more easy to accept the infantilism of their youth. 
The children, they state, may be violent, insane and anti-social, 
but no one will assert that it isn't their right to be so!
   To understand better how we got into this mess, we are going 
to have to go back to the early period of television in the 1950s, 
and show how what you watched as a child helped determine your values 
as an adult.
   As we said, the ``baby boom'' generation was the first to be 
reared by the television set. By 1952 there were already 30 million 
TV sets in America; by the end of the decade the penetration in 
American homes was near universal. This provided the basis for mass 
brainwashing, targetting especially the children born since 1949.
   It is important to understand that the brainwashers think in 
{long time spans}. They know that it is impossible to effect 
any significant change in social values over anything but time frames 
measured in several generations. Hence, the messages presented in 
mass television programming in the 1950s, which were planned to 
{play back} one and two decades hence. In the same way, 
what you and your children are watching today, will shape the first 
part of the next millennium.
   While your brainwashers think in {long periods of time}, 
you are being induced to think in shorter and shorter time frames. 
Your attention span is shrinking almost daily. For example, the 
average half-hour television show is broken into at least four segments, 
with usually the longest running no more than five to six minutes, 
with the remaining portions occupied by commercials, theme, and 
credits.  Television news presents items in 30 second bites, with 
slightly longer feature pieces. The very nature of the majority 
of your television viewing makes it impossible to consider difficult 
concepts, especially developments over long periods of time.

   Cultural Warfare

   Your brainwashers themselves actually fall into two major categories. 
They both have the same world view--the concept of man as a beast, 
to be controlled and manipulated like an animal--but there is a 
division of responsibility between them. There are the people like 
Emery and Trist and others at places like Tavistock, who create 
and analyze mechanisms for brainwashing, who study the effects of 
this brainwashing with what are called {profiles}, and who 
make recommendations on how to do it better.  They work as social 
psychologists, and in similar professions.
   Then, there are the people who create the {idea content} 
of the brainwashing. They operate on the culture or {paradigm}, 
as we have explained--the sets of axioms that govern the way we 
think. These are the {cultural warfare} experts, who create 
the value systems which are in turn imposed on the society by the 
brainwashing mechanisms, such as television.
   In the late 1930s and during the war, operatives of the Frankfurt 
School were involved in major studies of mass radio programming, 
and their effects on the population. Their work, with Tavistock-linked 
personnel, in what was known as the Princeton ``Radio Project'' 
provided important conceptual material for later, mass television 
brainwashing.
   One of the key early pioneers in television brainwashing techniques 
was Theodor Adorno, a Frankfurt School operative and a former member 
of the ``Radio Project.'' Adorno shared the bestial outlook of the 
neo-Freudians, developing, along with others associated with the 
Frankfurt School network, a perverse theory on the use of mass communications 
technology for mass brainwashing. Given the appropriate message 
content, said Adorno, media such as television and radio, could 
be used to make people ``forcibly retarded.'' An adult personality 
could be reduced, through interaction with mass media, to a more 
primitive, childish or infantile state.
   In a 1938 report, Adorno compares the retardation capability 
of existing media. Radio has one level of effect, but sound film 
is an even more powerful ``retardant,'' Adorno indicates.  Television 
is yet another level more powerful, said Adorno in 1944:  ``Television 
aims at the synthesis of radio and film, and is held up only because 
the interested parties have not yet reached agreement, but its consequences 
will be quite enormous and promise to intensify the impoverishment 
of asethetic matter so drastically....''
   In the minds of Adorno and his ``fellow travelers,'' the power 
to control the new medium meant the power to determine and control 
the values of society: ``Television is a medium of undreamed of 
psychological control,'' Adorno wrote in 1956.
   That same year, Adorno wrote an essay titled ``Television and 
the Patterns of Mass Culture'' that elaborated on the brainwashing 
techniques that could be employed with television. It was intended 
as a cookbook and discussion guide for people involved with the 
programming.  For people like ourselves, intended television brainwash 
victims, it provides insight into how the messages in the programming 
can be ``decoded.''
   Outlining his study, Adorno writes, ``[We will] investigate systematically 
socio-psychological stimuli typical of televised material on both 
the descriptive and psychodynamic levels, to analyze their presuppositions, 
as well as their total pattern, and to evaluate the effect they 
are likely to produce. This procedure may ultimately bring forth 
a number of recommendations on how to deal with the these stimuli 
to produce the most desirable effect....''
   Adorno states that all television programming contains an {overt} 
message as defined by plot, characters, etc. in the images presented 
and a {hidden} message that is less obvious, and is defined 
by the larger intent of those presenting the images. These {hidden 
messages} are the brainwashing content, while the {overt} 
message--the plot, etc.--is the {carrier} of that brainwash 
content.
   The {hidden message} operates on the mind so as to cause 
{value conflict} over a period of time. As we have stated 
before, the conflict will not surface immediately, but occurs over 
generational time spans. The {hidden message} in a show 
may not surface for 10-20 years as a change in attitudes of the 
majority of the population, but Adorno asserts that {it will 
ultimately surface.} This is the concept of {playback} 
to which we have referred in other sections of this report.

   Those `Wholesome' Shows

   To make his point, Adorno unmasks the {hidden message} 
of a number of popular shows of the early television period.
   {Our Miss Brooks}, a popular situation comedy (sitcom), 
pitted a trained professional, a school teacher, against her boss, 
the principal. Most of the humor, according to Adorno, was derived 
from situations in which the underpaid teacher tried to hustle a 
meal from her friends.
   Adorno ``decodes'' the {hidden message} as follows: ``If 
you are humorous, good-natured, quick-witted, and charming as she 
[Miss Brooks] is, do not worry about being paid a starvation wage. 
You can cope with your frustration in a humorous way and your superior 
wit and cleverness put you not only above material privations, but 
also above the rest of mankind.''
   This {message} will be called forth years hence, as the 
economy collapses in the form of a ``cynical anti-materialism.'' 
It came forth with a vengeance among the 1960s ``lost generation,'' 
and the first wave of the ``counterculture.''
   Generalizing from this, Adorno points out that it is {social 
tension and stress} that call forth the television images of 
{pyschodynamic stereotypes}, the role models and images 
from the early television viewing. The more confusing life becomes, 
the ``more people cling desperately to cliche@aas to bring order 
to the otherwise un-understandable,'' Adorno says.
   Another ``decoding'' by Adorno emphasizes this point. Remember 
the show, {My Little Margie}? The heroine of this sitcom 
was a pretty girl who played ``merry pranks'' on her father, who 
is portrayed as well-meaning but stupid.
   Adorno says that the {hidden message} is the image of 
an aggressive female sucessfully dominating and manipulating the 
male father-figure. He ``predicts'' that years later, that young 
girls will increasingly mirror this image of the ``bitch-heroine.'' 
Little Margie is the role model image for the feminist movement 
of the 1960s and 1970s that took off as the {My Little Margie'}s 
viewers grew up.
   The messages need not be contained within a single show; they 
could be transmitted through a series of images contained as primary 
or secondary features within {several shows}. For example, 
Adorno indicates that several shows featured characters who were 
artistic, sensitive, and effeminate males. Such images cohered with 
Freudian notions that artistic creativity stemmed from either a 
repressed or actual homosexual passion.  These effeminate, sensitive 
males usually come up against the other more, aggressive male ``macho'' 
images, such as cowboys, who are uncreative.
   Recognizing the psychological power in the {hidden image}, 
Adorno predicts that the ``creative sissy'' will find an ``important'' 
place in society. Such images are {playing back} today in 
the spread of homosexuality throughout society, and in all creative 
arts.
   {To be continued.}
-- 
         John Covici
          covici@ccs.covici.com