Subject:   Turn Off Your TV: part 6

Turn Off Your TV Set--Part VI

Television's Killing of God

by L. Wolfe

One of the fundamental relationships that defines our civilization 
is that of man to God.  That relationship is mediated through 
organized religion. It is religion that teaches the values and 
{axioms} of western Christian civilization, which creates in 
the individual the capacity for moral judgment that must inform 
our reasoning processes.
	As we have explained in another section of this report, 
the evil Sigmund Freud, whose mass psychology became the basis 
for theories of mass brainwashing, hated all religious belief, 
precisely because it told man that he was endowed with divine 
powers to perfect his existence; according to Freud, this belief, 
the root of our moral conscience, brought man into conflict 
with his more infantile desires, thus causing neuroses.
	Freud's system and its variants in social psychology must 
deny the perfectability of the soul, as described by Dante 
as the passage of man from the Inferno, through Purgatory, 
to Paradise; man, the two-legged animal, must not aspire to 
be any more than he is, a beast, at war with himself, whose 
base emotions must be repressed and controlled.
	In the early 1950s, the majority of Americans still actively 
worshiped God in churches and synagogues. The practice of religious 
belief was an {axiomatic assumption} of American life, even 
if Americans did not always act according to those beliefs.  
Television could not {actively and openly} attack this; to 
do that would bring down the wrath of an angry nation on the 
new medium, and lose its potential hold over the population.
	So the programmers took another tact: {Television shows 
made organized religious belief, invisible, made it disappear 
from the screen.} Studies of the content of television shows 
in the 1950s show almost no references to church-going or religious 
activities.
	Think about such shows as {Leave It to Beaver} or {Father 
Knows Best}.  Do you ever remember those families going to 
church or discussing religious beliefs? Do you even know what 
faith those families were? You don't because they never told 
you: They never discussed such matters.
	Most importantly, when these families had problems, did 
they ever turn to their church or their religious leaders as 
resources to help solve them? Never. They were all worked out 
within the family--in the absence of organized religion or 
religious beliefs. The family and its values were thus {secularized} 
and what were once called moral and religious values became 
known as {family values}--a secular belief structure that has 
nothing to do with fundamental values of western Christian 
civilization.
	This was the {hidden message} of those so-called wholesome 
family shows of the 1950s, the ones that some Moral Majority-types 
and people like Tipper Gore now hold up as examples of a golden 
era of television!
	The {playback} came in the late 1960s, with the nation convulsed 
in generational battles over values, triggered by the Vietnam 
conflict.  Tavistock brainwasher Fred Emery noted at the time 
that, unlike previous periods of social chaos, in the late 
1960s no one was turning to organized religion to help find 
a way out, to seek more fundamental values that could bind 
together society and troubled families alike. Instead, he describes 
the rise, especially among the television-weaned baby boomers 
of a {mystical anarchism}, that rejected all organized religion 
as false and ``sought a new definition for God.'' This is the 
``New Age,'' the ``Age of Aquarius,'' preached by Frankfurt 
School gurus like Herbert Marcuse.
	More recent surveys taken by Tavistock's population profilers 
show that fewer people than ever before say that they hold 
{strong religious beliefs} of any kind. A standard answer has 
a person saying that he was brought up religiously, ``but no 
longer practices any organized religion.''

	We're All Animals

	Now, let us turn our attention to how the programmers created 
an identity between man and the animal.
	One of the earliest forms of children's programming was 
cartoon shows; often those shows had human hosts, such as {Bozo}, 
or {Terrytoon Circus's} Claude Kirshner. But the majority of 
the content of the half-hour shows was the five to six minute 
cartoons. Much was made in those early days about how silly 
and innocuous the cartoons were, with some parents' groups 
complaining that there should be more ``content'' in children's 
programming.
	But they weren't innocuous. Almost every cartoon portrayed 
{animals} acting as if they were human beings.  Studies of 
children who had a daily, steady diet of television cartoons 
show that the kids lost their ability to see the difference 
between most animals and human life: The animal kingdom appeared 
to mirror human society. The children identified with certain 
animals as ``heroes'' and feared others as dangerous ``bad 
guys.''
	The same kind of cartoon fare had been available to Saturday 
matinee and other movie audiences. But children went to the 
movies at most once or twice a week, for an hour or two.  During 
the first 10 years of television, children aged 2 to 10 watched 
more hours of cartoons than they spent doing any other activity. 
They received more than an hour and a half a day worth of cartoon 
brainwashing.
	Toward the end of THE decade, the cartoon shows started 
to mirror adult television: {Yogi Bear} and other Hanna-Barbera 
features were put in the weekly series format, to create a 
regular, habituated audience. As some of the programmers predicted, 
this format also drew adult audiences to the cartoon series.

	That Lousy Mouse

	The most powerful of the children's shows were produced 
by Walt Disney Studios, which had years of experience in producing 
a mass brainwashing product directed at children. Walt Disney 
and his brother Roy were both involved in the production of 
propaganda films during World War II, overseen by the Tavistock-dominated 
Committee for Morale. His studio was the first to produce feature-length 
cartoons that incorporated human and animal characters; Disney 
recognized that the cartoon, with its color and larger-than-life 
imagery, was the perfect vehicle for carrying ``messages'' 
to children. His films, such as {Sleeping Beauty} and {Snow 
White}, were all aimed at becoming universal experiences for 
generations of children and their parents, containing {moral 
messages} that would stay with a child through most of his 
or her life.
	Thus, it was not surprising that the most popular children's 
show of the first television decade was the ``Mickey Mouse 
Club'', which mixed cartoon, movie and live interaction between 
human and animal characters.
	The ``Mickey Mouse Club'' was {an experiment in mass brainwashing 
of children through television}. Around the show was built 
an actual club organization, which by the end of the decade 
had more members than the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts combined. 
Along with membership came a club magazine and other items, 
which, in turn, suggested other group activities, which usually 
meant the purchase of some Disney-licensed toys and paraphernalia.
	Each child at home was ``indoctrinated'' in a membership 
ritual, with prompting from the television, and was urged to 
sing-along with songs, with words flashed on the screen, and 
chant things as instructed by their television group leader. 
They did so while wearing their ``mouse ears,'' which were 
designed to make them identify with an animal figure, Mickey 
Mouse.
	At the end of each show, there was a sermon by the ``group 
leader,'' a young adult male, whose preaching was reinforced 
by statements from the ``live'' Mouseketeers in the studio, 
each of whom was known only by his or her first name. The sermon 
usually spoke of the need to honor parents and other family 
members, and to do ``good'' things for little creatures and 
other little children. All of this was done while children 
at home and on the stage wore their ears and gave their ``club 
salute.''
	There had been other children's clubs before, around radio 
shows such as ``Captain Midnight,'' and around television figures 
like Roy Rogers or ``Howdy Doody,'' but nothing on the scale 
of Disney's Mickey Mouse Club, and nothing organized around 
identification with an animal. American children had been given 
a new pagan-like religion, and its god was a mouse!
	The parents saw nothing wrong in this. The mouse, through 
his surrogate, his human spokesman on the show, Jimmy, supported 
``American values.'' Children were being ``taught'' to respect 
their parents, to be ``patriotic'' and to act well-behaved. 
The parents were happy to let a mouse, or rather television, 
through a mouse, give those values to a generation of children.
	Reflect for a moment on a different time and a different 
place.  There was another generation of children whose values 
were given to them in an organized form from someone other 
than their parents. The {Hitler Youth} of Nazi Germany. They 
too had their rituals, their uniforms and symbols, and their 
songs. They too had their leaders, who preached sermons.  And 
they too were ``taught'' to be ``patriotic'' and respect their 
parents, and to always be polite and well-behaved. Remember 
what we said:  the Nazi state and values without the Nazi baggage. 
Mickey Mouse, the Fu@auhrer? Makes you think for a moment, 
doesn't it?

	Those Murderous Animals

	One of the ``values,'' that was inserted into the various 
serial adventures within the ``Mickey Mouse Club's'' format 
was the need to protect ``little creatures'' and ``nature'' 
against greedy man, who would destroy them to make money. Similar 
themes were contained in the prime time ``Walt Disney Presents'' 
series.
	Meanwhile, other more ``standard'' format shows, such as 
``Lassie} and ``Rin Tin Tin} created further identification 
between children and the animals. In these shows, the animal 
was the ``hero,'' who often defeated bad people, sometimes 
without the help of any human intervention. In each case, the 
shows featured a young boy or girl, who was protected by the 
animal (in the two cases cited, dogs). As later brainwashers' 
studies found, this made the images on the screen easier for 
the children viewers to identify with.
	All of this identification with the animal, and the blurring 
of the distinction between what is human and what is animal, 
{played back} a generation later in the lunacy of the environmental 
movement.
	Now, it's 1990. Those nice stories about ``cute little animals'' 
have turned a bit gruesome. The average nature show, whether 
it be on cable, on the networks, or on public television, shows 
animals killing each other and copulating. Some of the Moral 
Majority-types are a little squeamish about the copulation, 
but they apparently find little wrong with the violence.
	The new shows have the blessing and the guidance of various 
psychologists, who have profiled children's responses to the 
animal gore and sex. They openly state that the shows provide 
lessons for children about {human behavior}, since the animals 
merely reflect the darker side of man's own nature. Eli Rubinstein, 
a psychologist working on the American Psychological Association's 
task force on television and society, claims the violent nature 
documentaries ``puts human behavior in context.'' He says that 
parents should watch such shows with kids so that they can 
use them constructively to ``reinforce positive human behavior.''
	Such shows are especially good at explaining to children 
why it is bad to create large populations. The children can 
see that unregulated population growth leads to death and suffering, 
these brainwashers say.
	Thus, the next generation of children are to be told that 
they are to mimic ``good'' animal behavior and avoid the more 
nasty stuff. We don't want too many children, now, do we? And 
you tolerate this brainwashing and may even participate in 
it, as the psychologists ``recommend.'' This is where those 
cartoons and Mickey Mouse have led us.
	Next time you're around an environmentalist over 35 years 
of age, ask him if he still has his ``mouse ears.''

	And Justice For All

	Now, let's take a look at another brainwashing message, 
{justice, as carried out by law enforcement officers}, and 
see how television handled it. Here we will see how the hidden 
message shifts to an increasingly more fascist outlook.
	In the first decade of television, the image of law enforcement 
was conveyed in both the westerns and the so-called ``cops 
and robbers'' shows.  Children watched both, since they were 
on during prime time and were among the most popular viewing 
for families.
	Usually, the law enforcement officers were either the heroes, 
or major secondary characters, who worked with the heroes to 
solve problems. The sheriff or the detective or police officer 
was the ``good'' guy, who risked his life to protect citizens 
from ``bad'' criminals.
	The simple message delivered was ``crime doesn't pay.'' 
What was crime or criminal activity? Anything that violated 
the law. And what determined the law? On what principles was 
a society governed by law founded?  Certainly not on the concepts 
of charity and justice contained in the Bible or on the concepts 
of Natural Law embodied in our Constitution. At best, what 
was shown was that the law was based on a {social contract} 
to control the worst elements in society. At worst, it was 
shown to be based only on retributive justice--``an eye for 
an eye.'' As studies of the program content of such shows as 
``Gunsmoke,'' ``The Untouchables,'' or ``Dragnet, show often 
such ``justice'' was swift and final: More often than not the 
``bad guy'' wound up dead, without any trial.
	As television entered its second decade, the brainwashers 
altered the programming content. With the baby boomers approaching 
adolescence, new shows started portraying the {corruption} 
in society and the legal system. The series ``The Fugitive,'' 
for example, featured as a hero a man wrongly convicted of 
murder, running from the law while trying to find the person 
who framed him. Each episode showed the corruption in the society 
around him, including corrupt lawyers and police officers. 
Other shows had plot lines with the message that crime was 
a {sociological problem} and that {justice could not be found 
inside the ``system.''}
	Such images, imprinted on the minds of impressionable adolescents 
and children growing up, {played back} during the ``revolution'' 
against the social order in the late 1960s.
	More recently, television provided new messages telling 
viewers that the ``system'' had become so corrupt, that the 
corruption was everywhere: Judges were crooked, law enforcement 
officials were crooked, etc. The heroes of shows are now people 
who operate outside any law, who bring people to justice one 
way or another Rambo-style. A new fascist vigilantism is being 
organized by such shows as ``Dark Justice'' about a judge, 
who seeks to destroy people whom he cannot convict in his courtroom. 
The brainwashing message: {Constitutional law is itself a means 
to protect only the criminals and must be side-stepped to achieve 
``justice.''}
	This message finds no contradiction in the images from 35 
years ago that lie in the recesses of the minds of the baby 
boomers. The westerns and ``cops and robbers'' shows told you 
that justice is defined by the ``eye for an eye'' dictum, and 
that most often it was found at the barrel of a gun.

	The Sexual Revolution

	Finally, let's turn our attention to one of the most discussed 
questions about television programming: the wiedspread sexual 
content of shows. A flip through the dial makes it obvious 
that there is plenty of every kind of sex one could imagine 
on the tube, and what isn't shown explicitly in network prime 
time, is implied in dialogue. But it wasn't always that way. 
Again, we will see how the images have shifted, to an increasingly 
debased level.
	Let's go back to the 1950s again, when the brainwashing 
of the baby boomers started. In the early television shows, 
there was no depiction of any sexual activity and almost no 
discussion of the matter.  Those early shows supposedly featured 
``wholesome'' family situations, at least if you believe what 
some of today's television's critics now tell us. But the brainwashing 
message was more subtle. It didn't rely on visual image or 
dialogue.
	It is important that we make some distinctions about ``love'' 
and ``sex.'' The very fact that people focus on ``sex'' or 
``sexual activity'' already reflects a debasement of fundamental 
human emotions into their most carnal. We must draw a distinction 
between what is commonly called ``sex'' or ``love,'' and the 
concept of Christian love, known as {agape@am}. Man, as distinct 
from the beast, can experience love, in its most profound sense, 
as separated from instinctual cravings of animals, and to experience 
such love is joyful.
	There is no separation of the mind from such emotion, no 
split between emotion and reason, in this most fundamental 
sense of the concept of love or agape@am. It is this concept 
of love, as in man's love of God, that is the fundamental emotion, 
that truly makes man human. To say that all human society is 
fundamentally based on man's love of God and his fellow man 
is not incorrect.
	To reduce love to simple emotion, and to further reduce 
it to a sexual attraction, is a degradation of man. The Freudian 
paradigm and all its derivatives deny the existence of a love 
that is anything different than carnal or romantic. Any other 
kind of love is defined as {neurotic,} the product of a denial 
of man's basic {animal} instincts. In the Freudian system, 
agape@am has been replaced by eros, whose carnal cravings must 
determine all human relationships.
	There is no better example of agape@am than the love and 
joy that a parent feels in seeing his or her child develop 
into a reasoning, human being.  The tears of joy that come 
to parents' eyes when they see a child understand something 
for the first time are indicative of a profound emotional experience. 
This {fundamental} emotional experience puts man in touch with 
his human identity.
	The goal of the brainwashers was to destroy agape@am, using 
television as their weapon. Over a period of several generations, 
television would steer man away from agape@am, and place him 
under the thrall of eros.
	As we have stated, the earliest television was in no way 
sexually explicit or even implicit: The prevailing morality 
within the society, though weakened by hedonistic pursuits, 
would still not tolerate that. Instead, what was presented 
were simple {romantic} notions or no notions of love at all. 
Further, studies done during this early period revealed that 
early television reinforced infantile concepts about ``boy 
meets girl'' and ``infatuation,'' which, in turn, reinforced 
``common knowledge'' among children and adolescents about human 
relationships. The Frankfurt School crowd realized that by 
presenting no {positive} concept of loving, they were helping 
to ``wipe the slate clean,'' leaving the door open for more 
debased images at a later point.
	But there was another flank to the attack on agape@am, one 
with a more {hidden} message. Emery and others studying early 
television found that such shows as ``Father Knows Best,'' 
``Ozzie and Harriet}, and ``Leave It to Beaver,'' had a secondary 
effect on the children viewing them. The fictional parents 
were portrayed as ``perfect,'' without flaws.
	No real world situations were actually solved so perfectly. 
Tension was thus created between the {image} of the ``perfect 
parents'' that appeared on the screen and the {real} parents 
who lived in the children's homes: The latter could never measure 
up to the former.
	Meanwhile, the parents, who watched these shows with their 
children, were being shown television images of kids who were 
nothing like the real thing: They were too ``good,'' too well-behaved, 
too respectful. When they tried to measure their own kids against 
the tube's images of children, they found their own wanting.
	The brainwashers noted that this was the first generation 
whose images of parents and children were coming into conflict 
with reality. An obvious conclusion can be drawn: the early 
television programming message {played back} in the generational 
war of the late 1960s, when the tension exploded into anger 
and rage.
	As the baby boomers reached adolescence, they were bombarded 
with new, more degraded images of ``love,'' and ``love-making,'' 
which were to prepare the way for the next phases of the ``sexual 
revolution.'' Only ten years earlier, the images and situations 
of ``Love, American Style'' or ``MASH'' would have been unthinkable 
to put on television.
	A new image started to enter the scene: the shattering of 
the nuclear family, the fundamental unit by which society is 
reproduced. In the early 1970s, shows featuring unwed mothers, 
extramarital affairs, adultery, people ``living together'' 
out of wedlock were widespread. Sex and sexual references were 
everywhere on prime time.
	A study was done comparing a week of prime time shows during 
1975, 1977, and 1978, which shows how fast this {carnalization 
of America} was spreading: ``[C]ontextually implied intercourse 
increased from no weekly occurrences in 1975 to 15 in 1977 
and 24 in 1978; sexual innuendoes increased in frequency from 
about one reference per hour in 1975 to 7 in 1977 to 11 in 
1978. Most dramatically, verbal references to intercourse increased 
from 2 occurrences in 1975 to 6 references in 1977 to 53[!] 
in 1978....''
	It isn't just the amount of sex being shown and referred 
to on television, but the {messages} that accompany it. For 
example, in the early period of television, which we will define 
for our purposes as prior to the 1969 season, a study done 
by a research team and published in the excellent source book 
{Watching America}, showed that 38 percent of shows ``presented 
extramarital affairs as wrong. The proportion dropped to 7 
percent after 1970.  Before 1970 none of the shows ever portrayed 
recreational sex as acceptable without qualification. In prime 
time's passionate world of the 1970s and 1980s, 41 percent 
of the shows viewed portrayed recreational sex as acceptable 
without qualification, and 33 percent made no moral judgement.''
	The same book notes: ``On the TV screen, sex is usually 
without consequence, without worry and with rarely a bad experience.''
	The images of the 1970s are {playing back} with a vengeance 
in the 1980s and 1990s. There is an important point to be made 
here. While changes in values do not occur overnight, they 
are occurring at an increasingly rapid pace. This has to do 
with the cumulative effect of television brainwashing on an 
increasingly amoral and immoral population. {As morality collapses 
and breaks down, there is less resistance to suggestion in 
the individual.}
	The authors of {Watching America} sum up television's view 
of eros, and what the message is that television delivers to 
its brainwash victims:  ``Today television is both willing 
to talk about sex and tell the truth about it as the Hollywood 
community sees the truth. That truth is roughly, that sex is 
important, it needs to be dealt with, in all its diverse expressions, 
and those who would suppress it from popular entertainment 
are doing the mass audience a disservice. Indeed the real villains 
on programs that deal with sexual issues are ... the Moral 
Majoritarians who would deny romance its natural physical expression, 
restrict free expression and much-needed information, or condemn 
`deviant' social victims like gays and prostitutes who are 
no different than the rest of us except in one minor regard--their 
sex lives. As for extramarital sex, it's a fact of life, which 
popular entertainment would be foolish to ignore or treat moralistically 
according to outmoded standards.''
	They note that television, with its power, need not be direct 
in its advocacy: ``As a leading form of mass entertainment 
television rarely mounts the barricades. Instead it breaks 
down barriers one by one, gradually extending the limits of 
social acceptability.''
	How well this brainwashing has worked is reflected in some 
new reports from the Census Bureau, based on 1990 data.
	@sb|some 61 percent of all adults are wed, compared with 
72 percent in 1970.
	@sb|In 1970, 85 percent of all children under the age of 
18 lived with two parents; now only 72 percent do. Divorce 
caused 37 percent of the single-parent homes. In 33 percent 
of the single-parent homes, the parent has {never} married.
	In a reflection of the infantilism that now grips society, 
these reports also show that a larger number of youth aged 
20-30 continue to live at home with their parents than at any 
time in recent history, be they single or married and {regardless 
of economic circumstances}.

	Brainwashing by Remote Control

	In the early days of television, the Hollywood-based programmers 
were {directly} influenced by Frankfurt School operatives. 
Now, most of the people in charge of programming, both in writing 
and producing shows and determining which of those produced 
make it on the air, are in the approximate 35- to 45-year-old 
age range.  In other words, the programmers themselves have 
been brainwashed by 40 years of television programming! To 
use a television metaphor, {the brainwashing is now taking 
place on remote control}.
	This is confirmed by a profile made by the authors of {Watching 
America}. Their survey of a random sampling of the top 350 
people involved in television programming reveals the debased 
moral value structure that now determines what you watch:
	@sb|some 73 percent of this crowd comes from either the 
Boston-Washington corridor or California.
	@sb|Although 93 percent had a religious upbringing (59 percent 
were Jewish), 45 percent claimed no relgious affiliation or 
belief in God; those who said that they had retained some religious 
faith, said that their religious affiliations were nominal; 
93 percent said they seldom or never attended religious services.
	@sb|some 75 percent described themselves as ``left of center'' 
politically and ``liberal.'' These ``liberals,'' however, are 
strong believers in ``free enterprise,'' and almost all support 
the ``free market system of economics.''
	@sb|some 43 percent think that the American system of government 
and the Constitution need a ``complete restructuring.''
	@sb|some 91 percent are in favor of unrestricted rights 
to abortion; 80 percent believe that there is nothing wrong 
or abnormal about homosexuality, with 86 percent supporting 
the rights of homosexuals to teach in public schools. More 
than 83 percent think that extramarital affairs are okay, while 
51 percent do not think that there is anything wrong with adultery.
	In addition, nearly all support a radical environmentalist 
agenda to one degree or another. No question was asked about 
whether they believed that man was a beast, but their other 
answers reveal that their answer would have been a resounding 
``yes.''
	Finally, asked which groups should influence American society 
the most, they listed consumer groups and intellectuals at 
the top and religion at the bottom. Two-thirds believed that 
it was their role to program television entertainment to promote 
``their'' social agenda.
	Think back a moment to those figures from the Census Bureau 
on the American family, which showed in statistical form the 
collapse of the nuclear family. Can't you see the correlation 
between those figures and the degenerate values of the television 
programmers?

	Remote Control

	Let's go back to the {remote control} concept for a moment. 
Back in the early days of television, you had what you could 
appropriately call some ``hands on'' brainwashing--you had 
that crew from the Frankfurt School operating out of Hollywood, 
designing the programmed brainwashing messages.  But such people 
as Theodor Adorno realized that this tight control would not 
always be necessary to accomplish the task. The brainwashing 
messages of the 1950s and 1960s were conditioning responses 
in a new generation of programmers who would start having impact 
on programming content in the 1970s and 1980s.
	The operative concept is similar to what Adorno describes 
with his ``forced retardation.'' You create a society based 
on the infantilism of the majority of its members; that society 
bombarded with television, becomes increasingly more infantile, 
more {dissociative}, as we learned from Emery and and his fellow 
Tavistockian Eric Trist. Under such conditions, the so-called 
creative individuals, operating within the infantile geometry 
of the society as a whole, produce new ideas that further feed 
the infantile, carnal impulses of the individual. This in turn 
plunges the society to a new, {lower} level of thinking: People 
become more stupid, led by their stupid ``creative leaders.''
	The oligarchical elite, through their control over the television 
and cable networks, as well as the Hollywood studios, and the 
advertising funding conduits, keep this entire crew of ``creative'' 
people in a {controlled environment}. It is in that {indirect} 
way that they exert a veto authority over what is being broadcast.
	The New York-Hollywood social community of ``creative'' 
people functions in what the brainwashers call a {leaderless 
group}: They are unaware of the real outside forces that control 
them, especially unaware of their own brainwashing by 30-40 
years television viewing. They believe themselves free to create, 
but they can lawfully only produce banality.
	Ultimately, these creators of our television programming 
turn to their own brainwashed experience and values for their 
``creative inspiration.'' One producer was asked by an interviewer 
how he determined what was in his shows. ``I think of the audience 
constantly,'' he replied. But when asked to elaborate on how 
he knows what would appeal to them, he replied, ``I think of 
myself as the audience. If it pleases me--I always think that 
it is going to please the audience.''
	The authors of {Watching America}, who interviewed numerous 
producers, agreed with the conclusion, ``What you see on any 
television show reflects the morals and conscience of the people 
on those shows who have influence.''

The Invisible Government

	The power that such people have over our minds and the way 
they function as a ``leaderless group'' was understood by the 
original theorists of mass brainwashing. Eduard Bernays, Freud's 
nephew, who was trained with Walter Lippmann at the Wellington 
House psychological warfare unit in World War I, wrote in a 
1928 book {Propaganda}:
	``The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized 
habits of the masses is an important element in democratic 
society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society 
constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling 
power in our country.
	``We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes are 
formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard 
of.... Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware 
of the identity of their fellow members of the inner cabinet.
	``Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this condition, 
it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, 
whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social 
conduct or ethical thinking, we are dominated by a relatively 
small number of persons ... who understand the mental processes 
and social practices of the masses. It is they who pull the 
wires which control the public mind, who harness the social 
forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.''
	{An invisible government} acting through the power of the 
television brainwashing medium to control our world! Sounds 
fantastic, but after what we have shown you, it is impossible 
to deny. It is important to keep that in mind: Somebody is 
responsible for what is happening to you, for how your morals 
and society have degenerated.  {And they planned it to be that 
way!}

	Decoding Some Messages

	Now we are ready to apply what we have learned. It's time 
to take a look at a few more recent shows to see if we can 
discover how you are being brainwashed. We'll see if we can 
uncover the ``hidden messages}.
	Let's start with an easy one.  Let's take one of the most 
popular children's television show, the one that everyone says 
that your kid has to watch to successfully adjust to society: 
``Sesame Street.'' Did you ever really watch it? Given what 
we have been talking about, what's the first thing that you 
see: The show is dominated by animal-like creatures with human 
characteristics, the famous Muppets. It's symbols are ``Big 
Bird'' and ``Miss Piggy.'' A child relates to these puppets 
as real objects, thereby creating a bond between the child 
and the beast-like creatures. The {hidden message} is not all 
that different from some of the early children's programs we 
have already discussed.
	That would be bad enough, but, governed by a new bunch of 
programmers and child psychologists, ``Sesame Street'' seeks 
directly to preach to the children its brand of amorality. 
The Muppets talk openly about environmental questions, while 
also infusing a heavy dose of ``be good to Mother Earth'' in 
the ``teaching'' of the alphabet and reading skills. The show 
also is infused with rock music, or ``kid rock'' as it is called. 
More recently, it has used ``rap music'' as a ``teaching device.''
	All of this is sold to people in an advertising package 
that tells parents that ``Sesame Street'' is a ``great teaching'' 
institution. It has been incorporated into the classroom experience 
for kids from pre-school to day-care to public school. But 
studies demonstrate that the show does not enhance learning; 
in many cases, it appears to inhibit their ability to understand 
more complicated ideas. More importantly, the studies indicated 
that the children appear ``addicted'' to the show, and by that 
``addiction'' to become addicted to television viewing in general.
	As Neil Postman, a New York University professor, wrote 
in his book {Amusing Ourselves to Death,} ``If we are to blame 
`Sesame Street' for anything, it is the pretense that it is 
an ally of the classroom.... `Sesame Street' does not encourage 
children to love school or anything about school.  It encourages 
them to love television.''
	Some of ``Sesame Street's'' biggest defenders are those 
very same critics of television from the so-called radical 
right. They defend it because it doesn't show violence or sex, 
and upholds ``family values.'' In the most recent debate over 
funding for public television, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) rose 
to defend ``Big Bird'' on the Senate floor: ``If anyone wants 
to know whether Jesse Helms of North Carolina votes for Big 
Bird, I do. And I vote for `Sesame Street}!'|''
	The majority of America's brainwashed parents agree with 
Sen.  Helms. They see nothing wrong with the show because it 
``sounds'' right to them--it contains the same cacaphony of 
ugly noise that permeates every aspect of their lives. And, 
most importantly, it keeps those kids ``occupied,'' as they 
sit staring at the tube. They even find some of the little 
scenes mildly amusing--as they are intended to be by their 
producers, who claim that a good third of their audience are 
adults.  Together with their children they have made ``Sesame 
Street'' goods and services a {$1 billion} industry, one that, 
unlike the rest of the economy, is expanding each year!
	And you don't even think it's odd that your three-year-old 
daughter wants to grow up to be just like Miss Piggy!  Look 
into those blank stares the next time they watch: See your 
child being brainwashed.
	Okay, we'll try another one. Let's take one of those ``deeper'' 
shows, the ones the so-called critics tell you are ``socially 
relevant.'' How about ``The Wonder Years''}? Here we have a 
series about growing up in the 1960s, from the perspective 
of an adolescent.
	Does the show focus on any of the real horror of that period? 
Does it show the chaos, the drugs, the destruction, the collapse 
of social values, that we talked about? No siree.  It was all 
a good time back then, or so we are told. It was full of simple 
problems, like how to relate to the girl you had a crush on 
or your sister's hippy life style or how to make your parents 
not act so ``square.'' And when some social issue enters into 
the show, it is handled with the kind of sugary-sweet moralism 
that has more to do with the current degraded moral values 
of its producers than it does with the confused history of 
the 1960s.
	``The Wonder Years'' is a controlled {flashback} for baby 
boomers to what they would {now} like to ``think} the 1960s 
were like. By so doing, the producers have put you in touch 
with your most infantile and banal emotions, and made you feel 
nostalgic for them.  The {hidden message}: In these difficult 
times, one had best cling to memories and values of one's infantile 
past.
	The show bonds a 40 year-old infant to a romanticized view 
of his adolescence, making him that much more infantile. It 
might even make him pull out one of those old Jimi Hendrix 
albums.
	``The Wonder Years'' is part of a genre known as ``nostalgia'' 
shows and movies. They made one for the 1950s adolescents, 
called ``Happy Days'' which aired in the 1970s, and they will 
no doubt make one for the 1970s teenagers later this decade.
	Try to think of them in another way. Think of television 
as a big eraser, wiping away your real memories of the past, 
the reality of the way things really were. With ``the slate 
now clean,'' the tube superimposes a twisted and distorted 
view of that reality through an appeal, not to your mind, but 
to your infantile emotions.  If they can make a majority of 
people believe that the 1960s were whatever they depict them 
on the screen, then television has created a {new reality, 
a new history}.
	We'll take one final example, one of the most popular shows: 
``The Simpsons.'' A cartoon series about a family with three 
kids, the older one being especially obnoxious and manipulative. 
The parents are depicted as self-centered and stupid, and extremely 
banal. The obnoxious kids, especially Bart, are the heroes 
of the show, around whom the plot develops.  This then is the 
brainwashers' image for the family of the 1990s: one dominated 
and effectively run by obnoxious, almost devilish children, 
which causes some conflict with the banal parents.
	``The Simpsons'' family life both mirrors and shapes perceptions 
of the real, banalized life of families outside the tube: The 
experience is mediated through television, which explains what 
is happening to them. In a famous episode, the father, Homer, 
sees a television report that an accident has happened to him, 
which causes him and his family to try to find out whether 
it did indeed happen; in the end, they bring their lives into 
conformity with the screen's image. As Homer, says, ``The answers 
to life's problems aren't at the bottom of a bottle. They're 
on TV.''
	The show is popular with all age groups, but has a cult 
following among children and adolescents. Bart Simpson is the 
hero of their generation, whose face appears on their tee-shirts, 
whose mannerisms and whose slang expressions they have adopted 
as their own. But not just the kids; the whole society has 
accepted Bart Simpson as a role model, so much so that he is 
used by the government to preach an anti-drug message. President 
Bush quotes him. So does Bill Clinton.
	``The Simpsons'' hidden message:  There exists no real moral 
or adult authority in this world, save the television; in such 
a world, it is the children who must assert themselves, assert 
their right to be infantile; parents are powerless, save for 
occasional brute force, to do anything but assent. It is the 
image of the {Clockwork Orange} society packaged in a more 
palatable fashion; Bart Simpson is the brutal Alex's alterego.

	It's Your Turn

	Now, if you remember way back when we started this section 
on programming, I said that I would ask you at some point to 
turn on your television sets.  Well, we've reached that point.
	I want you to turn on your set during prime time for an 
experiment. I want you to see if you can find the hidden messages 
in prime time series.  Exclude the news and newsmagazine shows; 
we'll be dealing with them in our next section. But take some 
other series and see if you can pick up the brainwashers' hidden 
message. Try this with a few shows.
	Don't worry if you make some mistakes. Think about what 
we have learned in our study of television so far and take 
a stab at it.
	It's a form of therapy: Once you realize that {you are being 
brainwashed}, your mind still has the power to discover the 
means by which it is being accomplished. Use your mind and 
you have started to make yourself less capable of being brainwashed. 
But be careful: Don't leave that set on for too long! Remember, 
watching it for any length of time--for a few hours--will make 
you stupid. So shut it off after trying your hand at a bit 
of {deprogramming}.
	When we talk again, we'll explain how television news and 
opinion polling prevent you from understanding the world.
-- 
         John Covici
          covici@ccs.covici.com