The Medium is The Message- Getting Past The GateKeeper

Blogging is interesting, as I was looking for a quote that came to mind relating to my topic, I found this information on Wikipedia linked above on Marshall McLuhan, Who is credited with coining the term 'Global Village' and 'The Medium is the Message', in relation to technology changing our world. My intention was to talk about the media and the subterfuge in ads when I started thinking about the old film classic, Network where some anchor loses it and screams the memorable phrase, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!". So then then I start thinking, What was that saying, The media is the message?.. Googled and found the correct phrase and the subject it was used to head up. I never heard of Marshall McLuhan but he deserves credit and the info on his take about media is one very relevant to consider today.   I don't think this was a fluke, it's very spot on when you consider how the internet and television are used to express messages intended to get us to do something. 

I really thought the following was a great explanation of what we're seeing today;

"in Understanding Media, McLuhan describes the "content" of a medium as a juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.^[6] This means that people tend to focus on the obvious, which is the content, to provide us valuable information, but in the process, we largely miss the structural changes in our affairs that are introduced subtly, or over long periods of time.^[5] As the society's values, norms and ways of doing things change because of the technology, it is then we realize the social implications of the medium. These range from cultural or religious issues and historical precedents, through interplay with existing conditions, to the secondary or tertiary effects in a cascade of interactions^[5] that we are not aware of."

This punctuates what I've noticed more and more often and the irritation felt as I see how effective the medium is at sneaking the message past the guard dog of our critical thinking, to deliver it's payload while we're busy feeling emotion or caught up in the delivery or the personality delivering the message.
We have trust barriers that are on guard, we value one channel higher than another sometimes based on nothing but popular opinion or how wealthy the spokesperson is, or some language jargon that makes us feel comfy, but if you remember that classic old movie A Face in the Crowd, which was brilliant and before its time with good ol Sheriff Taylor,Andy of Mayberry, Andy Griffith, in the lead role, of a bumpkin who becomes the spokesperson for the Average Joe, the plain talking darling of the advertising world, a celebrity if you will, until he becomes a monster, as a power drunken figurehead of the cult of personality Lonesome Rhodes.

Someone needs to remake that 1957 film, it would be stupendous today, you could choose any genre of music you wanted to play Lonesome, of course country would fit great. I digress, but if you've seen it you'll remember the end and the moral of the story which was a fitting comeuppance and a hard slam from grace when he inadvertently slams his public while his mic is hot, done deliberately to prevent his dangerous charm from infiltrating the political area, his new aspiration. If you've never seen it, go rent it, it's worth it.

I was watching AM News Television on Fox last week and was put off by the light touch given to a serious story as if turning the page which I'm sure it was to the talking head on camera at 6am. It's not out of the ordinary but this time it really struck me as inappropriate. It has been growing inside me, this feeling of insult while being hammered with ads that have become more crafty, subtle, or subliminal in their message or otherwise the outright shyster type ads that used to be screened out on major networks now allowed with a brief disclaimer which may as well say, We know this is crap but hey, the money is green so don't hold us accountable for the hype this guy is selling.

A major crisis has hit the American public in massive job losses and the media and it's talking head's are all business as usual, bantering, consumerism, ads and marketing slickness trying to work into our subconscious to try and convince you it's all as it always was. Only now the marketing psychology is heavier than ever as you watch a show and see a brand name product placement in the hand of a well liked character, trying to use the pseudo relationship you have with them to get you to buy that product. Suddenly it's so overwhelmingly obvious you can't miss it. Even actors want to ride the popularity train as a cameo to boost marketability. You watch a fictional show and you're aware you're being pitched. Now even creative products are tainted with the selling out for another revenue stream from their product. Artists used to have standards. Commercialism rules.

But there's a heavier reason we have to question authority,
scrutinize the masthead who delivers the message and the message you're being told,  when on one hand you're seeing FDA approved drugs being pushed on TV through commercials with happy music used to spark emotions, portraying it as the end-all, be-all, answer to whatever disease or disorder you can name. Turns out some of the disorders, it turns out after being snitched off by internal whistle blowers, were manufactured in a product meeting by the pharmaceutical companies to help sell their newest finding on a drug.  PMDD for instance, that was a manufactured disorder for which one drug company had a symptom reliever monthly and wanted to create a reason for using it. PMS wasn't good enough, they needed a super-PMS, one that over the counter remedies wouldn't compete for market share on. Besides the cost would be out there so it had to warrant a good disorder to pry the dough out of the tight pockets of women. So you have the FDA 'protecting' us approving products and then you have a recall for death and complications when one of those drugs goes off the chart for collateral damages. Why does that happen? 

Doctors think little to nothing about handing a prescription for Adderall for Attention Deficit Disorder,  which is as close to methamphetamine as you get, to treat a teenager who's having trouble paying attention in school. Wow, what a shock, a teenager who's bored in class. Give em speed, that's the ticket.They focus on work like a meth-head focuses on cleaning the grout in their shower with a toothbrush.  Have you ever met a teen on adderall? It's just like watching a speed freak on the street. Neurotic, sleep deprived, introspective, hyper, emotional, unhappy.. and this while giving the Just Say No advice on street drugs. Then there's the flip side, what goes up must come down, they use alcohol or Xanax to take the edge off. Kids trade and sell this stuff in the areas where parent can afford to pay for it. In the low income areas you don't see the Rx drug use, the doctors aren't hammered by the reps as they are in wealthy areas.  Why is it that nobody is concerned that a drug like that is setting the kid up to be an addict all their lives? Once you stimulate the brain chemistry the way that drug does a person will never work normally again.  The tolerance to the euphoria builds up and the kid needs more and finds a way to manipulate mom into dosing them upward otherwise the mood-swings are so out of control it's frightening. Ever see the Bravo show called PrettyWild?
That's a bizarre example of a household of wild teen girls in Hollywood all on ADD meds who's behavior would scare anyone yet oddly glorified in a reality tv show.

A panicky mom will do anything to stop the insanity, to make it go away at that moment, she's got to get to work and the kid to school to keep the surface level facade going.   I can't help but wonder if the real war on drugs is more about where the revenue goes rather than the damage to the population and society. It's like a turf war between the drug companies and FDA using prisons to keep their competition out of their revenue shares. That's just one of hundreds of drugs we're pitched on, which if you were to Google search them and their side effects you'd be at least getting a second opinion before putting into your body. It seems to me we're just revenue streams for recurring income. Sell the doctor, they sell the patient, the patient is convinced it's good for them and pays over and over again. Until one day you see a class action lawsuit on some product like VIOXX for arthritis which gave people heart attacks. The company figures into it's pricing  the expense of collateral damage of  the side effects and weighs it out to charge enough for the product not only to cover any potential litigation in the future but to make sure there's a heft profit to boot. It's a no lose proposition and the FDA is in cahoots. There's been more research techs come out whistle blowing recently, seems their conscience cannot be silenced and there's a need to get it off their chest. It's not without a big cost to their livelihood from there on out, however.

We hang on every word from daytime talk-show superhosts like Oprah and Dr. Oz, as they seem so logical, temperate and caring. We listen to their opinions, we hang on their thumbs up/thumbs down on everything it seems. So much so that Costco will place a product mentioned one week on Dr.Oz and watch it go through the roof.  An example is Blue Agave sweetener, which was said to be low glycemic, which means the sugar in  a serving enters the blood stream much slower than sugar per se, thereby not causing a huge spike in insulin.  Very important for diabetics and people who want to lose or maintain their fat content. I fell for it, it tasted great, not unlike syrup with no icky aftertaste. It ran about $4 per bottle which was a great deal at Costco as it was more exotic and rare in supermarkets which charged upwards of $6 or more per bottle. What a great substitute for sugar!

Then came the reveal, after buying tons of it to sweeten my daily tea habit, a report hit the internet that Agave nectar is only low glycemic when produced a certain way using a specific part of the plant, the agave cactus which when the bulb or root is processed is no less glycemic than corn syrup. Very high on the bad list of sugars. There was no standardization process being performed as most of it comes from Mexico and has become a great revenue market for them. I stopped and had to find something else but wow, that was a costly mistake, I'd gained weight using it and didn't know why. Thanks Doctor Oz! I wonder if he bought shares in Agave like it was learned he'd had in the H1N1 Flu vaccine that was so controversial yet had few deaths associated with it after the fear campaign was launched by the CDC last year. Epidemic , no Pandemic expected was what they said. Parent concerned with side effects from such a vaccine as had been rumored with some suspicions of connection to autism had been reported caused Oz to do a show about it, saying he'd take the vaccine but refused to allow his wife or child to take it, playing it down as he was more at risk of exposure. Then came the report of the shareholders of the stock in the company that manufactured showing Dr. Oz as a shareholder and I think it also showed him on a board of directors. Isn't that some kind of conflict of interest?  Certainly it wasn't transparent that he was an affiliate of the drug manufacturer. 

I could go on and on but the bottom line is we need to do more critical thinking, research, tuning out the popular voices, the loudest ones, the gurus and not be so quick to believe they're all so benevolent or neutral in their message. Some people see an outbreak as an opportunity, others see a fear campaign as a method of marketing, somehow people who've sold out to the corporate machine are able to justify and live with themselves, chalking off a reaction or death to some strange aberration, not directly linked with their expert advice being taken as the directive of a deity that knows best. We have to stop being like sheep, following the strongest, most prevalent or loudest voice. We have to start putting the brain to work, real work, analysis, questioning, and stop being led around by fear mongers. For a nation we consider to be so overwhelmingly spiritual,why is it we can't trust our own judgment or stand up for our beliefs when it comes to something as important as our health and that of our children?  We are more than a commodity, we are not lab rats and we can't afford to be used like this.

We are more capable than we believe, we are smarter than we think, we have more resources for information than ever before if we'd learn to evaluate the sources of the opinions, follow the money, their agendas and make the ultimate decision based on the best most neutral and logical information. Maybe its time we learned to tap into the inner voice that ultimately will give you a feeling of peace even when you've made a decision that isn't popular. It's when we turn our brains over to others we deem more capable and intelligent than we are that we put ourselves at risk. See the mortgage meltdown, banking bailouts, and Bernie Madoff  for example. Look at us now.  If we don't learn from these lessons we're doomed to repeat them as history bears out.

The next time you turn on the tube and see some ad for tennis shoes that have the primary purpose or selling point of making your butt and legs look like those on the screen, remember to listen to the last line on the ad which says, our shoes help workout your legs and butt better than any other tennis shoe. Well, that's not saying much because the purpose for tennis shoes is to protect your feet and grip the ground to prevent slips, not shape your butt and legs. Anyone can make lame claims like that, you're just so focused on those perfect butts you don't hear what they're really saying.  Once you're aware it's impossible not to look at things without the X-Ray Specs. We can't afford to be disengaged any more. How much more can we afford to slide in under the radar?