"Cowardice asks the question...is it safe? Expediency asks the question...is it politic? Vanity asks the question...is it popular? But conscience asks the question...is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because it is right." ~Dr. Martin Luther King

Sunday 18 January 2015

"There Is Nothing New Under The Sun "" Ecclesiastes 1:4-11

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Another New Beginning":

There are just so many darned things about which we can do nothing. If that isn't depressing enough, we have to realize how fortunate we are compared to others. 
. 

Posted by Anonymous to Our Town and Its Business at 18 January 2015 at 09:30


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We have to realise we  have one life to live....one day at a time, find joy  ... and take it where we
find it.

It might just be an awareness of the comedy that surrounds us and the opportunity to share the discourse.

Ordinary people have not had that before. As it is, experts are bedeviled about where it might take us.

In the meantime we should just enjoy the trip.

Last week  on television , I watched Network  a film that won four Academy awards. Second  to do so  after "Streetcar Named  Desire"

I went out to watch it .....at the Sayvette (long gone) retail complex  on the south-west corner of Yonge and  Steeles ......twice  in one week.

Each time  I heard dialogue missed previously,

I asked Stephanie last week if she had ever heard  the line  "We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it any more"

She thought it was familiar but didn't know why. The movie was made before she was born. But the
woman has a university degree in that stuff.

Last week,during the tsunami of outrage about the atrocity in Paris, we heard ,read  and enjoined, another phrase repeated in rallies throughout the western world.

"Je suits Charlie"

Pencils were carried (whole and  broken?) to symbolize  solidarity with the right to draw satirical
cartoons in a world where nothing is sacred.

But there is  anomaly.

In the movie Network, new learned of things thatbare sacred. The right to capitalize is sacred. The opportunity to profit takes priority against all else.

Every journalist learns very quickly how decisions about which stories will run and which will not.

The economy of media  is not about news. It's about advertising.

News and other content is about enticing readers and increasing circulation upon which to establish profitable rates for advertising.

It is a very simple formula. Make money and you stay  in business . Lose money and you don't

The French magazine lost no time  exploiting opportunity to publish and sell hundreds of thousands  of additional copies of  the publication.  A golden opportunity for international circulation has not been missed.

Maybe even government grants on the grounds of economic development.

Is that idealism? Or is it capitalism?

Network was made forty-eight years ago in the heyday of television. A  redundant news anchor ,
in his last broadcast became Messianic ....electrified a  jaded national audience and inadvertently sent station ratings sky high

The only thing missing from the fiction versus the real event is the presence of politicians.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some days it is really hard to keep laughing. Thanks for adding your grace notes.

Anonymous said...

Network was released in 1976.

Anonymous said...



We will all be blinded from the sun's reflection as it bounces off our garbage through the clear bags.

I might even say that I am mad as hell about this latest political brainwave.

Will citizens be able to purchase official search certificates permitting them to list and analyze all our neighbours' garbage?

There has to be a privacy issue here. N'est pas?

Anonymous said...

The clear garbage thing is not even a privacy issue for me - if someone wants to go though my garbage, they can have at it. A few microns of black plastic won't stop them.

To me the problem is I buy a box of 100 garbage bags from Costco. I am about to open one. I use 1 bag every 2 weeks. This means that I have 200 weeks of garbage bags on hand (except for special circumstances - Christmas, spring cleaning, etc.). I am not about to go buy more bags when I have almost a 4 year supply.

It's STUPID

Anonymous said...

We use a garbage can and don't intend to stop.

Anonymous said...

I'm going to mail mine to the town.

Anonymous said...

I'm going to mail mine to the town....then go buy another box and use them!