Letters to the Editor
Dirigo
Published Letters: 673 Editor's Choice: 1
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It's All Been Said Before
[Read the article: Major revelation: U.S. media deceitfully disseminates government propaganda]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Omniscience - (1612, Medieval Latin, "omniscientia") - having total knowledge; knowing everything; an omniscient deity
--- dictionary.com
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"One of Bernays' favorite techniques for manipulating public opinion was the indirect use of 'third party authorities' to plead his clients' causes. 'If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway.' he said. In order to promote the sales of bacon, for example, he conducted a survey of physicians and reported their recommendation that people eat heavy breakfasts. He sent the results of the survey to 5,000 physicians, along with publicity touting bacon and eggs as a heavy breakfast."
[snip]
"Bernays, (a nephew of Freud) ... was a philosopher of promotion, and it was probably that philosophical quality, evident in his writings and speeches, as well as the sheer exuberant creativity and intelligence of his publicity blitzes, which enabled him to impart to his own efforts and to the field more generally a sense of stature, scope and profundity.
The belief that propaganda and news were legitimate tools of his business, and his ability to offer philosophical justifications for these beliefs that untimately embraced the whole democratic way of life, in Bernays' mind, set his work in public relations apart from what ad men did. The Bernays essays ... show that Bernays regarded advertising men as special pleaders, merely paid to persuade people to accept an idea or commodity. The public relations counsel, on the other hand, he saw as an Emerson-like creator of events that dramatized new concepts and perceptions, and even influenced the actions of leaders and groups in society.
Bernays' vision was of a utopian society in which the dangerous libidinal energies that lurked just below the surface of every individual could be harnessed and channeled by a corporate elite for economic benefit. Through the use of mass production, big business could fulfill constant craving of the inherently irrational and desire-driven masses, simultaneously securing the niche of a mass production economy (even in peacetime), as well as sating the dangerous animal urges that threatened to tear society apart if left unquelled."
---Edward Bernays
---Wikipedia
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"The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest."
---Edward Bernays
---"The Engineering of Consent", 1947
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"Yet sit and see, minding true things by what their mock'ries be.
---Chorus
---Henry V, Act IV
---Shakespeare
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Revelations
[Read the article: Major revelation: U.S. media deceitfully disseminates government propaganda]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]JOAN: MAGS MAKING US DUMB
New York, April 15, 2008 - Joan Collins says we're turning into a world of idiots - and she thinks the celebrity magazines are partly to blame.
"Our civilization has become extremely dumbed down, with short attention spans. All they want are sound bites," the 75-year old diva, who famously played super-bitchy Alexis Carrington on 'Dynasty', tells BlackBooks' Steve Garbarino.
"The tabloid magazines are the same every week. PEOPLE has the same cover as IN TOUCH and OK! as US WEEKLY as STAR magazine!
"They're exactly the same.
"It must be the same 100 to 120 people you read about all the time."
But, why?
"They're appealing to a young audience, or a rather dumb audience," Collins theorizes. She adds that the magazines "go after those girls who exhibit more outrageous behavior; and, believe me, those girls love it! They call in items themselves - that they were at Nobu, some night club in SoHo.
"I can't think of anything more horrible than that.
"Publicity can be a drug."
---New York Post
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The Times Is Dead; Long Live The Times
[Read the article: Major revelation: U.S. media deceitfully disseminates government propaganda]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This may be the start of a last, humongous stagger for the Sulzberger Times.
NEWSWEEK, in a lengthy piece this week, says a titanic struggle is about to break out between the Times and Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal.
NEWSWEEK speculates the result of this challenge from Murdoch and a re-designed Journal will be a buyout offer for the Times from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, owner of Bloomberg Media.
Last week, the Times posted a first-quarter loss of $335,000.
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Know It All
[Read the article: Brian Williams nominates Peggy Noonan for a Pulitzer Prize]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]YOU don't understand!
Brian Williams is an omniscient American network anchor. He embodies the warp and woof of the traditional, white American poobahs of national broadcast news, who themselves were molded out of the rough clay of Murrow, Cronkite, Brinkley et al.
Trouble is, today, with declining audiences for network news fare, people like Williams have nothing new to say and react, as parody, to disturbing public statements, rather than offer something new and up to date.
To Williams, Noonan makes perfect sense in her pining for "Morning in America" one more time.
It's like we're all supposed to sit at the kitchen table with Auntie Peggy and Uncle Brian and listen to them hold forth, rapt, over our bowls of corn flakes.
No discouraging words, please. Otherwise the cowboys might storm the pantry, demanding answers.