by Editors

McLuhan’s Monster: The Merger of Media and Money Madness in America In the Wake of Babel’s Tower

 

Al Cambell’s recent essay observing how America’s addiction to having it’s news media and other appetites satisfied “now” at the expense of what we used to do: e.g., logically and responsibly plan for future events, such as predicted hurricanes, terrorist attacks and SUV-generated gas shortages, inspired me to reprise some earlier ruminations of my own on collateral topics: What’s really happening to America’s former “character” and what parts do our addictions to media and money play in the mix?

 

It’s not like we got to this point without fair warning. Some of the most profound truth in cultures is found in their mythology, both religious and secular; other truths are found collaterally in scientific disciplines. Two of these I see converging today are the Biblical story of Babel’s Tower, and Marshall McLuhan’s (media philosophic commentator) prophetic warnings about the emergence of the media in our culture…popularly called “McLuhan’s Monster” by academics since he expounded his caveats at mid Century Twenty…that “The Media were BECOMING THE MESSAGE.

 

I say there’s reason to believe that both prophesies have been fulfilled in recent times…both Babel’s terrible Tower and the birth and maturation of McLuhan’s Media Monster. Al Campbell’s article made me ponder bottom lines…common denominators. Behind the “Madness” of our war on terrorist phantoms in Iraq, and the near-anarchal para-apocalyptic mess we find ourselves in with Katrina and her sister in our Gulf, is there any semblance of a central flaw….a crack in the tectonic shelf of America’s former E-Plurbus Unum terra firma? I think there might be. I think Al came close with his synthesis of the situation as being defined by our creeping addiction to “immediate gratification”…both in our public and private lives. We want to SEE IT, EAT IT, UNDERSTAND IT, HAVE IT, OWN IT, FLAUNT IT, GO THERE, BE THERE ….N O W! And by God (primarily Judeo/Christian) if we can AFFORD IT, IS IT NOT OUR DIVINE RIGHT TO …HAVE IT?

OK, if we and our media and our politicians are all becoming critters of immediate impulse and gratification, is there anything in our chaotic courses that we can put our hands out and touch…and thereby have the hopes one day of manipulating back into place…into a place of sanity? I think, maybe so. What are the seeds of America’s Madness which if found and…perhaps genetically re-engineered (or maybe simply sprayed with Round-up) might provide saving grace for a Culture in an Increasing State of Shock?

 

I submit it’s a potentially fatal mixture of Media Might, and Corporate-Driven Money Madness. In short, McLuhan’s Monster and Human Hubris (Greed). In view of our shrinking ….AND WARMING….AND INCREASINGLY WIND-BLOWN WORLD, we’d better heed the seeds of warning.

 

MAD IN AMERICA
(Turning now to where the Rubber no longer
Hits the American Road)

 

What is, actually “Made in America” these days…? Only two things for sure- (1) those little foil stickers on the bottom of every thing we buy at WalMart that say “Made in China” and (2) the paper our Hong Kong-bound books are printed on – including the book with that old story of Babel’s Tower in it … that prophetic parable first uttered over 2000 years ago that today warns that if we humans keep trying to make things bigger and better (and easier), one day, our greedy and luxury-driven industrial revolution might lead us to a time and place when and where we can’t even understand what each other are saying. Are we there already?

 

Remember your “Personal Banker”? 
We are all now PIN-heads.

 

Have you recently tried calling your “personal banker” maybe to find out what’s in your checking account ? If so, you’ve discovered that , your “personal banker” has no name. In fact, he has no blood, bone or any other signs of sharing life with you. He is, in fact . . . IF you can remember your PIN number, and IF you find the toll-free number that allows you to call your local bank’s (mine is in in High Point NC) customer-service department in Tupelo (can we rename that ” cussed-service”, maybe?), and IF you can ferret your way through the punch-key code that robotic voice gives you, and IF you can recall and correctly key in the 10 sequential numbers of your account . . . a digital cyber-chip , made of silicon and silver whose quantum of cognitive quality makes Dick Cheney seem charismatic. By the end of this experience, you will have discovered that , though your dollars and bank account may in fact be “made in America”, they are serviced elsewhere… out there in the neverland of corporate cyberspace, somewhere north , east , south and/or west of the Tower of Babel.

 

“G.E. Brings Good Things to…New Deli”

 

A recent case in point. Sue – my very sweet and trusting step mom recently re-did her entire kitchen — Filled it completely– floor to ceiling with brand new appliances – all of which were , of course “Made in America” – - fine modern machines made by trusted old-brand National industrial heroes like Whirlpool , Matag and our own , still “bringing-good-things-to-life” U.S. o f A. icon, General Electric. Of course, Sue ordered all her new stuff from our equally home-grown home supply super-store in High Point (not Home Depot, but rather the “other one”).

 

When the remodeling was done and the delivery guys (who did actually have blood and bone) came and installed her new stove , refrigerator and dishwasher (all G.E.) , Sue was beside herself , surrounded by all that new glistening reaffirmation of American innovative technology … the wherewithal and embodiment of her lovely life of industrially-engineered comfort and leisure. Surrounded and buttressed by all her spanking-new American appliances , Sue wasn’t at all shaken initially when her dishwasher and refrigerator wouldn’t work, because, they failed to drain and cool (respectively or respectfully) , thinking she’d “just call down to the store and they’d come and fix things”. Memories of current “Maytag” commercials flashed on the screen of her nonchalant noggin as she dialed up her local appliance megastore.

 

She held her own while navigating through the computerized telephone maze which connected her finally to yet another flesh-and-blood primate. This “customer service” man , addressing the non-draining dishwasher first, said “No problem – let me connect you with the GE repair department”. Seconds later, a heavily -accented middle-eastern male voice comes on the phone and , after identifying himself and taking the dishwasher’s symptomology from Sue, informs her as follows (in an authoritative – but soothingly-exotic version of English that brought to mind the Gandhi character Ben Kingsley played in the Made-In-England movie of the same name): ” Your dishwasher (assures Gandhi) is not broken. Merely it is most probable dysfunctional temporarily because it is not used to its environment.” Whereupon, my step mom, of course says…”What????”…And the Gandhi-guy on the other end haltingly continues…. “Just leave it to be. When the machine is adjusted to new environment… a few days only it will take …. it will swallow the water and it will be fine…Not to worry.”

 

Sue, thought this pronouncement (not-to-mention pronunciation) a little strange, but when an appliance is made from parts emanating from a dozen venues around the globe…why be concerned if the repairman (and his remedy) seem a little . . . exotic? And maybe those various alien parts in her dishwasher needed time to adjust to the temperature and humidity-controlled climate of her new Carolina kitchen.

 

So , Sue resolves to give her dishwasher time to “adjust” to its new environment, and , calling the store again, addresses the problem of her refrigerator’s refusal to refrigerate. This time the very same virtual humanoid at the mega-store she talked to about the dishwasher answered and declared that Sue was “in luck”. This was the second call on a un-cool GE fridge he’d handled that week, and he knew just how to fix things. He had personally called the repair department for General Electric… “Did I tell you they’re in India ? ” , he asked her. “In India?” , says Sue – thinking “No wonder that guy sounded strange… and took so long to answer-we were talking on satellite .” “Why is the GE repair department in India?” , she asks, naturally. “Well, it’s not really the repair department– just the customer service part of it. GE can afford to have them talk to you long distance because they work for $10 a day in India, and the union workers in the States get paid more than that an hour.”

 

“I see”, says Sue, “but what about the fridge ?” “Oh, that one’s easy”, says the store guy. “I called and talked to the guy in New Deli myself when a customer last week had the same problem and the Indian guy just told her all she needed to do was put stuff in .” “Put stuff in?” , Sue pursues. “Yeah,” the guy continues, “The Indian fellow says that the new GE refrigerators won’t cool unless they sense that they have food inside them, and so you have to put your food in so they will decide to cool.” “Really”, quizzed an increasing incredulous North Carolinian customer named Sue, who by then couldn’t resist ruminating on the odds of an environmentally-traumatized dishwasher and an on-a-food-strike refrigerator having been delivered to her by an All-American General Electric Company on the same day.

”But don’t do what that other lady did”, continued the store guy , still relaying to Sue the New Deli guy’s remedy for her refusing refrigerator … “That lady tried to trick her refrigerator into working by filling it up with magazines… and it didn’t work.” By this time, Sue, feeling herself somewhat Alice-one-toke-over the-looking-glass-line , said, “Maybe it (the refrigerator) would prefer newspapers …. I have a lot of those”. And she wasn’t altogether kidding. Certainly the store guy wasn’t, because he responded , sincerely and artlessly , “No m’am. I’m sure that won’t work …The Indian guy said for sure the refrigerator needs food. You need to fill it with food and than call me back if the refrigerator won’t cool it.”

 

By now , any sane reader will think this story is being made up. That at least part of it has to be a joke. Sorry, my comfortable compatriots. The sad (if comical) story is , the story is true. Every weirdly worrisome word of it. As things turned out, my step mom, Sue, finally came out of the Indian ether and called General Electric’s corporate home office (some place…you never know where you’re actually calling these days). When the “all-American” (i.e., $18/hour) boys heard Sue’s story, they had the store send out union-card-carrying blood and bone American repairmen that very day, and within minutes, the fuse and o-ring required by the GE fridge and dish-washer were installed , and the rebellious machines were contentedly cooling and draining their food and water like GE and the Heavens had ordained.

 

But speaking of “ordained”: More than a comfortably few prophesies in the Good Old Book seem to be being ordained of late. Our blind, heedless greed and endless quests for affluence, leisure and dominance of our natural environment (not to mention our neighbors’) may have finally led us again to the top of that tottering tower of mythical Babel. Some how, to some degree, that filthy lucre (the Dollar) and perhaps increasing human laziness and narcissism are involved. But as far as who’s ultimately to blame (or to become responsible ) for this creepingly ubiquitous state of American affairs is a little harder to pin down. Maybe we can go back to that ancient Myth in Genesis (11:4-9) for clues. When mankind’s pride , heedless striving and ambition got to the point that he offended his maker, what did that Ultimate Authority (in the story) ultimately do? He made it impossible for men to continue building their structures- stopped them dead in their progressive tracks and scattered them to the four corners of the globe by …making them speak different languages…

 

Is that what all this . . . madness in American means? Has the ultimate cosmic authority commenced another remedial intervention in our collectively dysfunctional lives? If so, we need to be aware: Men, speaking in “different tongues” simply can’t help each other fix things. Over the phone, the internet, through the media , or at a Middle Eastern Summit. From the terrifyingly-toppled twin towers to my step mom’s tiny refrigerator, this trend poses a chilling question: Where is this shrinking world – this swelling separateness – this so-called “globalization” taking us? I don’t think we’re likely to find the answer in calling General Electric via New Deli. I think that , eventually , we’re going to have to look inward, and maybe take a few steps backwards , in the direction of a time and place where in fact, truly good things were brought to life …by Americans, for Americans . . . in America.

 

AMERICAN CORPORATIONS HAVE EXPORTED….AMERICA

 

Unsupervised, unsanctioned, unfettered corporate American corruption and greed buttressed by political collaboration and co-conspiracy and greed have brought us here. Hallibuton’s Pentagaon-machinated attack on Iraq was only the most recent in a long evolution in the Corporate scuttlings of the American ships of industry and state. Corporate piracy of the Enron ilk is but the tip of our Titanic ice berg of outlaw corporate fascism.

 

The Kevlar-lined suits at the top of all the corporate worm hills all have Harvard and MIT-trained MBA “margin men” blueprinting all their plans of corporate fleecing from the RJR-Nabisco “Barbarians at the Gate” to the still-unresolved scandals of Enron and on-going ravages of Cheney’s Halliburton.

 

Self-serving corporate management has exported substantially all of America’s jobs to China and has stolen untold quantities from the tills of our domestic companies and their workers’ retirement investments, not to mention our own Congressionally-pilfered Social Security funds. The solution offered by the Bush neocons is to punish those corporations with further corporate welfare and their criminal leadership with perpetual income tax cuts, and to continue buying products made in China with counterfeit U.S. Dollars.

 

The damage in terms of lost competence and capabilities we are reeping in this process is now trickling down like Reagan’s Republican economics even to the federal and local governmental bureaucracies responsible for the obliteration of New Orleans. The first ten thousand callers from that disaster area were in all likelihood put through by some automaton telephone robot to an emergency service assistant in New Deli.

 

McLuhan’s Monster:

 

The Media as Frankenstein Fabricator of
America’s (Fictionally) Monstrous Character

 

Because no one listened to Marshall McLuhan’s warnings about the way the media were changing the character of America, his worst prophesies have been ordained. The media have “become the message” as McLuhan frenetically forecast in the early 60′s.

 

But McLuhan was really ruing the unlocking of the barn door when the cattle had already gone…The alleged transmogrification of television was but a geometric expansion of what the film industry had already done to and for American “character”. A strong case could be made for the proposition that some predominantly Jewish immigrants invented the American “character” -and perhaps saved America and the free world in the process. These progenitive, essentially European, film artists immigrated America’s West Coast between the two wars, and for combined motives of self-preservation and prodding America away from its isolationism to become big-brother defender of the free world, created the image of America that united diverse populations of previously warring Irish, German, French, Italian, Spanish and African peoples into the image of…well, John Wayne. John Wayne’s character, as Maureen O’Hara, would subsequently proclaim to Congress, became America’s character – either commanding platoons of eager “Sea bees” or heroically assaulting the sands of Iwo Jima.

 

Up until the tandem threats of the Kiser and Hitler, America appeared to the rest of the world just as it was… a refuge for immigrant fugitives and rebels who followed European pilgrims to America for reasons as diverse as their genetic roots. Even before the first 4th of July, America had no “national character” other than the proud mongrel essence that eventually gave metropolitan melting pots like N.Y. City labels like “hell’s kitchen.” And because it was a haven for rebels and “rugged individualism”, America’s diversity spawned further diversity and rugged individualism. It took a depression and two world wars for America to acquire a “face” recognizable to the rest of the world, and the face was not established by traditional books or news print. The face of America assumed its unique character on the silver screens of Hollywood.

 

BEFORE TV, HOLLYWOOD WAS US

 

Without the images of John Wayne, Rosie the Riveter and similarly waspish Hollywood effigies of the American G.I. and fly-boy “Hero”, it is unlikely America would have learned to beat its mongrel heart with the strength and endurance it took to leap from the ashes of Pearl Harbor and storm the Beaches of Normandy on the way to Berlin’s final bunker. Certainly, to win the wars against the enemies of freedom, in America “all gave some, and some gave all”, but that clever and cohesive core of kosher movie makers artistically-and effectively– gave America and the world the first clear (if essentially-contrived) image of America’s “face”. Post his image today on the corner of any 50 culturally-distinct metropolises in the world, and in as many tongues they will salute “John Wayne”. The same cameras subsequently codified and exported America’s peacetime image in the equally waspish forms of Mickey Mantle and Marilyn Monroe.


THE MEDIA (TV) BECOMES THE MESSAGE
TV’S BOSSES-THE CORPORATIONS–CONTROL THE MESSAGE

 

McLuhan’s Monster is Born

 

But then came the mid-century emergence of Television, and Hollywood’s position as America’s image-artist was challenged. Actually, with the passing of the art/media torch from Hollywood to …ubiquitous Television, a cataclysmic conversion of American’s character occurred. The artistically-inspired face of America passed from the hands of fond and symbiotic Hollywood moguls to a menagerie of Mr.-Hyde-mad–monster TV producers (inanimate, corporate “networks”).

 

Before TV, the worst rebels Hollywood artists created for our-and the world’s-imitation and adulation were the relatively benign (if still waspish) bike-braving Brando, and switchblade-shwashbuckling James Dean. Following the sadly short Halcyon days of Ozzie and Harriot, our Loving Lucy and Mayberry’s mythically “simple” society, the artists who once controlled the evolution of America’s image were replaced…as was America’s morality itself, by dollar-driven corporations intent on fashioning whatever image of America their Neilson Ratings dictated. No longer were artists sitting around creating beautiful images of how things in America COULD be, if only we continued to love, and strive…Rather, writers and producers were being told to write what would sell sponsors’ product. Madison Avenue “margin men” came up with the catastrophic concept of “demography”…. “Don’t give them all a single image of truth and beauty they can rally round…Give them what sells.” At this point, America ceased evolving as an integrating culture and began disintegrating into demographically-dictated sub-cultures. Whitie could watch the Andy Griffith Show, and later the more realistic All in the Family, and the dollar-demographers would spin off Jeffersons for the blacks and Chico for the Hispanics. This part of the media paragigm shift from silver to cathode-ray screens was arguably salutary in that diversity had been the culturally primordial stuff from which the initial character of “America” had been mined by the minds and souls of those pioneer Hollywood movie makers who were truly the romancers of American’s mythically monolithic demeanor. Watching Carrol O’Connor struggle with the funny fruits of his own bigotry was …good for white and blacks, and watching the Jefferson’s discover that previously “white-type” power can corrupt…currently black Americans, was a sharpening experience at both ends of the diversity stick.

 

So, what part of McCluen’s sinister prophesy has been ordained in monstrous fashion by the American media, and how has this served to transmogrify America’s image of itself and the world’s image of America? The answer to this question would afford an answer to Michael Moore’s plaintive opening querry in Farenheit 911… “Has it all (from the election heist in Florida to the War in Iraq) been a dream? The answer is the same because the cause is the same. It was all a dream. There were no WMD’s and no bin Laden/Saddam connections. The lies were told and the media printed them, and the media’s message changed the face and character of America.

 

The power of the media to dictate the form and content of art has been pivotal in the evolution of America’s now Frankenstinian image. The cataclysm that has made this the reality is composit-a composit of the evolution of American citizen-driven democracy into an oligarchical corporate despotism, and the evolution of the media’s prime medium from silver screen to electron machine. The music industry provides an illustration in microcosm: The illustration is relevant, because the “sound image” of America has been almost as integral as its visual counterparts in providing the world its image of American character. Before syndicated corporations bought up the air waves, there were literally thousands of family-owned (human) broadcasting stations where an artist could be heard…and “discovered” by his naturally-selecting audience of empathetic ears. Now there are literally a handful of music monopolies and our radios now blast only what these musak moguls decide the public will hear. Our children are for the most part today in our ….cars. In the cars, are the radios. Six mega-companies dictate what comes over the air, and what comes is what sells. It’s no longer a matter of artistic discrimination, because the masses are given only six options, where, in the days of their parents, there were thousands. If Bob Dylan or Paul Simon were teenagers today, their music would perish in a New York or L.A. coffee house. Diversity is for the most part …dead…and if Darwin was even close to being right, and McLuhan only 5% on the money, diversity, a vital element in any system of successful evolution….is now missing from the equation by which our American character continues to evolve.

 

ARTISTIC EVOLUTION SCREACHES TO HALT

 

In the place of diversity today, the media gives us various forms of “non-art”. On the visual side, the “reality show” epitomizes the Frankenstein-monster evolution of America’s media-spun character. The corporations currently dictating television programming have discovered that it is “dollar efficient” to wholly eliminate art from television, as, appealing to the baser audience instincts, sexual infidelity, humiliation and mahem pay greater dividends. Thanks to the “dollar efficiency” of the Jerry Springer paradigm, the rest of the world is now forming its image of America by watching its perversity in the form of wholly artless “reality TV”. In place of former art and diversity, the American media has put America’s perversity on parade…because it sells. During the crucial years the Al Qaeda was making its early sorties into the basement of the Twin Towers, the media busily enabled a lame Republican party to effectively demean and ultimately displace an American president-along with his party- by publishing video and audio tapes of his extramarital dalliance.

 

THE CORPORATE MESSAGE IS … WAR

 

When Al Qaeda finally succeeded in toppling the twin towers, a media-conscious president was more concerned with completing his TV Video op in a grade school reading class than contending with the mortal enemies of Amerians under attack. Bush’s inspired speech before Congress, and the entire “War On Terrorism” were, in practical terms, products of a media-driven society. Bush didn’t write his speech, or even formulate the globally-encompassing policies pronounced therein… Rather, he read–as any other media “talking head–from a teleprompter screen….a speech written by a media-savy speech writer ( David Frum), dictated in terms by a corporate-driven adviser named Richard Pearl. In turn, what force drove Richard Pearl, to drive David Frum to drive the teleprompter tech to put all those words of war before our Congress, and before us through, again, our TV screens? … The clear answer to this rhetorical question is, of course the Corporations, like our V/P’s own Halliburton has, through support of the Neo-Con Military-Lobbied and complexed Republican party has led us to a war for urgently-needed oil-and hense-dominance in Iraq and ultimately the entire Middle East.

 

The answer to this final question provides us both a conclusion and a cruelly ironic modicum of hope as we wind up our search for America’s image , and how it’s managed to devolve from John Wayne to a Machiavellian (or Straussian) Frankenstein monster in a short half century… The media. When Bush began to market his war in Iraq as a war on Al Qaeda-connected terrorism and WMD’s, the media published this corporate-contrived fiction without due circumspection or question, because the story sold.

 

SURVIVAL OF FREE (PAPER) PRESS PROVIDES VESTIGE OF HOPE

 

But, although the TV medium (E.G. Neo-Con Republican run Fox) has enabled the transmogrification of the America’s image from heroic to monstrous…more benign (greener) branches of the media tree may well have started reversing the process and restoring America’s image to one we can live, and even grow with. For example Vanity Fair, in July of 2003, published Sam Tanenhaus’ avante-guarde revelations concerning the Cabal which successfully managed the silent coup in our Pentagon which led us to wage our Neo-con Zionist-inspired wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on the pretext of declaring a war of reprisal against terrorists.

 

As said before, lies were told and the media printed them, and the media’s message dynamically changed the face and character of America. But the change in America’s perceived character was based upon lies, and therein lies our room for hope. The change in America’s true character has been as fictional as the lies and misinformation on which the perceived change was founded. When and as the media discover and collectively reveal the truth, America’s true character and face can-and will-emerge.

 

Vanity Fair’s bellwether article courageously published the evidentiary core of Michael Moore’s mainstream movie production, which (film) despite neo-conservative attempts to stifle its broadcasting, has succeeded in giving America a facelift, beginning with a twenty-minute standing ovation in France, and sallying forth with box-office attendance by Americans sufficient to bode a renaissance of truth and diversity in America, and the restoration of her former character and destiny to join and perhaps eventually again lead the international brotherhood of states and souls in search of freedom, global harmony and peace.

 

RAGE WITH US

 

So, Freedom-remembering and loving Americans everywhere, unite with Al Campbell and me. Pick up your pens and your computer key boards and rage against the lying of the Right. Even with Bush’s neo-con packed Court, we’ve still got freedom of the press. The paper press remains–now expanded by the www Internet-as our final vestige and buttress of truth and hope for remediation. One day, God willing, McLuhan’s monster will be felled and the twin towers of American industry and productivity will be re-designed by one of our brave and willing pens.

 

Dusty Schoch
Sept. 24, 2005

 

This entry was posted in America, American Economy, Capitalism, Political. Bookmark the permalink. ← On the Light Side… Black Hawk Stung →