I love TV and watch way too much of it. Luckily there are only six ‘free to air’ channels available for my obsession and, as a struggling student, I don’t have the wherewithal to indulge in the satellite offerings, which is just as well as I’m sure if I did I wouldn’t get much study done. The irony is that I’m a ‘visual learner’ and would be well served if ‘SKY TV’ http://www.skytv.co.nz/ were to broadcast programming relative to my curricula, instead of the ‘for the short attention span’, watered down to the lowest common denominator, repetitive, docu-mag, conspiracy-theory pap currently broadcast (excluding of course , some of the BBC’s documentaries).
Though, as a plebeian of modest means I count myself lucky: up until a week or so ago, late-night, on three of our ‘free to air’ channels, we were able to flick between BBC World News http://news.bbc.co.uk/ , Fox (mainly the early morning show ‘Fox & Friends’) www.fox.com/home.htm , and Aljazeerah www.jumptv.com/en/channel/aljazeerainternational or http://english.aljazeera.net/English , for a fascinating view of how the world sees itself from three specific political standpoints. If a news story of substance broke while the channels were running the overseas news services you were able to observe the media commentating on unfolding events across the political spectrum (broadly speaking: left, centre and right). If the story was say Eurocentric and in particular British and, was not about the royal family nor a major event like the 7/7 bombings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_July_2005_London_bombings , it was likely that the heavily made-up and finely coiffed, rightwing talking heads at Fox would not be expressing their biased opinions at all, which (“with a little bit of fun”) is what they tend to do rather than actually report the news. Meanwhile, it would be all over the BBC (as long as there was no sports program running), reported with an imperceptibly, stiff-upper-lipped-liberal-pinko-lefty condescension. While Aljazeerah would be attempting to just report the events. You might think that my own political tendencies would have me favour the BBC version but you would be wrong! ALL the voices are relevant and together help formulate a better understanding of what ever is going on however, all comment is biased, even that of the participants, thus:
“History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.”
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 - 1821).
www.lucidcafe.com/library/95aug/napoleon.html
Different groups of people choose to believe different versions; the truth gets lost in the middle and is only recorded in time by the omniscient universe (who so far never tells). Perhaps a practical car manufacturer’s comments are more relevant:
“History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's dam is the history we made today.” Henry Ford (1863 - 1947), Interview in Chicago Tribune, May 25th, 1916. 
www.time.com/time/time100/builder/profile/ford.html
Unfortunately, as mentioned previously, we lost Fox a week or so ago: the local channel that broadcast them late-night has been purchased by (you guessed it!) ‘SKY TV’, which is owned by News Corp. (see: Rupert Murdoch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Murdoch) and no doubt in an attempt to have the viewers ‘pay to view’ have discontinued much of its airing. As another interesting aside: since the inception of the English version of Aljazeerah it is remarkable to note how many BBC stalwarts have jumped ship. These include David Frost and Stephen Cole, whose hype delivers the message that they wish to be at the forefront of journalism but, methinks it may have more to do with the (probably) enormous pay checks offered by the rich Arab backers of the channel.
Understanding and observation are always prejudiced by the collective consciousness of the society in which we dwell and for me, a believer in the extrapolation of quantum behaviours into the biochemical/physical realm, the observation of events is likely to alter the outcome i.e. do you think Lt. William Calley would have murdered those twenty-two Vietnamese civilians at My Lai during the Vietnam War if an Aljazeerah film crew had been recording his actions. www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/lai/verdict_12.html
His telling address (quoted from the above link) to the jury after sentencing clearly defines the collective consciousness of those running and participating in the war:
“Nobody in the military system ever described them as anything other than Communism. They didn’t give it a race, they didn’t give it a sex, they didn’t give it an age. They never let me believe it was just a philosophy in a man’s mind. That was my enemy out there. And when it became between me and that enemy, I had to value the lives of my troops, and I feel that was the only crime I have committed.”
Above: NB. The “Gooks’” cleverly concealed weapons
(Click once to Play)
The American psyche, a notion attempting to encapsulate an essentially fractured and disparate entity, is unintelligible to the psychowrecker. For the past two days I have watched events unfold on Fox’s ‘American Idol’ show http://www.americanidol.com/ with disbelief. Three of the final twelve contestants are black American women with fine voices, any one of them, in my opinion, are candidates for the top spot and yet the American voting public, in this case some 30 million people (though it has to be said probably consisting mainly of adolescent girls), chose to eliminate Stephanie Edwards: one of the three afore mentioned contestants. During the Friday night show she belted out a Shirley Bassey http://www.dameshirleybassey.com/ song with such emotion it bought tears to my eyes and yet on Saturday she was gone, voted out, usurped by some goofy white-boy with a wan and insipid warble of a voice. This is injustice, or worse! Yes, many black American women have fine singing voices and they are represented on this show because of this, but it is, as Simon Cowell keeps re-iterating, fundamentally a singing competition and not a pretty-boy beauty pageant as the majority of the viewers seem to think. The contestants should be voted for on the basis of their vocal abilities and not on their gender or the colour of their skin!
Can I hope that the remaining women of colour: LaKisha Jones, Jordin Sparks and Melinda Doolittle, all with fine voices (not to mention star quality names), remain in the competition and that one of them takes out the top honours? Or is the American public too dumb and biased to recognize a ‘true’ idol when they see one?
Above: Stepahnie Edwards
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