Brainwashing

To imbed lower expectations

If you want to know what’s overpriced, pay attention to the kind of calls you get from telemarketers.  This year it has been health insurance and in 2007 it was mortgage loans.  If you look at new TV ads, it’s medication, weight loss, health care, medical procedures, law firm ads, investment advice, car insurance, gold and silver and your credit score.  Regular TV ads for soap, cars, food and other products continue as they always did.   If you look at new TV programs it’s tiny house, floating house, naked and afraid, investigation crime stories, ancient aliens, restaurant management, jewelry, cooking shows, police shows, courtroom shows and exercise shows.  There are movies and old series TV re-runs, Sports channels and News channels and foreign language channels in Spanish and Chinese. 

The narratives being pushed in these ads and TV programming have several themes that tell us about the viewers and the kinds of problems they are having.  The solutions to those problems offered in the ads are suspect, because the advertisers simply want you to buy their product or service.  The TV programming reflects the down economy and plays into our fears that we will need a tiny, floating home to avoid being naked and afraid. 

If you look at TV shows that were popular in the 1960s and 1970s, you got a lot of comedy and entertainment in shows like Laugh-In, Carol Burnett and I Love Lucy. You also got musical variety shows like Sonny & Cher, Donnie & Marie, Lawrence Welk and Andy Williams.   TV shows like “little house on the prairie” gave us role models for regular living.  These shows reflected a different era in America. This is an era we should return to.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader