Magda Szubanski's public relations exercise

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Permalink Reply by ChrisS on October 2, 2009 at 12:59am

Nancy Boy articulates nicely what many people have been thinking already, although I can emphasise with his anger. The recent bout of bullshit groupthink behind all this dross has me questioning the whole "Laura Norder" bollox. Oh bugger it, time for sleep.

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Permalink Reply by Peter Hartley on October 3, 2009 at 11:07am

Good on ya Magda - give these pricks heaps! Pity you backed off though - what happened, did the thought police get ya?

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Permalink Reply by ChrisS on October 3, 2009 at 11:54am

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Permalink Reply by andrew stretton on October 5, 2009 at 8:28am

Hmmm, why I don't have, therefore don't watch TV.

Guy DeBord outlined it a couple of decades ago in "The Society of the Spectacle" and Étienne de la Boétie wrote about it in the early 1550's.

Magda, and I suspect, all those involved with this insidious device, know the Rules of the Game so well. Here's Etienne, enjoy! (additions in brackets are mine)

The method that tyrants use, one of stultifying their subjects, cannot be more clearly observed than in what Cyrus did with the Lydian’s after he had taken Sardis, their chief city, and had at his mercy the captured Croesus, their fabulously rich king.

When news was brought to him that the people of Sardis had rebelled, he was unwilling either to sack such a fine city or to maintain an army there to police it, so he thought of an unusual expedient for reducing it. He established in it brothels, taverns, and public games, and issued the proclamation that the inhabitants were to enjoy them. He found this type of garrison so effective that he never again had to draw the sword against the Lydian’s. These wretched people enjoyed themselves, inventing all kinds of different games.

It is indeed the nature of the populace, whose density is always greater in the cities, to be suspicious toward one who has their welfare at heart, and gullible toward one whom fools them. Do not imagine that there is any bird more easily caught by decoy, nor any fish sooner fixed on the hook by wormy bait, than are all these poor fools neatly tricked into servitude by the slightest feather passed, so to speak, before their mouths. Truly it is a marvelous thing that they let themselves be caught so quickly at the slightest tickling of their fancy. Plays, farces, (Television-GNW), spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny.

By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes (literally), learned subservience as naively, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books.

and so it goes..........Andrew

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