HW: Tour Shirts

[Nick Medford]

On Mon, 26 Apr 2004 12:12:11 +0100, M Holmes <fofp at HOLYROOD.ED.AC.UK> wrote:

I said:

>>you know how it goes- give-em-what they-want, keep-em-stupid, keep-
>> em-docile...

To clarify- though I thought it was obvious- this is what I take to be the
attitude of many people who write for, edit and publish tabloid newspapers,
not a comment on people who read them.

Mike Holmes said:

>
>This crap always annoys me.  My parents read the tabloids.  people
>reading tabloids are quite simply not so stupid that they can't see
>through all the cant telling them how to vote.

Telling them how to vote? We were talking about a *gossip columnist*, were
we not??

Of course I don't imagine that everyone who reads the tabloids is stupid,
any more than I imagine that everyone with a university education, say, is
highly intelligent. I do however believe that the style and content of mass
media in general is very much geared to reinforcing and maintaining a
particular social and cultural climate.

You yourself, if I've understood anything about you, are very keen on the
idea that people do well to think for themselves and cultivate independence
of mind and spirit- something with which I concur wholeheartedly. Do you
feel that our mass media is geared to promoting those things?

  That their choice of how
>to be entertained doesn't match our own choices does not make them
>stupid.
>
>What I suspect is that people promulgating this excuse for a theory
>really want us to think not that tabloid readers are stupid, but that
>because they are not tabloid readers, and look down on them, they must
>be incredibly clever.

There are many aspects of society, and indeed aspects of human nature,
including my own, which are not to my taste, but this is a very different
thing from "looking down" on people. Without going into details I've spent
my whole adult life trying to help people at the very bottom of the heap.
The people I meet in my working life are generally those who are "looked
down on" by society as a whole, and it is my belief that I always do my
best to accord them respect and dignity. In fact, I seriously f***ing
resent being told that I look down on people, particularly by someone who
has never even met me.

cordially

Nick