B. U. G. S.

In an age when information POURS in, a PRACTICAL Achilles’ heel of Wordism is that it is BORING. History, the story of the entire experience of our species, is just a recitation of dates and names. Instead of being at his computer, a freshman must spend his time in the basic course in History of Civilization memorizing whether Asurbanipal was a Babylonian or an Assyrian, and WHEN.

I watch the old Dan Rather types sit around and gripe about the Good Old Days when news was the province of Professionals like them. They make a few hidden references to Good Old Soviet television where Professionals like them would limit television to ballets and other Uplifting stuff.

In short, the masses are entirely out of hand. Someone should give them what they OUGHT to watch and nothing else. The code term for this is “being obsessed with ratings.”

In our seminar, the first thing we should think of when this sort of phrase is used is “watching the ratings COMPARED TO WHAT?”

Compared to the Wordists’ dictation of what everybody should have.

All this fits into the unquestioned Sixties mantra of Social Messages which the Greatest generation never questioned. So they were grateful when someone said, “Pollution is bad” and followed it up with the standard bureaucratic solution. That was considered to be a FAVOR.

This whole concept of Social Messages fit into an old saying, “A lot of what he says is new. A lot of what he says is true. But nothing he says that is new is true.” This is a perfect description of 60s Social Messages

The fact that pollution was bad was not new. The standard prescription for it was not true. But the good old Obedience Trained Greatest generation never thought of that. And no one in the controlled media was allowed to say it if they did.

For the lost monopoly called “professional journalism” those were indeed the Good Old Days.