A Glint of Moonlight

“How can they get away with airing such a crooked show?”

That’s a question that came at me rapid fire after everyone watched the 20/20 tabloid piece on Saipan (“The Shame of Saipan,” which aired locally on May 31).

The slick and sleazy sniping from the elitist media in the states shocked a lot of folks here. And, let me look into this term “elitist” briefly. The media power structure in the states is concentrated in very few hands. Coupled with that is the dumbing down of American society, which has hit the point that whatever some slickster on the television news says is gospel, while real journalism (from, say, the Wall Street Journal) holds far less sway in forming public opinion.

American television news isn’t really news, it’s entertainment with an agenda behind it. Any mental vegetable watching four hours of television per day (the national average) is a real-life zombie: totally dulled, obediently guided by suggestion. The country is in a hypnotic trance, and the hypnotists hold the power. If they had their way (and they will, some day), their ilk would rule as Bolshevik elite, while the rest of us would be condemned to serving them as we eek out lives as wards of the state.

Much so-called news is like a twisted Sesame Street for sleepy-minded adults. Images, pictures, voices, even mood-making background music are blended with scientific precision, formulated to produce a very specific reaction in the viewer. They don’t tell you what to think…they actually implant the very thought itself. Americans who didn’t know Kosovo from cabbage are utterly convinced that they have sufficient moral insights on the matter to butcher Serbian civilians. Television dictates what Americans believe: It determines who they like, who they hate, who they trust, who they fear, who they’ll kill, who they’ll feed.

Americans can be made to do anything–even send their sons off to die in meaningless wars–if the television tells them to do it. There’s no limit. None.

That’s a pretty pathetic state of affairs in a once-great nation founded by freethinkers. Equally pathetic is this: 20/20 is considered a credible show in the United States.

A score of folks has asked me “Didn’t you hate 20/20’s piece?” No, in a way, I love it: It is a gem of propaganda, an absolutely perfect example of the way opinions are manufactured by media machinations. It’s like the shiny heft of a Colt .45 pistol… a cooly efficient machine that serves a specific purpose–something to be admired as much as feared for the sheer effectiveness of its honed and polished mechanisms.

So, in a way, you have to admire the skill of the 20/20 piece…kindly George Miller with his $30 blow dry hair do…demure Connie Chung with her $90 blow dry hair do…all of them doe-eyed and radiating love and concern for all of humanity…contrasted with bleak footage of bar girls on a dim street in Saipan’s Garapan district.
The slick versus the non-slick. It’s a version of the old Batman television series, where the camera was tilted when filming the crooks’ hideout, so the image came out slanted. You knew you were looking at the Bad Guys when their floor wasn’t level.

It is no surprise, then, that 20/20 wasn’t on the level when it came here. But don’t bemoan the fraud. Learn from it. I’m no historian (understatement of the year), but I know that societies told what to think by professional manipulators eventually get seduced into slavery.

Saipan is important to us in Saipan, but it is not the world’s most profound issue. There is, however, a profound lesson in the treatment of our humble island at the hands of the media elite. Like a glint of moonlight reflected by an assassins pistol, Saipan got a glimpse of the raw power of the men in the shadows who control the American mind.

Stephens is an economist with Stephens Corporation, a professional organization in the NMI. His column appears three time a week: Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Mr. Stephens can be contacted via the following e-mail address:ed4Saipan@yahoo.com.