THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

AFKAN | 2008-06-20

Yet - and this is part and parcel of the power of widespread color television - see Strom and Humphrey in the context of their times, and see why neither would last for five minutes today.

Thurmond dealt with the First Great Depression by working, and working more, in ever more valuable jobs and professions; he dealt with WWII by enlisting.

Humphrey's family all but lost their family business, a pharmacy in South Dakota, during the end of the Roaring Twenties. They moved, and stayed in the drugstore business, seeing the First Great Depression as it played out on the Great Plains. Humphrey always want to teach college, and didn't qualify for WWII for medical reasons. He taught college in DC during the war.

Thurmonds' life story is quite impressive; Humphrey, that of a man who knows One Big Thing, and ran the table with it.

Both spoke for the tremendous sectional differences that were in place in America, even in 1948 - this, before widespread television.

"Professional journalists" - another archaic "profession" in the day of the blogosphere - are now providing entertaining commentary on the entertainment, as people see the major trends as being pretty much locked in place, and changes only occur on the margin. REAL political changes, take place because a Federal judge says so; the politicians then hide behind his dress.

Ever wonder why the transformational political decisions from the Federal judiciary come, at least as seen by the public, from the men, particularly older, White men?

The Indoctrination of the Self-Proclaimed Greatest Generation seems to have worked; they respond damn near automatically, like beaten dog

-- AFKAN

*******************************************************************

*******************************************************************

*******************************************************************

-- BOB'S NOTE:

"this is part and parcel of the power of widespread color television "

NEVER FORGET that when you discuss the power the old media had, you are also saying what power the NEW media can have.

COMMENTS (5)

#1 Dave | 2008-06-20 11:22

An enduring fiction is the notion of "career". How it got going, I don't know. The notion does more damage to otherwise bright people that any other "meme".

There is no such thing as a "career". No such thing has ever existed.

This Wordism was most heavily promoted by the "Greatest Generation" to justify their defined benefit retirement programs and public employee union cards. Mommy Professor loves the notion for the same obvious reasons.

This "meme" would not exist if it were not for government. It is entirely a "Soviet" idea.

Think of the fools who pursue "career" in our time. How dumb can you get? Because of the Internet, there are no "exclusive access" silos of knowledge (stuffed inside some guild) anymore.

How do you get "profession" out of this? It's obvious to me that the "professions" are attempting to bail their sinking ships with spoons.

And it is astonishing how fast these ships are sinking.

#2 shari | 2008-06-20 13:09

Dave says what I've felt for many yrs,but of course couldn't just state so well. I once had a teacher tell me that she didn't want written on her tombstone that she had vacumned the floor so many times or did so much laundry etc. My only comfort then, was knowing that things like that were never put on tombstones. Now I'm seeing a lot of sad results from that nonsense. Most would hope for more than a mundane life, I think, but a bureaucratic "career" isn't it.

#3 Pain | 2008-06-20 19:06

One reason people pay any attention at all to the Media is that they still worship status, are suspicious of authority, and don't know the difference between the two. Once they realize that truth is more valuable to them than a glitzy broadcast, the revolution is already done.

#4 mderpelding | 2008-06-20 21:20

Thirty years ago, An intelligent man could be a newspaper reporter, a chemist, an engineer, a musician, a soldier, and an architect, plus many other professions, without a college education.

Nowadays, sans a college education one is reduced to sweeping floors and picking vegetables.

Was Gregor Mandel an educated man?

Was Johann Goethe an educated man?

Was Johann Bach an educated man?

In todays world, where would these men be?

Dave mentions something really important..

"An enduring fiction is the notion of "career". How it got going, I don't know. The notion does more damage to otherwise bright people that any other "meme".

There is no such thing as a "career". No such thing has ever existed."

Note how we identify ourselves....

Doctor, Lawyer, Engineer, Psychologist, and a myriad other singular definitions.

We have been conditioned to assign ourselves value based on our utility. Absent utility, we are useless.

#5 AFKANNow | 2008-06-23 01:49

in (partial) reply to mrpelding:

you wrote:

<blockquote cite=""> Note how we identify ourselves....

Doctor, Lawyer, Engineer, Psychologist, and a myriad other singular definitions.

We have been conditioned to assign ourselves value based on our utility. Absent utility, we are useless.</blockquote>

in reply:

The Associated Press - great Gatekeeper of "News" as defined by "Professional Journalists" - just suffered a near-death experience when they jumped on a blogger for using too much of their material - even when properly sourced and cited - in his blog.

Suddenly, newspapers are looking at lowering their costs, and one way to do this is to limit the fees they pay to the Associated Press.

The first guy to do this is Rupert Murdoch, with the Wall Street Journal.

The "utility" of the "professional journalist" is being marked to market in the new world of the Internet, in general, with the growth of the blogosphere, AND with the new, links-based information economy.

With the passing of the "professional journalist" AND its source of organizational power - the Associated Press - will come, in time, the passing of most other "professions" that do not directly add value to the end user.

And, regarding "utility," the Internet-forced transparency of the New Economic Order will redefine it, not in terms of governmentally-defined "titles," but in terms of the value they deliver.

We can see this already in journalism, where the professional journalists are calling for a central fund to support them, and their academic positions.

I suppose the next step for them would be to require licensure for "professional journalists," as they had in Marxist countries - proof positive that they are of no value whatsoever, in terms of telling the "truth," but only the politically correct "truth."