roundtable: Re: OP-ED ON TV - PUBLIC

roundtable: Re: OP-ED ON TV / PUBLIC

Re: OP-ED ON TV / PUBLIC

Jeff Briggs (jbriggs@capital.edu)
Sun, 8 Jan 1995 05:14:22 +0500 

Date: Sun, 8 Jan 1995 05:14:22 +0500
From: jbriggs@capital.edu (Jeff Briggs)
Message-Id: <9501081014.AA07670@athena.capital.edu>
To: roundtable@cni.org
Subject: Re: OP-ED ON TV / PUBLIC


Thank you for your insights about my attack on Brad, which you made me
see was indeed, intemperately expressed, whatever the validity of its 
points.

     Sometimes I am critical of Vigdor, but not when he proposes 
(as I understood it) means of electronic or TV communication not
controlled by capitalist enterprise to serve the 'public good".

     It was what I perceived to be Brad's mocking the idea that
such a concept exists and comparing those who contemplate it to
Communists that unleashed my cathartic enema.

     Your point about "diving for the public good apart from what
the public really wants" gave me pause, as well as the dangers of
those (perhaps me) who think they know what's best for people. 
	
     But at the same time your holding up public opinion as the
final virtue and only valid judge of what is good for people is
flawed, and you can think of reasons why - support for Nazism,
slavery, and numerous other gross violations of human rights. And I
don't think a leftist critique of modern American media in invalid 
simply because the republicans won the election. The very reason I 
was supporting Vigdor's idea was because only if we have a reflection 
of the true span of thinking in our media can we tell what public 
opinion really is, since any ideas that question the godliness and 
democratic virtues of greed being the only human motive are (and have 
been for decades) systematically exorcised from our national dialogue.

     And finally, I don't agree with the commonly expressed idea
that both right and left are equally flawed, however much 20th
century history proves it in the extremes. Rightwing opinion is only
capitalist thinking, nothing more (unless it hedges into its natural
neighbor - fascism). Leftwing opinion envisions a wider sharing of
the good things of life - health, land, housing, jobs, education - 
things that rightists want to leave to chance or some Protestant idea 
that the fit and deserving (them) will always get them through the 
brutal struggle for economic survival. The brutality and evil of the 
essence of the Soviet system (its totalitarianism and viewing people 
as means rather than ends, as well as its clumsy planned economy) is 
unquestionable, but that does not mean that humane means of sharing 
the good things of life more equitably than under capitalism are 
inevitably and forever impossible, or that if possible, are 
undesireable.

Jeff Briggs
jbriggs@capital.edu

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