Our history will be what we make it.
And if there are any historians about 50 or 100 years
from now and there should be preserved the kinescopes
of one week of all three networks
they will there find, recorded in black and white and
in color,
evidence of decadence, escapism, and insulation from
the realities of the world in which we live.
We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable, and
complacent.
We have a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing
information.
Our mass media reflect this.
But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and
recognize that television in the main is being used to
distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us,then history
will take its revenge and retribution will not limp in
catching up with us.
It may be that the human race is doomed, never to learn
from its mistakes.
We are the only animals on this globe who periodically
set out to slaughter each other for the best, the
noblest, the most inescapable of reasons. We know
better. But we do it again and again in generation
after generation.
It may be that our empire, too, is doomed like all
those that have gone before it to continue to spew and
waste its best blood on foreign soil, no matter what we
say or do in this place, or think, or believe, or have
learned from history.
But, thank God for us...
And if there are any historians about 50 or 100 years
from now and there should be preserved the kinescopes
of one week of all three networks
they will there find, recorded in black and white and
in color,
evidence of decadence, escapism, and insulation from
the realities of the world in which we live.
We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable, and
complacent.
We have a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing
information.
Our mass media reflect this.
But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and
recognize that television in the main is being used to
distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us,then history
will take its revenge and retribution will not limp in
catching up with us.
It may be that the human race is doomed, never to learn
from its mistakes.
We are the only animals on this globe who periodically
set out to slaughter each other for the best, the
noblest, the most inescapable of reasons. We know
better. But we do it again and again in generation
after generation.
It may be that our empire, too, is doomed like all
those that have gone before it to continue to spew and
waste its best blood on foreign soil, no matter what we
say or do in this place, or think, or believe, or have
learned from history.
But, thank God for us...