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Date Posted: 05:15:19 09/22/02 Sun
Author: Try One
Subject: Re: Iraq?
In reply to: Jack 's message, "Iraq?" on 12:22:08 09/08/02 Sun

I've always thought there seems to be a bit of a problem concerning the definition of the word 'democracy'. I can't really agree that Blair voting in favour of a war with Iraq is 'undemocratic'. As far as I'm concerned, democracy starts and ends with that little cross on the ballot paper. All the decisions made forthwith are out of our hands. Is that really democracy? I didn't vote for a minimum wage, or for a road hump to be built incongruously outside my house. Just because our leader supports a pre-emptive attack on Iraq, it doesn't suddenly mean parliament is a bunch of undemocratic fascists, no more than if our leader decides on a £5 toll to get in and out of Central London. The only major difference is that the Iraq situation is mildly more controversial.

And this is a result of the media's hyperbolic stab at 'democracy'. All very well delivering the news, but sensationalising it to turn it into a soap opera; a montage of couch-potato voyeurism, is masturbatory nonsense. Tabloid papers are mainly responsible, but it's not entirely their fault. You have to be thick to get drawn in by it, and unfortunately, most people who live in this country (and certainly all people who read tabloid newspapers) are thick. Perhaps this is a bit crude, but like Jack says, there is a thirst to quench. A thirst derivatory of people not being capable of articulating their own opinions; a void needing to be resolved by perpetuating something exciting or thrilling. Levi-Strauss, just for the record, is a very influential post-structuralist who wrote reams about the media "striving for an equilibrium": an attempt to balance out people's lives in times of frank boredom.
Marshall MacLuhan in his book The Making Of Man, coined the infamous phrase "The medium is the message". And this was in 1961, before the television was a mandatory necessity in the common man's living room.
I didn't know Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman from Adam. And this time next year, nor will anyone else. Television pictures showing people chasing after that police van with whats-her-name in it sums up beautifully just what the media does to people.

My cat was brutally killed a couple of months ago by a drunken neighbour. There has been a police inquest since, and the man is currently serving time. I have no doubt that if the media had given that as much coverage as the Souham scenario, there would be people burning this bloke's house down, chasing him in a police van or what have you. My road would be the centre of a hate campaign for animal welfare fanatics.

So whether or not we go into war with Iraq doesn't really bother me. And if it was put in small print at the bottom of page 23 in The Sun, then neither would anybody else. Not because they wouldn't know about it, but because it hasn't been blown up out of all proportion.

To me, the Palestinian crisis bears far more importance on world peace than America fannying about over whether or not they have the balls to dig out Hussein.

The UN inspectors have been allowed in. Whoopee do. That will be the last we'll hear from Saddam and his cronies for another ten years, whilst the media focus their attention on some other scandal which will help them dictate to the ameobic public what to 'think'.

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