DEATH IS EASY by Russell Madden

FREEDOM,  As If It Mattered by Russell Madden

The Guardian Project by Russell Madden

RaNdoM by Russell Madden

 

The television industry is not renowned for its willingness to take risks. After all, as a mass medium, the people involved in the production and distribution of television fare -- whether comedies, dramas, "reality" shows, or commercials -- must appeal to a mass audience if they hope to prosper in their highly competitive business.

While competition is good at providing people what they like, what they like is not always good. Indeed, the context in which a mass medium such as television operates tends to marginalize the eccentric, the highly original, the controversial. That fact arises from the very nature of crafting communication to reach larger and larger numbers of people.

In order for communication to occur, the participants must discover common ground. For television writers and producers and directors, this task can be a daunting one. When the scale of communication expands, all those people that the creative types and the advertisers seek to reach share fewer and fewer characteristics.

"Appealing to the lowest common denominator" is not merely a figure of speech or an idea taught in math.

This fact of life is not necessarily or automatically a criticism of the industry. As anyone who has attempted to latch on to a mega-audience can testify, this is no easy task. Skill, knowledge, and hard work are required to achieve success.

Yet it is also indisputably true that McDonald's ain't the Ritz.

Simple can be fine -- and tasty -- but that lowest common denominator in the realm of ideas can lead to tragic mistakes.

The November 16, 2002, edition of that venerable icon of the couch potato set -- The TV Guide -- provided an unwitting example of this widespread phenomenon.

The lead letters the editors chose to print concerned a story the magazine ran in October: "Show Them the Money!" This story detailed who some of the richest stars were in the television firmament.

Unfortunately, the points made above regarding the nature of mass media apply equally well to mass print media...and perhaps especially, a print source that is wedded to the doings of mass market entertainment.

The first letter complained about "America's value system." That hoary fallacy of "firefighters, police officers, paramedics, nurses and teachers" -- those souls whom "Americans say they value most" -- failing to receive "decent" wages was once again trotted out for millions of readers to see.

How dare mere entertainers "make millions of dollars" while these average Americans are slighted!

This writer is apparently innocent of any knowledge of the law of supply and demand...or incapable of applying that principle to something more than the supply of blueberries.

Do we really need to point out that classic example of water being vastly more "valuable" in the sense of important for maintaining human life but costing vastly less than diamond jewelry, a "frivolous" extravagance that no one actually "needs"?

If the man who wrote this letter stopped and thought for a moment, he might realize that, for example, professional athletes are paid so very much money for their skills because so very few people can perform at their level of ability. After all, millions upon millions of young men and women play organized sports in grade school. But the funnel narrows throughout middle school, high school, and college. By the time the select few reach professional tryouts, those millions of individuals have been winnowed out via competition and self-determination to a select few hundred or thousand.

The best performers in any field -- television, sports, movies, writing, computers, construction, whatever -- earn the compensation they receive...from willing buyers/purchasers/consumers. This letter writer from Jacksonville, Florida, (home of the professional football team, the Jaguars) skates precariously and unwittingly close to the edge of the truth when he writes that these people "make" money.

Precisely. They make their money. They don't steal like politicians and criminals (excuse the redundancy...). They don't defraud or lie or beg or ask for charity. They "make" money, i.e., create wealth via their writing and acting and producing and directing.

Yes, teachers and police officers and nurses are (quite often) wonderful people. Those professions are indeed honorable ones and vital to a modern, healthy society.

But millions of people can or could teach. Millions of people cannot act or sing sufficiently well to entice millions of others to attend theaters, turn on their televisions, or purchase compact disks.

This is not rocket science, folks.

It is that letter writer's value system -- not that of America -- that is sorely in need of correction.

But this lead letter had good company in the one that followed it.

In this second letter, the writer tells us that, "I don't have a problem with people making money."

Whoa! Red flag time. The giant "but" that is coming echoes ones heard from those people who proclaim that, "I don't have a problem with freedom, but..." or "I don't have a problem with [pick your group of people: blacks, whites, libertarians, atheists, men, women, etc. etc.], but..."

Those words are obvious clues that the writer has a huge problem with whatever it is he tells us he does not "have a problem with."

In this particular case, this missive informs us that these rich entertainers should be judged on "how charitable they are with their tremendous salaries."

This blatant altruism grows even worse with the last line:

"Wealth is only good if it's used to help others."

Savor that altruistic piety, the sanctimonious notion that charity alone justifies how much income one receives. In the eyes of this altruistic proselytizer, the more money someone makes, the more he must give away to other people who did not make as much. Indeed, if we take this writer at his word and recognize his adult moral and intellectual autonomy, his responsibility for what he says, then any money -- wealth -- is "good" ONLY if it goes to those people who want or say they need it to "help" themselves...but did not actually earn that money.

If the individual who made the money uses it to help himself, however, then that wealth is not good, i.e., is bad, i.e., is evil.

The fact that the people who earned their fortunes -- however modest or extreme -- obtained their wealth by providing values to others in exchange for money is seemingly insufficient to justify their assets.

The fact that a rich person -- of whatever degree -- provided jobs and income for others who might otherwise have been unemployed is of no significance.

The fact that -- in a free society -- a tremendous salary represents a tremendous accomplishment goes for naught.

No. Feel guilty. "Give back." Atone for the sin of success. Take no pride in what you have done in the name of your own self-interest, your own values and interests, your own life.

None of that matters in the collectivistic, altruistic fantasy world championed by the non-rich, the lower-achievers, the non-wealthy, the less-accomplished; the same folks who believe that health care and retirement payments and State-subsidies are their due, theirs by "right" and might.

Even more horrendously, that sick delusion is swallowed whole and defended by the vast majority of those very same affluent folks who are being attacked by the multitudes.

And how did the folks at TV Guide choose to headline -- and implicitly endorse -- these two obnoxious letters?

"Dollars and Sense."

When nonsense is dressed up and trotted out as its opposite in homage to the masses, we can be confident that the lowest common denominator has reached new lows.

A ratings winner, for sure.