Laura's Theory of the Universe

By Laura M Mauney

Three weeks ago I cancelled my decades old relationship with cable television. I did so for one push button reason: I decided I didn’t want to contribute any more of my extremely hard earned money to the salaries of people who think wasting our time with flagrantly biased news stories and frequently false statements is a justifiable use of mass media. 

For weeks prior, far too many TV news people and commentators just wouldn’t stop yacking about Donald Trump and his attempts to stir up controversy about President Obama’s birth certificate. For me, trying to make a point by changing the channel or writing a complaining email was no longer working on a spiritual level.

The so called “birther” controversy, as resurrected and made more famous than it ever deserved by Trump, had put me over the top. That latest foray by the media into The Pit of The Fatuous was the last in a litany of similar episodes that I labeled “fraudcasting” many years ago, after mis-hearing the word “broadcasting” while listening to a radio announcer in my noisy car one day. 

(I define “fraudcasting” as the act of perpetuating false notions via mass media, whether that be false election results, false assertions about the presence of WMDs in Iraq, lies about celebrities, lies about political positions or actions, lies about birth certificates, or crime shows where female victims rarely defend themselves, and male perpetrators are rarely Caucasian).

In any case, on the day after Mother’s Day, I took a midafternoon work break (I’m fortunate enough to enjoy flex time on my job) so I would have time, before closing time, to unplug the cable boxes for the two TVs in our house, grab the cable modem, track down both remotes, pack it all in a box and drive it all over to the cable company, which thankfully is located only a few miles northwest of my home.

I found no-pay street parking, also thankfully, carried the box inside the cable company’s office, and got in line behind a bunch of other people who were mostly there to pay their bills. Almost all the people in line were either African American or Hispanic.

I wanted to shout at them all: “No, don’t do it! Don’t give another dime to supporting bigotry and lies in the media! You can get all the broadcast TV you need for free, and now, there is 4G Internet! Vive la France!”

Actually, I kept my mouth shut, for fear of being arrested for making a disturbance, which in this day and age of the Patriot Act is pretty much guaranteed for anyone who raises a fuss about anything in a public setting (I know that because I’ve been watching cable news regularly through the past decade).

When my turn came to go to the counter, I was, of course, asked why I was cancelling. I did not mention Donald Trump, but rather said, as loudly as I could without being accused of making a disturbance, “I’m just tired of paying money to listen to people on the cable news channels disparage President Obama.”

I was offered a $10/mo package for local programming only. I said “No, thanks.”

In any case, the deed is now done. My floors are no longer strung with cable cords and nasty, curling safety tape all gross with dog hair. I no longer have three vampire electronics running up my electric bills through the night with their little, blinking lights. 

My savings on cable alone will amount to approximately $900 per year. (Yikes! That’s embarassing, and really? That’s like 3 months’ worth of food!). I still opted to cover the roughly $700 per year for Internet service, but I switched to a new ISP.

Best of all, no more of my money will be going to support Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, or Donald Trump.

The only downside is that, by the same token, my money will also not be going to support OWN, Comedy Central, TBS, TNT or USA, alas. 

Abandoning Oprah’s new enterprise is pretty tough, but abandoning Ted Turner, founder of TBS, TNT and CNN, and owner of the Atlanta Braves, is another story altogether, for he’s the one who brought cable television into my home in the deep south when I was kid. 

Yeah, yeah, I know Ted doesn’t need my money, but my family loved his original Atlanta Superstation back in the day, which played reruns of old shows and movies, and aired Braves baseball games. Turner’s capitalistic liberalism, his genius in the founding of the first 24 hour news station, and his support of environmental issues are some of the reasons ol’ political me has stayed loyal to cable all the many years since.

My other motivation for cable loyalty, in more recent years, was tied to the excellence of so many original cable dramas, from Nero Wolf to Leverage, Monk and The Closer, to Psych, Burn Notice, In Plain Sight and The Killing. In some cases, acquaintances of mine were actually involved in those productions, all the more reason to pay my cable bill each month.

In the end, however, Trump trumped all the positives. Trump eclipsed them, in fact, with a lot of help from the silly Sarah Palin, the naughty Newt Gingrich, the mean Michelle Bachman, and the extremely overpaid Charlie Sheen (how anyone in Hollywood can justify giving any performer or crew member a million+ dollars per TV episode when there are people starving and homeless all over the world is far beyond my comprehension; no offense Charlie, but that’s just the way it hits me).

Don’t get me wrong. I am all for the First Amendment, and unlike some who abandon television, I am not, at heart, anti-media, or anti-Hollywood. I am not one of those people who believes TV programs, or movies, or rock and roll, or video games, or the Internetz, cause other people to commit crimes. I don’t believe entertainment drains the brain or prevents children from being properly educated, either. 

I belong to the creative class, and believe that all forms of creativity are also a form of knowledge, and a form of prayer, homage to the ultimate Creator. I believe that artists are obliged, by the Creator, to share their gifts with the world. 

I also believe, however, that artists are obliged to communicate, constantly, what we call “Universal Truth.” Hurting others by constantly fomenting falsehoods, hatred, racism, bigotry, or sexism is not part of that “Universal Truth.” (If I have ever done so myself, I apologize and retract).

With that said, I also believe in the power of the almighty boycott, and that if one is truly disgusted with an activity, the best strategy is to simply stop participating. 

So it sits with me: until the current crop of media executives (gatekeepers as they are called in mass media theory) are willing to do their well-paid jobs properly, and filter out lies, hatred, and racial, religious or gender bias from their content, whether it is dramatically based or reality based, I will not be paying for cable.

Nor will I be trading cable for satellite TV because, for me, that is just trading a moldy peach for a moldy plum. Instead, I invested about $200 of my $900 annual cable savings in a 4G mobile hotspot device from Sprint, a 4G wireless card for my desktop workhorse from Belkin, and one of those newfangled HDTV antennas and a digital broadcast converter box from Radio Shack. 

From here forward the only fee I have to pay each month is for the Sprint 4G service. I think the 4G device is especially nifty because it is more secure than was my cable modem, and I can carry the device with me anywhere for use with my laptop. Just as with cellphone service, as long as one is not in one of those “roaming zones” one can ride the waves, so to speak, without paying extra.

I have so far been able to keep myself happily informed about the news of the day by watching local news in the AM and PM, occasional national news, and reading the news on my smartphone or computer (I don’t subscribe to paper newspapers for environmental reasons). 

If I want to watch one of the President’s speeches (without interruption from news commentators) or find out what the government is REALLY up to these days, I can visit www.whitehouse.gov, or any number of other websites for Congressional or agency news.

As for entertainment, there’s YouTube, as most of us know, and many other channels for Internet TV. I’ve now committed $7.99 per month out of that $900 annual savings to Netflix, and will happily pay a few more bucks this year to Amazon Instant Video. Netflix gives me unlimited access, via my computer, to movies and some TV series. Amazon Instant Video allows me to pay, by the episode only, for the shows I really want to keep up with.

Otherwise, I still have, via free broadcast, full access to the best of network television, including a lot of faves, like Hawaii Five-O. I’ve also discovered all these secret, antenna only channels that air reruns of old shows and movies, as well as eclectic educational programming that I didn’t even know existed before, like Cooking with Ming.

Most delightful of all, however, is that I’ve actually started keeping the TV off for long periods, when there is no broadcast programming available that is particularly interesting. This frees my brain and my body for more creative and/or vigorous activity, like finally planting a garden (there went another $100 of that $900 annual savings), reading library books, spending more time with my grown-up children, walking my dog, and engaging in my own creative pursuits, photography and writing.

As for no longer providing my two cents of support to OWN, I’m actually thinking of writing Oprah a letter, asking if she would look into the possibility of licensing a few broadcast stations in key markets. Meanwhile, I’m content with reruns of her final year on Channel 7 each weekday, which I think will be running all summer long.

In conclusion I repeat what I’ve stated many times, and truthfully, in my letters of complaint to the media. I am a southern white woman who grew up during the Civil Rights Era, steeped in the best and worst behaviors of the era, so believe me, if I think something is racist, you can bet it is probably just that.

I really don’t care if I sound all self righteous or pompous, or that media personalities have a far larger audience than me, or whether they perceive my remarks with cynicism or doubt, or if anyone in the media even reads this. Now that I am no longer paying the media to ignore me, I’m good, because I know my two cents worth, by virtue of its absence, is finally being heard.

by Laura M Mauney

Certain newcasters who fell for that balloon boy gimmick, and for the story about that spoiled white woman who splashed acid on her own face, then blamed it on a non-existant homeless, black woman, have been telling us again and again, with absolute, great and pompous authority, that 25% of the people this, and 71% of the people that, and 46% of the people thus, for months, years even… as if their know-it-all pseudo-intellectual predictions and projections represent some kind of true statistical analysis of massive amounts of data that they and no one else have access to because they are the privileged and well paid media.

Worse, once said media folk make known said percentages, a certain new breed of political animal that is being shoved down our throats despite our gagging  protests tends to grab hold of the percentages, blabbering them repeatedly in defense of any character flaw he-she possesses that needs defending (often xenophobia or greed).

Truth is, as most of us know, the percentage numbers the media are so fond of reciting are based on polls, usually of fewer than 1,000 people, sometimes a few hundred more, in a nation of well over 100 million active voters (1,000 to 100 million is 00.001%, by the way).

Whenever I see or hear about poll results, especially when they fail to favor my own POV, the first question I think of is, “Who on earth did the pollsters poll?”

And then I ask, “What about people on Internet phone lines, and people who only use cellphones, like me? Do we get polled? What about people who are never home, or who ignore calls from unknown numbers because they are really, really busy all the time?”

(One poll, back in 2002, asserted that the majority of citizens supported the Iraq war. The poll was taken during a nationwide peace march, when millions took to the streets to protest the war. These millions were not home to answer their phones during the poll: thus the result was skewed in favor of war).

Finally, I ask, “Why aren’t these statements about percentages properly qualified? Why don’t the newscasters just tell the truth, as in ‘25% of 900 people polled say that…blah’”? 

To me, whether the polls are intelligent enough to serve as true indicators of anything or not, the whole shebang is pretty creepy from the door into the carnival funhouse all the way through to the daylight on the other side.

Political advertisers are paying media outlets wagon-loads of money for air time all day long, every day, money which, in turn, goes to the salaries of the people reporting on and interpreting the polls.

Additionally, sloppy journalism has become so status quo these days that we the people may be numb to it. Mass media theorists figured out the numbing effect of repetitive exposure to certain types of information way back in the day, so I guess that nifty little insight is now being abused for the sake of… what?

For me, this continued neglect by the mass media of what’s best for the people and the nation is just more justification for continuing my petulant news boycotts (whenever I get really pissed, but must still have TV, I watch old movies or fave show repeats; sometimes I even listen to Reggae, or the Beatles, or Jazz).

It’s also justification for continuing my spending moratorium against certain products and businesses - ongoing for almost 3 years now. From here forward, I think I will ferret out businesses that are members of the US Chamber and do whatever I can to boycott them, too. That’ll be tough, but I bet there are a few changes I can make to make the right kind of difference in our economic recovery.

I’ll also continue to vote in every election, midterm, quarter term, full term, just to make sure I do not ever get mis-filed in the so-called “enthusiasm gap.”

What I really would like, however, is the ability to “like” or “dislike,” with the click of a mouse, TV newscasters, commentators, interviewees, news stories, and political ads, just as we get to do on Facebook or the way big websites, like Google, choose content, and that THAT statistical data could be used to determine which person, story or ad stays on the air…kind of like big brother in reverse, with all the power going to the people. Wouldn’t that be so super creepy, and wonderful at the same time? :)

I guess I just made every media buyer in the country a personal enemy, but honestly, at this stage in the game, I really don’t care anymore.

Happy Halloween!