Originally Posted By: redewenur...from Is Science the answer?
...causes indignation among a populace that's very comfortable with those illusions "thanks, anyway, Professor Chomsky".

The point is, people are happy with their illusions/delusions - whether they be political or religious. It's unscientific, it's short-sighted - at it's worst it's genocidal - but it's understandable.

Excellent summation, once again redewenur.

Speaking of Norm Chomsky,
the original syntactician....

Your summation reminds me of an interview with Susan Moeller.
Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death by Susan D. Moeller
She talks about how the media is concerned with retaining the audience (americanize the news, among other things) and media is afraid its audience will suffer from Compassion Fatigue (audience will turn the page/channel).
....ultimately leading to "compassion avoidance."
Also, she mentions conflation of chemical & biological weapons with nuclear weapons (i.r.t. lead in to Iraq war), like Norm and Al.

Articles in Summer 1999 issue of Journal of Political and Military Sociology (another cool link!)

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3719/is_199907/ai_n8841489

"Compassion Fatigue, Moeller asserts, "is not an unavoidable consequence of covering the news. It is, however, an unavoidable consequence of the way news is covered" (p. 2). This pattern of coverage involves prioritizing stories where American political, cultural or commercial connections are involved, and failing to cover fully (or to cover at all) events where American interests are not evident; offering simplistic, formulaic presentations; employing sensationalized language and imagery; relying on Americanized metaphors and references to tell the story; and radically reducing or terminating coverage of an event the moment something new occurs that seems more likely to attract audience (consumer) attention.

....After a few weeks of horrifying, didactic images appear to overload viewers' senses, the media are on to the next crisis. But whatever that next crisis is, media coverage will have trained its public to want even more sensationalized details; it must appear more threatening and more aberrant.

The lesson to be learned, the media reported, was the lesson of Vietnam: the United States should not get involved in faraway crises when its own security is not in danger. Largely pre-empted by the Somalia coverage, famine in Sudan, Africa's largest nation, never produced significant media interest. Sudan remained "just another one of those stories about starving black people."
...

Originally Posted By: ...from a RELATED LINK
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1568/is_2_31/ai_54772894
Carter, a white South African, spent only a couple of days in Sudan. According to Susan D. Moeller, who tells Carter's story in Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death, he had gone into the bush seeking relief from the terrible starvation and suffering he was documenting, when he encountered the emaciated girl. When he saw the vulture land, Carter waited quietly, hoping the bird would spread its wings and give him an even more dramatic image. It didn't, and he eventually chased the bird away. The girl gathered her strength and resumed her journey toward a feeding center. Afterward, writes Moeller, Carter "sat by a tree, talked to God, cried, and thought about his own daughter, Megan."


....
For the American media, the most important deaths (assassinations) are those of leaders of countries where the U.S. has substantial commercial, political or cultural interests and people who have high personal status in this country. Such fallen leaders are characterized as martyrs, peacemakers and great historic figures. Such language was used in coverage of the assassinations of Israel's Yitzhak Rabin (1995) and Egypt's Anwar Sadat (1981), but not in media accounts of the murders of India's Indira Gandhi (1984) or Pakistan's Zia UI-Haig (1988). Reports of the killing of "important" leaders employ extensive reference to the mythic Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations. The media also use partisan and emotional language to tell their assassination stories in order to forestall anticipated compassion fatigue. The stories are framed as compelling dramas of family and nation, hero and villain, grief and misery, and the reassertion of established political and social order."

~samwik

Last edited by samwik; 05/26/07 10:09 AM.
Pyrolysis creates reduced carbon! ...Time for the next step in our evolutionary symbiosis with fire.