Robert A. Flutie

I was watching the movie NETWORK this weekend. It’s a brilliant satire on the television industry during the 70’s. Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway give spectacular performances and if you have not seen NETWORK, please get a copy and watch it.

There is a scene about one hour into the movie that struck me as being very relevant to the issues that we face today. Pardon my paraphrasing the dialogue, but it’s worth the effort of typing this out given how well it reflects on our society today.The scene is a newscaster gone mad who has been allowed (manipulated), by the network execs to go on the air because the network is in the crapper and they are trying to come out of a slump. In other words, they have put this poor psychotic out to the slaughter.

“I don’t have to tell you things are bad! Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression, everybody is out of work, or scared or losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth. The banks are going bust. Shop keepers keep a gun under the cupboard. Punks are running around wild in the street and there isn’t anybody who knows what to do and there is no end to it. We know that the air is unfit to breath, and our food is unfit to eat. We sit watching out TV’s while some local newscaster tells us that today we had 15 homicides and 63 violent crimes as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be! We know things are bad, worse than bad. Their crazy, it’s like everyone everywhere is going crazy so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house and slowly the world that we are living in is getting smaller and all we say is Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster, my TV, my steel belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone. Well, I’m not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don’t want you to protest, I don’t want you to riot, I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you’ve GOT TO GET MAD! You’ve got to say that I’M A HUMAN BEING GOD DAMIT! MY LIFE HAS VALUE! So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to your window, open it, stick your head out and yell I’M AS MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”

In the movie, the millions of people who are watching the above broadcast begin to open their windows and begin to yell “I’M AS MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!” And so the scene goes on to express how this newscast put the network on top and served as the basis of the network’s ability to command liberal programming and messaging. Even the William Morris Agency gets and honorable mention.

So I get to thinking….and guess what I realized. Yes, “I’M AS MAD AS HELL AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!” Oil prices continue to rise, liquidity has left the market, people can’t buy homes, we are in a recession (don’t believe the BS you read about how we are not there yet), and we have become subject to the messaging and thin content of an otherwise shallow creative process because of it all.

It’s time for us to speak our truth. Go to your God, go to your Guru’s, go to yourself because that’s the only place where you’re going to find the truth!

Rent the movie.

* FLUTIE *