"Why," somebody asked, "are there so many
radical, right-wing talkers on radio, when Joe and Jane Public
are mostly middle of the road or liberal leaning?" How better to
bait people into listening. Easy solutions come from lazy minds.
Bear baiting is older than the written word. The
current radio situation is akin to letting the fox, the sales
people, run the hen house, the creative side of radio: egg
production, hours tuned, drops and only drastic measures can fix
the problem. The lazy go for easy and say, "Let's bait bears."
Even lazier, albeit
arrogant and self-righteous, on-air staffers are hired. They tow
the line, blissfully unaware of their ignorance of the way of the
world and the harm they do. They do it for a paltry pay check. Out of a
radio job, these talkers will sell encyclopedias or telemarket.
Listeners, who are mostly middle of the road or
liberal leaning and definitely empathetic on social issues, turn in to hear the hosts and prejudicial callers spout
well-prepared infamies. Inflamed, listeners yell at their radios
and swear oaths against station content to family and friends,
who, themselves, tune in to hear what's what.
All the while, hours tuned spikes. Revenue flows.
Management and sales people cash hefty bonus cheques.
Not for a moment do any of these women and men,
especially when cashing their bonus cheques, recognize or ponder
the deleterious consequences of their mindless, thoughtless, lazy
and greed-based easy solutions. Why expect social responsibility
from men and women who lack creativity,
imagination and imagineering, in the first place. Money may make
the world go around, but social empathy made the
world, in the first place.
When your 3-year old will die without $150,000 of medical care
and you can't afford medical insurance, the lesson of
social responsibility foregone is hard learned. When you're aged,
dependent on a fixed income, and the mindless prevailed in
dismantling
CPP, OAP and employer pension responsibilities to retired workers, the lesson is hard learned; you'll die
before
your time from the stress. Injured on the job and no
government-based compensation, the lesson is hard learned. The
consequences of easy, lazy and opportunistic solutions are too
numerous to list.
Simple, easy, lazy
solutions, conjured by mindless, thoughtless and short sighted
opportunists, promise the same result for all: pain and anguish,
and no
one escapes. The sole alternative is empathetic forethought and
vision. The only upside is that the opportunistic problem solvers
will be caught in their web of self-deception along with the rest
of us.
dr george pollard is a Sociometrician and Social Psychologist at Carleton University, in Ottawa, where he currently conducts research and seminars on "Media and Truth," Social Psychology of Pop Culture and Entertainment as well as umbrella repair.
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