So here we are in 2025 and the surreal
and glaring lack of self awareness was on full display on Friday morning on the horrendous "Morning Joe" on MS Never. I try not to listen but there I was in the drive thru getting my daily dose of faux food and I was clicking through channels and there they were talking about the great films of 1975. So I thought I would stop a minute since it was something other than the usual crap.
They made a big deal about how they all loved "Network" and they made comments about how "predictive" it was about how horrible TV and people have become. I love "Network" and the themes in it about vapid, ruthless people entering the medium and putting up mindless, empty headed programming, the themes of being tested about selling out what is real and worthwhile in your life and holding on long enough to reject selling out and fighting to get your decency back. Along with the theme of using and twisting a weakened person who no longer can discern basic reality or truth for himself and eventually destroying him because it will get ratings.
So the vapid people of "Morning Joe" were lauding the messages of "Network" while being so lacking in self awareness that they fail to see that they have been and are a major part of the decline and wretched state of public affairs/commentary/analysis/editorial/news on television today.
The lines delivered by William Holden when he finally breaks the "spell" and tells off Faye Dunaway are some of the greatest of all time:
"You need me. You need me badly. Because I’m your last contact with human reality. I love you. But our painful, decaying love is the only thing between you and the shrieking nothingness you live the rest of the day. It’s too late, Diana.
There’s nothing left in you that I can live with. You’re just one of the humanoids. If I stay with you, I’ll be destroyed. I’ll be destroyed like everything you and the institution of television touch is destroyed.
You’re television incarnate, Diana. You’re indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy. All of your life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death are all the same to you as bottles of beer. And the daily business of life is a corrupt comedy.
You even shatter the sensations of time and space into split seconds and instant replays. You’re madness, Diana. Virulent madness. And everything you touch dies with you.
But not me. Not as long as I can feel pleasure… and pain… and love. And it’s a happy ending. Wayward husband comes to his senses, returns to his wife, with whom he has established a long and sustaining love. Heartless young woman left alone in her arctic desolation.
Music up with a swell; final commercial. And here are a few scenes from next week’s show."
Whatever cable "news" and programs like "Morning Joe" thought they were or could be in the beginning died long, long ago.
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