TV: SOS! Save Our Souls!

     My warning that AT&T/TCI, if it acquired our local Cable Coop, would eviscerate the best programs in favor of pop culture, has echoed around the country. A message from Iowa reports that C-SPAN has just been removed from the local `programming, leaving only a diet of junk food.
     I hate mobs, but the Seattle protesters were fighting a good cause: the worldwide belief that big corporations are really interested only in profits. Health care is now controlled by profit-seeking HMOs, and schools, jails, and even universities are falling victim. Non-profit organizations are quite a different matter.
     The intellectual and spiritual life of the nation are at stake. C-SPAN is performing a national service, not only educating the public but creating the necessary civic spirit. SCOLA's foreign-language news broadcasts not only serve many ethnic groups but provide a unique tool for the teaching of foreign languages.
     Anything to sell and make money. A careful analysis of the campaign to solve the mystery of the assassination of President Kennedy showed that many people swallowed the thesis of a popular film that the U.S. government was behind it. There is no truth to this, and to discredit the U.S. government with such false accusations is worse than libel, it is treason.
     Worldwide protests against U.S. control of entertainment are not to be dismissed as cultural chauvinism or dismissed with allegations that junk is what the people want. The Nazis wanted to kill the Jews, and the masses applauded.
     Our whole culture is endangered. Our universities are dropping substantial courses in favor of idiotic ones which attract crowds of students. Caught in this frenzy, university presidents seldom show intellectual leadership and risk incurring student displeasure by calling a dirty spade a dirty spade.
     Please do whatever you can to stop this trend and at this juncture to save good TV. Civic organizations should become involved. Members of language associations should use push for formal resolutions supporting SCOLA. Write to your congressman. Do anything!!!

Ronald Hilton - 12/12/99