This is probably a third rail quote, but: Words from another Howard...

[arendt]

"We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true. But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds. We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube. You eat like the tube. You raise your children like the tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass madness -- you maniacs! In God's name you people are the real thing, WE are the illusion.

"So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now. Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off. Turn them off right in the middle of the sentence I am speaking to you now. Turn them off!!"

-- Howard Beale, as played by Peter Finch, during his live studio broadcast of the Network News Hour


PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE hold your fire long enough for me to
say something.

WHY can't ANY of the candidates say that the corporate media is
a bunch of lying weasels? Because the weasels can KILL the candi-
dates.

But, we SUPPORTERS can do as we please. And I think its about
time for

"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

The TV coverage of ALL the Democratic candidates is pro-GOP
sabotage, and "let's you and him fight" stuff.

Except for the totally-overspun 3 AM pep rally speech, I would
have tied Howard Dean to Howard Beale. Now, I think it would
harm my candidate.

So, why then am I doing this? Because I have no handlers to
stop me. :-)

But, I would like to know why no one else has picked up on
the similarity of Howard B.'s message?

I hate myself when I do things like this.

arendt

[markus]

1. I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore

Beale: I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the streets, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be! We all know things are bad -- worse than bad -- they're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living is getting smaller, and all we say is "Please, at least leave us alone in our own living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my 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 gotta say, "I'm a human being! 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 get up right now and go the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!!"


I still get chocked up when I hear this speech. This movie was so prophetically right. Hell, I'm not sure you should be allowed on TV or in a polling place if you haven't seen this film.

[arendt]

2. KICK - what? nobody is "mad as hell"? I thought this was GD-P04 n/t

n/t