Network (1976) - Money speech

[MinM]

Run time: 04:18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI5hrcwU7Dk   Posted on YouTube: August 26, 2007 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: September 11, 2009 By DU Member: MinM Views on DU: 1809

 
FRIEDMAN sez we internets webbers are "a SEWER". BROKAW agrees.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6524372

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Is this the blog that first soured Tom "thenext6monthswillturnthetideiniraq" Friedman?

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2005/03/network.html

Sunday, March 06, 2005

Network

Watched this movie for the first time in a long time last night. I was struck by how the speech given to Howard Beale by Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty) sounds like your typical Tom Friedman column...


You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear?! You think you've merely stopped a business deal -- that is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity. It is ecological balance. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West! There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, Reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE!

Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?

You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen, and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and A T & T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state -- Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale! It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war and famine, oppression or brutality -- one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.


-Atrios 10:34

[whathehell]

1. Fabulous...Thanks for posting...I saw this flick years ago and never forgot it.

It's timely..perhaps "timeless", unfortunately.

A "must see" for all DUers and those interested in politics..particularly politcs and the media.

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. I broke up with my first fiance shortly after this movie came out -

I dragged her to see it, when she wanted to see Rocky.

It is an unbridgeable divide, I found.

[present and past]

3. Contrast Chayefsky With Friedman -- What Do You Think, MinM ?

Did Paddy Chayefsky go over the top when he wrote Arthur Jensen's speech? Sure. But he was writing fiction, and Jensen's conspiratorial attitude worked perfectly as a foil for Howard Beale's apolitical cynicism.

Tom Friedman claims to tell the truth. He doesn't use fictional characters or plot devices. He always uses his own name. I’ve seen him talk about the power of nations being superseded by multinational corporations and both being surpassed by “super-empowered individuals.” His shtick is too scary for a news network or movie distributor to sell in Middle America. He rarely if ever appears on MSNBC or the Fox News Channel.

Other Friedman rhetoric is too much for the little old lady in Dubuque. Consider his September 9, 2009 column in which he argues Communist China’s system is preferable to ours because it “can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.”

Arthur Jensen and Howard Beale reach many more millions of people (despite being 33 years old) than Tom Friedman does. "Network" sells thousands of DVD copies.

Do you agree with any of this, MinM ? It has a lot to do with what an A list screenwriter can get away with -- or what he could get away with in the 1970s. Americans can swallow plenty of rhetoric as long as they hear it from fictional characters who are part of a good story. Their attention spans are limited when they come across Tom Friedman's words in print. Even if they read it, they forget it pretty quickly. Paddy Chayefsky knew how to make his words timeless.