Imagine Reality

A letter to my republican friends

2006-11-01T09:38:00.000-08:00

The recently signed John Warner Defense Authorization Act allows the administration to declare martial law. This, coinciding with the re-defining of torture, constitutes a fatal blow to democracy.

Every time I inform you about some disastrous new provision provided by the administration, you refute it on grounds of a faulty source. Look it up if you don't believe me. Democracy is officially dead. Thanks for voting bush, not that your vote mattered, because the election was rigged by faulty electronic voting, which isn't even being stopped this election season (link)

I don't know who to point my finger at, because the senate and the house almost unanimously voted for this recent blow to democracy. But somebody has to speak up! Why is this getting no news attention? Somebody?! Anybody!!?

Revolutionary: Thinking vs Doing

2005-12-18T22:28:00.000-08:00

By Mike Thayer

Being revolutionary means changing our economic relations, not just our worldview. Thinking we are different does not equal being different. So many people who think they are different have fallen into this 'counterculture' mindset that has been constructed for us in large part by corporations as a way to make money. It serves to assimilate resistance back into the system of corporate capitalism. For anyone fed up with any aspect of society there is always a shirt or bumper sticker out there that you can buy to show your opposition. Upset about some social inequalities you've heard about? Just "Google" around for a shirt which expresses your discontent. More often than not our anger is funneled into even more consumption. By purchasing that shirt, (whether is be a earth day shirt or whatever) you have unwittingly participated in that global exploitative system you are against.

So what is being different then? True, wearing a shirt may draw attention to a particular social or environmental issue. But the main reason we wear them(I'm blaming myself here, too) is to show our identity. It signals to others that we care about this stuff, it helps us meet likeminded people. And that part is good. But we can't forget that economically, our choice to buy that shirt which was most likely made in a third world country by severely underpaid people, is no different than buying anything else. It contributes to that exploitation.

I say all of this in a spirit of kindness and sharing, because I see so many young people who are aware of a lot of problems in the world, and are openly against the inequality and the atrocities. Yet, we fail to understand that the root of these problems is economic in nature. That the forces creating inequalities, creating poverty, creating environmental destruction are globalized economic forces that are really very much a part of our everyday life. And by buying clothing as the style changes, buying cd's, dvd's, ipods, more clothing, etc. that we are simply participating in the system just as much as anyone.

All this to say that I have realized that corporations have seized on people's desires to "do something good for the world”, they have seized on the feeling of wanting to "do my part” and they have provided avenues for us to feel like we are doing that. More often than not these avenues promote consumption and contribute to the global processes that are destroying our communities. I urge people to really scrutinize the ways in which we relate to the rest of the world economically, and to decide if these ways are part of the problem or part of the solution.

Advertising and the Alpha Male

2005-11-17T16:48:00.000-08:00

by Cameron Gaut

Advertisements have always relied on stereotypes to sell products. Since most TV ads are only thirty seconds long, and most magazine advertisements only fill up one page, advertisers rely on quick visual identification to sell their products. Advertising works because consumers associate an image with a product, and after repeated stimulation, the message or image is subconsciously ingrained. In the last few years, advertisements for drugs that treat erectile dysfunction, or ED, have come further and further into the public spotlight. These ads don’t offer us any relief from the barrage of stereotypes in the media. In fact, ED drug advertisements reinforce the masculine stereotype because they portray the stereotype as desirable, as well as achievable through the use of the advertised drug.

Both humans and animals originated from nature, so it makes sense to analyze animal behavior to give us a firm platform to begin with. So, in nature, how do male animals act? A plethora of books have been written on the subject, but let’s abbreviate it for our purposes. Lions fight to the death for mating rights with lionesses, male jumping spiders perform elaborate mating dances to attract female attention, and male peacocks have brightly colored feathers that are meant to impress the female peacocks. It’s a fact of nature. Males compete for females, allowing the most adapted and strongest males to mate. Naturally, this makes sense. In order for the members of a species to thrive, they must reproduce as many of themselves as possible, and make their offspring as strong as possible. The male that leads the pack, the one that has sex with the most females is the Alpha Male, the one that all the other males wished they could be. At our most animalistic level, copulation is competition. However, animals obviously do not construct societies, and they clearly have no definitions of what it means to be a member of the male gender.

As we humans evolved from our primitive origins to the complicated beings that we are today, we assembled civilizations in which to function. The development of language allowed us to do this. We were civil beings, largely disconnected from our seemingly uncultured animal counterparts. Because of our logical, objectifying nature, humans began to classify objects in order to communicate abstract ideas to other humans. Just as we have classified millions of types of plants and animals, we have also classified types of humans. Classification became a way to take the infinite and condense it into the finite. The need to categorize large groups of people with certain traits seems to be the origin of the stereotype. Obviously, males share a plethora of common traits, most of them physiological in nature. However, at one point in history, certain groups of people began to classify behavioral traits in men, which eventually led to the enduring masculine stereotype. According to the historian George Mosse, it wasn’t until somewhere in between the second half of the eighteenth century and the nineteenth century that the stereotype of masculinity seemed to arise.

Lasting well into the eighteenth century, ideals such as medieval chivalry and rituals such as the duel facilitated the formation of early concepts of masculinity. The duel, a form of combat between men in front of witnesses, required physical skill and dexterity, which had always been prized as “necessary to defend one’s honor” (Mosse 23). The act of dueling embedded the traits of respect, pride, justice, and physical strength into the original notions of manhood. With the beginning of the modern age, Europe entered a more visually oriented era, one that emphasized the importance of the formation of the male body. Europeans began to homogenize, or look at man as a type, rather than an individual. By the end of the eighteenth century, the standard of masculinity was measured by appearance and behavior.

As the male physique became increasingly important as a potent symbol of true manhood, greater attention had to be paid to its development. For as long as there has been a standard of masculine appearance, males have molded their bodies to fit a manly image. This image that men have always strived to emulate originated from ancient Greece, where gymnastics was a widely used method to achieve the ideal male form. This is may be why sports have played such an important role in the masculine stereotype. To quote from Scouting for Boys (1908): “A strong and healthy boy has a [foot]ball at his feet” (Mosse 135). It wouldn’t be until the beginning of the 21st century that drug advertisers would capitalize on the association of masculinity and sports, which brings us to the birth of erectile dysfunction drugs.

In 1991, inventors and Pfizer employees Andrew Bell, Dr. David Brown, and Dr. Nicholas Terrett made a discovery. They found that certain chemical compounds belonging to the pyrazolopyrimidinone class aided in the treatment of heart conditions such as angina. The result was a drug called Sildenafil. In 1994, the endowing effects of Sildenafil were discovered during trial studies of the compound for treating heart problems. Terret and his colleague, Peter Ellis, discovered that the use of Sildenafil increased blood flow to the penis, and could be used to reverse the symptoms of erectile dysfunction (Bellis Online). Finally, in 1998, after extensive drug research, the FDA approved Sildenafil, more commonly known as Viagra, as a drug on the consumer market. In 1997, the FDA relaxed a prohibition on direct-to-consumer drug advertising, allowing pharmaceutical companies to market their drugs to consumers through radio, print, TV, and internet advertising (FDA Online). Televised ads are the most misleading of all; the function of the drug is never explicitly revealed. In this way, advertisers can avoid listing the side effects, which would otherwise be required by the FDA. Since the explosion of Viagra in 1998, variations of the drug inevitably followed. Currently, there are four different treatments for erectile dysfunction: Cialis, Levitra, Uprima, and Viagra.

The names of these ED drugs aren’t arbitrary; they’re carefully crafted and market-tested by drug companies, which can cost up to $2.25 million (DeNoon Online). What words are associated with “Levitra?” Lever… Lift… Levitate.... Levitate is defined in the American Heritage Dictionary to “rise or cause to rise into the air and float in apparent defiance of gravity.” The name itself humorously implies the drug’s function. How about Viagra? Viagra sounds big. Like Niagara Falls, it connotes power. “Vie” means to strive for victory or superiority. The brand name Uprima can be interpreted in a few different ways. The key word in this name is “up,” which is closely related to “upright.” It doesn’t require much speculation to see the connection between the function of the drug and these words. Another interpretation would involve the deconstruction of a few words that begin with “prim”: primary, primal, primitive, and primacy. What do they all have in common? They all describe something that comes first. Alpha Males always come first. In fact, the word Alpha is Greek for the letter a, which is the first letter in the alphabet. Whether these concealed meanings were intentional or not is irrelevant. The point is, these brand names affiliate themselves with traits desirable to males and capitalize on men’s desires to feel important, successful, potent, and to be the best. The brand names imply that men will be the best and most victorious if they use these drugs.

Victory is a recurring theme in the advertisements of ED drugs. In fact, sport is the vehicle of most ED ad promos. Viagra is endorsed on the panels of NASCAR race cars, as well as through Rafael Palmeiro, a player for Major League Baseball. To advertisers, the best way to reach a large audience of men is through sports. It’s also a convenient way to make men comfortable with their own sexual problems. ED ads portray sports figures that many men respect that have the same problems as their viewers. This is the main reason why pharmaceutical companies and commercial sports have teamed up to reach the largest potential customer base imaginable.

In a recently published magazine advertisement for Levitra, Mike Ditka, an NFL Hall of Fame player and coach, is imposingly crossing his arms. The entire advertisement is geared towards football and masculinity, which draws on the origin of sport as a manly endeavor in ancient Greece. A bold headline reads “strive to be your best.” From the lower corner, we see the phrase “proud sponsor of the NFL,” accompanied by the familiar NFL logo. Placed besides Mike Ditka’s face is a personal quotation. “It doesn’t matter if the challenge is on the field or off – I always strive to be the best.”

Males have always felt a tremendous societal pressure to be the best, to prevail and to dominate. From a young age, boys learn not to cry because it shows weakness. They are taught to look up to “Real Men.” Real men don’t cry. Who are these Real Men? There was a TV show that I used to watch called “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.” He-Man was the embodiment of masculinity. He was literally the most powerful, muscular man in the universe. I used to want to be He-Man; in fact, I wished to be the strongest man in the world after blowing out the candles on my 8th birthday. I thought that if I was strong like He-Man, everyone would like me. I thought this way because that’s what I learned from stories, movies, and TV. Everyone has read or heard some form of the tale of the “knight in shining armor” that comes to rescue the “damsel in distress.” That knight is a Real Man. Boys are ingrained with the concept that girls and women are helpless, and they are to be subordinate to powerful men. Girls are trophies to be won by the strongest and best man. There’s a perfect example of this in “Back to the Future,” when a teenaged George McFly punches Biff, the bully who almost wins over Lorraine, George’s future wife. After Biff falls to the ground, Lorraine suddenly falls in love with George, and they eventually get married. A young boy’s first movies, stories, and video games are almost always based on a plot that revolves around the “good guys versus bad guys” theme. To be the best, the men in these stories defeated their opponents. Boys are taught that men must be powerful, successful, virile, muscular, confident, and dominating.

In the aforementioned ad for Levitra, the drug’s slogan tells men to “stay in the game.” Here, “the game” is a metaphor for the copulation competition. In my high school, the most popular boys were football players. It seemed to me that the star player, or the Alpha Male, always got the prettiest, most popular girls. Perhaps football is just a grandiose metaphor for the courting and mating processes themselves. One needn’t look further than popular slang to see how intertwined the concepts of sports and sexuality are. In this case, to “score” with a woman means to have sex with her. In football, one must score as much as possible to win. The Alpha Male similarly “scores” with as many women as he can, especially if he’s taking Viagra.

A recent commercial for Viagra shows a man walking into the office, his co-workers asking if he’d gotten a new suit, haircut, shaved his mustache, gone on a vacation, gotten new shoes, or received a promotion. The narrator says “no, he asked his doctor about Viagra.” Perhaps they noticed that something was different because the pill’s enlarging effects were kicking in. Although this idea is amusing, this most likely is not the case. Viagra’s advertisers are probably implying that he had great sex the previous night, giving him confidence the next day. All it took was one pill to make him the Alpha Male for a night.

During last year’s Super Bowl, ads for Viagra, Levitra, and Cialis were all aired. Averaging at the cost of $2.3 million for a 30 second timeslot, these ads cost pharmaceutical giants an incomprehensible amount of money. Drug corporations are obviously willing to bet that they’re going to make all of that money back, and then some. The commercial for Levitra shows a middle-aged guy who sees a football in his backyard shed. He tries to throw the football through a tire strung from a nearby tree. It bounces off repeatedly, try after try. The voice-over suggests you "ask your doctor about new Levitra." Levitra's logo pops up on screen, and the sound of a match being struck plays, suggesting that, unlike its competitors, Levitra is hot, while the others are cold and sterile. The suddenly revitalized man throws the ball straight through the tire, again and again. A smiling, much younger woman joins him in the yard, and they nuzzle. The ridiculous suggestions that this ad makes imply that, with Levitra, you too can “get it in the hole” every time.

Drug advertisements such as these are prolonging the antiquated classifications of human characteristics. Men and women today should not be pigeonholed as manly or womanly. We are ready to evolve beyond those stereotypes. Let us put an end to the ideals of the Alpha Male and the feeble female. We need to step outside of our black-and-white vision, to see that humans are not just either masculine or feminine, but a glorious equilibrium between the yin and the yang, between the push and the pull, between the sturdy and the supple. How much longer are we going to tolerate multi-billion dollar corporations capitalizing off of insecurities caused by an inability to meet the demands of gender stereotypes? How much longer are we going to perpetuate ideals of the past? These are the questions that will put an end to the repression of our true selves. These are the questions that will propel us to incite a gender revolution.

Sources Cited:

Bellis, Mary. “Viagra, the patenting of an aphrodisiac.”

DeNoon, Daniel. “What’s in a drug name?”
< http://my.webmd.com/content/article/80/96414.htm?z=1728_00000_1000_nb_05>

Farnham, Alan. “Is sex necessary?”

FDA (Food and Drug Administration). “Direct to You: TV Drug Ads That Make Sense.”

Mosse, George L. The Image of Man. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
The American Heritage Dictionary. Third Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.

Mass Media: Democracy Undermined?

2004-11-17T01:11:00.000-08:00

by Cameron Gaut

In his essay on civil disobedience, Henry David Thoreau once said, “The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich,” (Gage 164). The Mass Media, the collection of newspapers, magazines, and TV news programs that reach a mass audience, is usually owned and controlled by media corporations. Today, media corporations are such institutions that make people rich. America’s free market economy is a game of evolution which allows dominating media corporations to expand their empires while crippling the less powerful independents. This expansion, important to keeping news sources diverse, discourages competition between media companies. The conglomeration and concentration of media outlets impedes the functioning of the democratic process because a democratic process can only function when its citizens are informed by unbiased, diverse media.

Charles Darwin’s widely accepted theory of social evolution, survival of the fittest, applies to several aspects of American society, including media companies. Survival for these companies entails fierce competition to catch the most viewers and/or readers. Over time, strategies for catching attention of viewers and readers have become more and more extreme. The news media will often rely on the ability to exploit our most innate, primitive instincts. Agner Fog, Ph.D., tells us, “Some of the most important survival factors for primeval [humans] were food, danger, sex, and children” (Fog Online). These topics always catch our attention, whether we like it or not. Therefore, we will listen attentively when news programs document disasters, and we will buy the paper when it warns us about the next new hazard. These attention-catching subjects are metaphorically called “buttons”. Take the death of Princess Diana, or even the anthrax scare. The Mass Media capitalized off of these stories because they pressed people’s emotional buttons. Problems involving fear and danger are very captivating to audiences, therefore very lucrative for the media. This contest to see who can push the most buttons is a downward spiral that only gets worse with each new shocking headline. In a free market economy, if you aren’t always outdoing your competitor, your competitor will outdo you.

In recent decades, the competition between Media corporations has transformed the way that they are managed. According to Frank A. Blethen, the publisher and CEO of the Seattle Times Co., the following things have happened in the Media. “Convergence”: Just recently, on July 2nd of 2003, the Republican controlled FCC loosened a ban on cross-media ownership. It is now possible for a company to own a daily newspaper and a television station in the same town or area. Also, a single TV network can now reach as much as 90% of the nation’s TV audience (FCC Online). “Concentration”: Media corporations are owned by only a few individuals, instead of many independent individuals. “Commercialization”: Advertisers that provide the news media with their income have nearly gained editorial control. Also, advertisements are present more than ever before in the News Media. “Trivialization”: There has been more of what the Public “wants”: sex, violence, and celebrities, which do nothing more than distract us from issues that are truly important, such as the one discussed in this essay. But of course, the media would prefer not to talk about what I’m about to tell you.

A competitive economy is a breeding ground for monopolies. A monopoly is defined as exclusive control by one group of the means of selling a commodity. In this case, the commodity on sale is information. When media corporations compete, thrive, and grow stronger, it makes it easier for them to dominate and monopolize their industry. Once the corporation achieves its mega-corporation status, smaller companies have difficulty succeeding, and eventually will die off, or will be assimilated by its larger counterpart. The trend of amalgamation of small companies and larger businesses results in a lack of diversity, as well as a loss of checks and balances. It could be argued that diversity is not lost with the conglomeration of media companies; the companies simply join together with other diverse companies under one name or conglomeration. While this is true, the inherent problem with this is that the companies are no longer owned by several people from diverse backgrounds, but one or two people with a single agenda.

Diversity and Checks and Balances in the media ensure that the public is heard, and that the government and businesses are held accountable for their behavior. The first amendment of our constitution says that Congress shall make no law “abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.” This guarantees that there will be a multitude of voices to represent the diverse opinions, interests, and backgrounds of the population. Diversity is essential to the mass media, but diversity is only part of the solution. Checks and Balances are also essential. Without opposition or competition, an unrestrained organization can effectively carry through with whatever agenda it desires. Admittedly, the first amendment has been successful in upholding our right to speak out without fear of prosecution. The problem is that it’s very difficult to extend our voices beyond public access television, ‘zines, and local newspapers. The only way to reach beyond our neighborhoods and communities is to gain access to the Mass Media, which isn’t possible without the essential commodity: money.

Today, media conglomerates are not only influenced by Big Money interests, but they are often themselves Big Money interests. For example, General Electric owns NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, CourtTV, Bravo, A&E, the History Channel, GE Consumer Electronics, GE Power Systems, GE Plastics, GE Transportation systems, and much more (General Electric, Online). Media corporations have billions invested in varieties of industries. We can see how this can be disruptive to accurate and fair reporting. To illustrate, a news program shown on NBC will probably never do any deep investigative muckraking on, say GE Power Systems. The business community in the United States generally wants material in the media that supports their image, as well as the White House, Pentagon, State Department, and local police departments; they desire the media to serve as a pipeline for the word of government officials (Herman 13). To illustrate this point, 78 percent of stories in the NY Times and the Washington Post stories are based on “official sources” (Lee 17). The angle from these officials is not often supportive of non-officials and competitors who do not side with the president. Financial influence from outside interests and reluctance to offend partners of business ultimately results in a news establishment biased in favor of wealthy corporations.

The automatic endorsement of information from any “official” by the media makes it very easy for government propaganda to appear real and truthful; the agenda of mainstream media is also almost always strikingly similar to that of the government and wealthy corporations because of this fact (Herman 5). Professional journalism relies heavily on “official sources.” Spokespeople, White House press secretaries, and the army general are all considered official sources. Their perspectives are automatically legitimate; not many people question an “official source.” Reporters will sometimes use specific sources to illustrate their point, because they know that they can count on the viewpoint of the source to coincide with the agenda. But it's not the reporters who are at fault. They just report what they are told to report. Even if they did find something that would be of interest to the public, editors re-write, slash, and pick out parts that they find unnecessary (Lee 16). Reporters that do uncover scandalous stories, such as the Watergate incident, are rarely independent voices in search of the truth for the sake of the public. Woodward and Bernstein, the reporters that “uncovered” the Watergate scandal actually received a leak from a hired investigator. It turns out that the grand jury had already presented the incriminating information in court a month before it was released to the Washington Post on August 1 (Epstein Online). Often the reporters who uncover stories are the ones most subservient to their superiors. By being obedient, reporters can compete for access to the “best” sources (Lee 18).

The competition of media corporations allows money to be a more important asset than providing the public with informative, quality journalism. To be successful in America, you need money. To successfully compete in the media marketplace, the necessity of money is also necessary. To fulfill this necessity for more and more money, the news media will often write from one angle because it’s more lucrative to tell only one side of a story (Fog Online). Most people want to hear points of view that they agree with. In essence, the mass media will often give the public “what they want to hear” to increase their revenue. By appealing to many readers, newspapers and magazines can not only increase sales, but also charge advertisers more money because the audience reached is wider.

Money earned from advertising impedes the news media’s ability to deliver the most truthful and unbiased information, because the media’s ability to make a profit partly depends on delivering an audience to advertisers. Martin Lee, a nationally syndicated columnist, says that to advertisers, the public exists mostly as a mass of potential customers (Lee xiii). Since advertisers provide a bulk of the money to the media, the media does not want to offend the advertisers. For instance, in Newsweek’s June 6, 1983 issue, Newsweek published an article detailing the nonsmoker’s rights movements. When the tobacco advertisers learned about this, they withdrew their advertisements from that issue, which may have cost Newsweek as much as one million dollars in advertising (White 139). It is true, though, that not all media broadcasters and publishers rely on advertisements. There are the rare few exemplary stations such as Oregon Public Broadcasting and publications like Adbusters that don’t rely on advertisements. However, these kinds of organizations usually don’t fit the definition of Mass Media. Although advertisers have a role in the suppression of information from the media, they aren’t the only perpetrators in preventing information from reaching the public eye.

“Gatekeepers” can prevent people with opposing viewpoints from those of the Mass Media from making their voices heard, which is dangerous to democracy. Originally, gatekeepers were essential to newspapers because without them, newspaper stories might have run on for much longer than most people’s attention spans could tolerate. This power over what is left in and what is cut out of the media has given gatekeepers a very influential role in the news that reaches the public. However, a new kind of gatekeeper now exists. Wealthy individuals who represent corporate establishments that advertise in the media can also influence what gets published and what doesn’t. Political economist Edward Herman writes that the biases of gatekeepers are reinforced by external biases: those of advertisers and convenient government officials from the White House, Pentagon, and State Department (Herman 12). It seems that the freedom that our constitution guarantees us can only be exercised with little public significance. People may have something to say that the public would like to hear, but gatekeepers are free to exclude any individual opinion from public news at their will. Although wealthy gatekeepers have this ability, it doesn’t mean that they will always exercise it. Admittedly, it isn’t too difficult to submit controversial opinion articles to local newspapers. If you’re lucky, it’s even possible to get your opinions published in state-wide newspapers. However, the quantity and variety of newspapers that you can submit opinion articles to is diminishing.
America is losing independent news sources at an alarming rate. In 1975, there were 863 daily newspaper owners and 543 television station owners. In 2000, there were only 290 newspaper owners and 360 television station owners (Blethen Online). The disappearing establishments are those that don't push quite as many “buttons” as the larger, more extreme equivalents. At the time of the Time-Warner merger, company executives were asked why they were merging, they said that “it would not be long before there would be five businesses that controlled all the media on the Planet Earth, and they intended to be one of them” (Blethen Online). The thought of so few companies dominating the Mass Media scares me, and I hope that the day never comes when we have to depend on a just a few corporations for our news. Although independent news publications are disappearing, another form of independent news is rapidly becoming the preferred alternative to mainstream media for countless individuals. Online news organizations such as indymedia.org and accuracy.org are paving the way in community-run, online independent news. Maybe there is some hope for democracy.

Democracy can be thought of as a four-legged stool. Each leg represents a different element that ensures the integrity of the system. The four legs are separation of church and state, inclusion (the Public's ability to vote), the constitutional balance of powers (the President, the Congress, Judiciary) and most critically, freedom of speech and press. If any of these legs are taken away, then our democracy is at risk. Freedom of the press and freedom of speech are what keep the stool in balance, their purpose is to prevent abuse of power, give the public a voice, and keep the government and businesses responsible for their actions. The media conglomerates that have been acquiring independent news affiliations are threatening the purpose of free press. If no action is taken soon to correct this error, democracy will not be able to function.
Works Cited
Blethen, Frank A. " Concentration of Media Ownership Is Eroding Our Democracy.” 12 Sept. 2002.
Epstein, Edward Jay. “Did the Press Uncover Watergate?” July 1974.
FCC (Federal Communications Commission). “FCC Sets Limit on Media Concentration.” 2 July. 2003.
Fog, Agner. “The supposed and the real role of mass media in modern democracy.” 2003.
General Electric Company. “Our Company: GE Business Directory.” 1997-2003.
Herman, Edward S. Beyond Hypocrisy. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1992.
Lee, Martin and Norman Solomon. Unreliable Sources. Secaucus, NJ: Carol Publishing Group, 1990.
Thoreau, Henry David. “Resistance to Civil Government.” The Shape of Reason. Ed. John T. Gage. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 2001.
White Larry C. Merchants of Death. New York: William Morrow Beech Tree Books, 1988.

Revisiting the Pledge of Allegiance

2004-05-19T17:22:00.000-07:00

by Leslie Ankney

Since 9/11 and the current war in Iraq, saluting the flag is looked on as more of a duty than a choice of patriotic expression. It’s a sensitive time where national unity is considered by many to be vital to the safety and solidarity of our nation. Since the majority of us have been reciting the pledge of allegiance since kindergarten, the pledge is by now, an accepted routine. We learned the words and how to place our right hand over our hearts but we were not taught who created the pledge, how it has changed and the controversies that have arisen over it since its creation.

Perhaps we were too young to be taught why we pledge although we still have not discussed it. Now, more than ever, the pledge of allegiance is something we are expected to say because of principle. What does loving this nation and even supporting the war have to do with saying "under God" or "to the flag"? When we look at the pledge for what it is, there is a lot we might wish to change.

Recently the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the words "under God" violate the 1st Amendment. It was for many, a first reminder of the salute's history. The original version of the pledge did not include that phrase or any reference to religion. "under God" was added by Congress at the height of the communist scare in 1954 to separate the United States from the godless Soviet Union. Francis Bellamy, who wrote the pledge in 1892, hoped that the pledge, and especially the line "one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all," would promote equality.

To Bellamy and many other Americans, the U.S. stood for democratic values: economic and social equality, mass involvement in politics, free speech and civil liberties, eradication of the second-class citizenship of women and racial minorities. Now that is radical! Today, especially with the melting pot we are, it is important we respect the basis of religious freedom our nation was founded on. This clause singles out Atheists, Buddhists, Muslims, and Ba'hai to name a few major religions in the United States.

Here’s another idea some Americans have voiced interest in: changing what we pledge loyalty to. In this spirit, the historical document we know as the U.S. Constitution would be switched with the flag in the pledge of allegiance. The idea being that in pledging allegiance to the constitution, we would be required to further investigate the document itself. Assuredly, pledging to the constitution would rely more on thought than the emotions and the symbolic simplicity associated with the American flag. It’s unfortunate but often these sorts of routines that inspire nationalism also perpetuate a blind pattern of conformity. Hitler capitalized on national symbols, notably flags, as means to produce a people lost in the spirit of nationality rather than notice his contradications in policy. With a deeper understanding of America’s responsibilities and promises to its people, perhaps the loyalty in this allegiance would be much more sincere. It’s a thought.

Most Americans are unaware that writers of left-wing sympathies created much of our patriotic culture-including many of the symbols and songs that have become increasingly popular since Sept. 11.

For instance, consider Woody Guthrie's song, "This Land Is Your Land," written in 1940. Guthrie was inspired to write it in response to Irving Berlin's popular "God Bless America," which he thought failed to recognize that America belonged to "the people." Just like the pledge of allegiance, songs like this one have been exploited as symbols that ignore their original intent- a better America, not necessarily the current one.

Every day, millions of us recite the Pledge of Allegiance, without knowing the political context in which it was written. The progressive authors of much of the nation's patriotic pieces rejected blind nationalism, militaristic drumbeating and sheep-like conformism. They believed that America's core claims -- fairness, equality, freedom and justice -- were their own. It is vital that we continue to promote these claims, through changing imperfections, eradicating negative aspects of our government and protecting what works. Questioning our relationship with the flag may only be the tip of the iceberg.

Expansion Versus the Environment

2004-03-16T13:16:00.000-08:00

by Cameron Gaut

Everywhere around us, we can find manifestations of cultural beliefs and attitudes that have shaped our country. Our cars and homes for example, often refer to American myths and legends that perpetuate certain beliefs we carry today. Myths such as the Wild West demonstrate our fixation on progress and expansion. As Americans, our roots lie in expansion; this country was founded on the conquest of native people for the purpose of growth. The frontier, where individual opportunity was inexhaustible, instilled restlessness into American blood; it trained us to never be content with the present. As we will see, the egocentric desire to expand (in wealth, power and real estate) taints the construction of our living spaces, as well as our attitudes towards the earth. Comparatively, the living space of most Native Americans reveals attitudes that emphasize community and reverence towards the earth. Currently, the pervading attitudes in America stress egoism and reckless growth. Consequently, this trend of thoughtless expansion undermines the sustainability of the environment that nourishes us.

In the early 1600s, pilgrims sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in search of religious freedom. They colonized on the East coast, bibles in hand, and began to spread the word of God. In the Old Testament of the Bible, Genesis 1:22 says God created humans, then “God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on earth.” The Bible was used to justify the broadly interpreted “manifest destiny,” which validated the conquest of any foreign land and its people, including Native Americans. Not only has this belief led to the gradual destruction of the earth’s resources, but also to the destruction of native cultures. Believing that the natives were savage, the new Americans were determined to Christianize or Catholicize the so-called savages. In doing so, the new Americans encroached upon the natives and dismantled the foundations of their culture.

Many of these indigenous cultures that were being assimilated believed in the vital role that humans played in the ecosystem. They saw all organisms as a part of a larger whole. They believed that by hurting any part of the larger whole, they were hurting themselves. One of the hundreds of groups of Native Americans, the Pueblo natives of New Mexico, lived simple lives in harmony with the earth. According to Rina Swentzell, a member of the tribe, the Pueblo people believed that the most important relationship for humans is “with the land, the natural environment, and the cosmos, which in the Pueblo world are synonymous” (Swentzell 450).

The architecture of the Pueblo people emphasized the importance of this bond between humans and nature. Construction methods and materials for the buildings were uncomplicated. The most direct methods were combined with the most accessible materials. In this way, the Pueblo people wasted nothing. Everything that they used came from the earth, and eventually went back into the earth. Buildings were organic entities just as any creature. The structures were born, and eventually they decayed. All of their buildings emulated the earth because they believed that aesthetics and the universe were indistinguishable.

Communal participation among the Pueblo people was another cultural practice that manifested itself through their use of space. This custom was evident in their buildings, which were constructed by people in the community. Everybody in the village, including the elders and children, helped construct and decorate the straightforward, earthy buildings. Their homes comprised of complexes of interconnected rooms and homes (Pueblo Indian History Online). Nobody had much private space, for their concept of privacy was much more internal than external. Privacy of mind and thought was satisfactory because they didn’t need to hide the body and its natural functions from each other. Sharing was essential to the people, who shared both outdoor and indoor spaces. This communal style of living demonstrates the belief that the earth cannot be owned; it is intended for everybody to share.

Western culture embraces the opposite belief. The nature of the capitalist system that America was founded on is self-centric. We Americans were taught to believe that land is not free, but it is marketed and purchased for personal gain. In the early years of the United States, Native American affairs were governed in a way that revealed our self-serving ways. The natives didn’t claim to own the land, so we declared it ours for the taking.

In order to accomplish this conquest, the Committee on Indian Affairs was established in 1775 to cope with Native Americans as efficiently as possible. The committee, for the most part, accomplished their long term goal, to assimilate the natives into the new American culture through several means. One of the methods used was to send native children to boarding schools. By educating the children, the committee could distance them from their cultural heritage. There is no better way to indoctrinate a culture with foreign beliefs than to teach its children from a young age. The children were taken away in busses to attend boarding schools, given new names and uniforms, and were forbidden to speak their native languages. This concrete, wooden and glass environment was completely alien to the children. One of the most foreign ideas that the children were forced to accept was the complete domination of the environment. .

The boarding schools themselves demonstrated the domination of the environment that the Bible had commanded. The paved playgrounds prevented the children from playing in the dirt, from interacting with the earth. Barbed wire fences constructed around the property kept civilians and animals out. The buildings conveyed a message that the community was not to be trusted, and that there was a need for protection and privacy. The structures demonstrated the separation of the children from the villagers and other outsiders.

Separation was a recurring theme at the boarding schools. For example, the buildings at the schools were separated and given specific functions. Teachers divided the students from each other to categorize their abilities. The hierarchy of grade levels, which coincided with the physical floor levels of the building, symbolized a continuous striving for something bigger and better. Here the native children would learn that Americans are never satisfied with the moment because, as the phrase goes, the grass is always greener on the other side.This separatism in all aspects of the schoolprepared the students for American society; they would learn to live in separate homes, have separate functions (jobs) in society, and most importantly, live in total separation from the environment. And separatism only reinforced the American ideals of expansion by teaching them to be dissatisfied with the present.

A fundamental difference between many Native Americans and modern Americans is how we view the present. Most natives took joy in the present. They also took joy in their work. Separation of work and play would have been unnatural. In Perspectives on the North American Indians, A Hopi chief recounts the education he received as a child:

“Learning to work was like play. We children tagged around with our elders and copied what they did. We followed our fathers to the fields and helped plant and weed. The old men took us for walks and taught us the uses of plants, and how to collect them. We joined in gathering rabbitweed for baskets, and went with them to dig clay for pots. We would taste this clay as the women did to test it” (Nagler 89).

Today it seems that most Americans despise their places of work. The main purpose of their job is to pay the bills. Aren’t we all looking forward to the day when we will retire with lots of money? Most Americans tend to look to the future for happiness, and they tend be discontented with the moment. In the relentless pursuit for happiness, we have been fooled into thinking that money will bring us joy. The goal of our existence today has been summed up in the phrase, “whoever dies with the most toys wins.” We must realize that happiness will not be found in the future if we cannot find it in the present.

When we are unhappy with the moment, we will always be looking for something to make us content. In America, we are trained to spend and consume to fill the hole of dissatisfaction with the moment. The earth cannot sustain our bad habit of over-consumption forever.Native Americans knew that sustainability was of key importance. Their desires were usually limited to those that fulfilled the requirements for survival. In contrast, our lives are much more complex, as is our happiness much more conditional. A lesson that can be learned from Native American simplicity is this: when one reduces the desires for material wealth and possessions, one also diminishes the unhappiness caused by the inability to fulfill the desires. Not only is endless consumption preventing us from finding true contentment, but it is also depleting the earth’s natural resources faster than ever before. However, it wasn’t always this way. America’s addiction to expansion began with the early explorers of the Wild West.

When settlers of the frontier began to move west, spectators’ eyes lit up with aspiration. The frontier was a land full of opportunity for those who were willing to take the risk. Spectators often gambled large sums of money to construct small towns in dry, vacant lands. If one were lucky, a railroad would be built in his town, which would bring many travelers (and their spending money) from far away. If the spectator wasn’t so lucky, the town would be abandoned. But that didn’t really matter. There always seemed to be a second chance in this land, where “growth was destiny and where expansion and purpose were the same” (Shames 57). Opportunity seemed to be endlessly fertile; the frontier was limitless. Thus, cities and towns continued to blossom throughout the western United States, eventually resulting in the gradual transformation of the rural life to the urban life. In 1990, 75% percent of Americans lived in urban cities (US Census Online). Americans shifted from a position of living with nature to living completely disconnected from nature in cities and suburbs.

Today, our cities and suburbs, our houses, and even our cars are a reflection of the American fascination with expansion and the frontier. Take the SUV, for example. The names of SUVs such as Ford Explorer, Isuzu Rodeo, Ford Bronco, and Jeep Wrangler are all directly evocative of Wild West folklore. In the 1980’s, when the SUV craze first began, the national productivity rate was shriveling while the national debt was mounting. People were finally beginning to realize the limits of the economic frontier. According to David Goewey, the explosion of SUV sales may represent a “reassertion of a courageous American defiance in response to threatened frontiers” (Goewey 115). The SUV embodies the ideals of careless expansion; these gas guzzlers were carelessly designed without the environment in mind. Most of the SUVs on the market today can only drive for 12 miles per gallon in the city. Many SUVs like the enormous Ford Excursion are so large that they are not subject to any kind of fuel economy standards at all. The statistics show that global warming caused by car emissions is an ignored problem; one in every four cars bought today is an SUV (SUV.org Online). The SUV embodies an escapist fantasy, allowing us to overcome time and space in an encapsulated vehicle that shelters us from the natural world. America’s love affair with SUVs demonstrates the furthering gap between humans and the environment.

Our isolated homes, cars and cities contain us in a contrived world where we are disconnected from the source of all life, the natural world. As we’ve seen, the way that we construct and live in our spaces demonstrates this fact. We are deceived by the illusion that we are independent from the source. This disconnection from the environment is causing us to overestimate the earth’s ability to sustain our lifestyle of endless consumption. By learning about the sustainable ways of the Native Americans, we can develop a better understanding about the relationship between humans and the earth. I don’t claim to have an answer to the global eco-crisis, but we’ve got to start somewhere. However impossible the task of reducing our consumption may sound, minimizing our destruction of the environment will not require us to fully abandon the social constructs that we have so firmly established for ourselves. There are so many places to begin, such as reducing our dependence on resources like fossil fuels, plastic, and wood. Today we are presented with a choice. We can continue to deny the fact that we are using up and polluting all of our resources, or we can take initiative and begin changing our lives to live with the earth, not against it.

Sources Cited

Goewey, David. “Careful, You May Run Out of Planet.” Signs of Life in the USA . Ed. Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003.

Nagler, Mark. Perspectives on the North American Indians. Montreal: Carleton University Press,
1972.

Shames, Lawrence. “The More Factor.” Signs of Life in the USA . Ed. Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003.

SUV.org. “SUV Environmental Concerns.”

Swentzell, Rina. “Conflicting Landscape Values: The Santa Clara Pueblo and Day School.” Signs of Life in the USA . Ed. Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003.

The Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

US Census. “Population: 1790 to 1990.”

Why you should kill your TV

2004-02-25T12:27:00.000-08:00

by Cameron Gaut

In the 1940’s, America was recovering from World War II. The war had alleviated the depression of the 30’s; it created new jobs for people to build war supplies. Although this jumpstarted the slow economy, it was only a matter of time before the war would come to an end. After there were no more uniforms to make, no more tanks, America needed something to keep the economy strong. Thus, “a new vision was born that equated the good life with consumer goods” (Mander 136). Tail finned cars rolled off of assembly lines and sleek chrome appliances began to make life more comfortable and convenient – for those who could afford it. The rise of technology, made possible by patriotic consumer spending, provoked visions of a utopian society in which all could live in a world free of war, poverty, labor, and ignorance. America believed in this vision, because for the first time ever, we could see it happening in our own living rooms. TV offered entertainment with a price; advertisements would be shown for several minutes per hour of programming. The function of commercial TV was, and still is, to attract viewers and present them to advertisers. When this advertiser-consumer relationship of TV was initially created, no one knew that the television would eventually become the unavoidable hub of pop culture consciousness. Yet today, TV programs and their advertisements have come to influence our lives and culture the way that community and spiritual values used to. TV is more than merely entertainment, it’s a virtual reality made possible by advertisers with a self-serving agenda. This agenda, as we will soon see, often exploits us in the name of profit. Therefore, commercial television should be boycotted because it is detrimental to our well-being.

TV, unlike any other form of media, has the unique ability to shape our perceptions of reality. Before video was invented, humans relied on always trusting their sensual perceptions to survive. If they saw something, they believed that it was real. To doubt the reality of the oncoming lion would be fatal. It’s part of nature; we are genetically coded to accept images as truth (Mander 249). Moving images are very convincing. After all, it’s right there before our eyes. Of course, adults know that not everything on TV is “real.” But what is real? Whether fact or fiction, we are seeing real people truly interacting. The effect of watching a fictional show on TV has nearly the same effect as watching a documentary or the news. We identify with people on TV, fictional or not. Notice how many people talk about fictional characters on television as if they were real people. A typical conversation may consist of, “Oh my god, last night on Friends, Phoebe tried to teach Joey to speak French. It was SO hilarious!” Because television images can be so convincingly real to our minds, there are likely to be values and messages that we may “absorb unintentionally” (Lichter Online).
This is particularly the case with young people. For a specific example of this, consider violence on TV. According to studies conducted at Columbia University in 2002, the ever-increasing prevalence of violence on TV is causing teens to become more violent. Among youths who “watched less than an hour of television daily at age 14, just 5.7% were involved in aggressive acts by the ages of 16 to 22.” For those who watched more than three hours daily, the aggression rate skyrocketed to 28.8% (USA Today Online). The reason for this correlation between TV viewing and aggressive behavior seems to be that people subconsciously accept television as a reflection of reality. And on TV, people often resolve conflicts with violence that is portrayed as cool, free of consequence, painless, and quick, just in time for the commercial break.

A study conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health concluded that “many viewers seem to be seeing the [television] shows they value as directly relevant to their own lives” (Mander 254). Most of those studied tended to copy social behavior from situations presented on TV in their daily lives. Even adults absorbed practical knowledge and methods of problem solving from TV. Watching TV stimulates our sensual perceptions into believing what we are seeing. Repeated impressions of these images alter our understanding and expectations of human nature. Repeated commercials contribute small pieces of the jigsaw puzzle of the American Consumer. Advertisers are harming us with their superficial messages that we are unintentionally absorbing.

Since the beginning of television, advertisers have always had a significant influence on the content of television. To illustrate this, we must analyze the production of programs on TV. Programs that are aired on television have been created or purchased by major TV networks. Before a show’s creation, advertisers often opt for “product placement,” or the discrete use of the advertised item in the television program. This discreetly advertised item can be placed in the main character’s hand (e.g. drinking a Pepsi) or on a billboard in the background of a set. After the creation of the show, advertisers can then purchase time slots between shows. A general precedent in commercial television is that if the program does not receive support from advertisers, it will not make its way into the broadcasting schedule (Rafuse online). A number of factors are considered before advertisers will purchase expensive time slots on TV. The content and message of the aired program must be “congruent with the objectives of the sponsor” (Rafuse Online). Advertisers also must be confident that their money is going to be spent efficiently, i.e. there must be as many potential customers as feasible. This is all made possible through the analysis of viewer demographics.

TV ratings are just collections of demographic data collected by companies such as Nielsen Media Research. Since 1923, they’ve been analyzing audiences of radio and TV programs. In a specially selected sample of homes, Nielsen Media Research technicians install metering equipment on TV sets, VCRs, cable boxes, and satellite dishes. These TV meters “automatically and invisibly keep track of when the sets are on and what the sets are tuned to” (Nielsen Media Online). The meters are connected to a "black box," which is actually just a very small computer and modem. Information from the meters is collected by the black box, and in the middle of the night, all the black boxes call in their information to central computers. Then, according to a universal TV program listing, the raw data from the black boxes is translated into which shows are being watched. Once all of the statistics are collected, advertisers can purchase them and use them to strategically target specific groups of individuals. For instance, if the demographic statistics show that males from the ages of 17 to 35 watch a particular show, advertisers for say, electric shavers, will most likely purchase time slots during that show. If the show has high ratings, then the price for time slots multiplies. This technology allows advertisers to categorize people, to use them as statistics, in order to make a profit.

Advertisers have one sole purpose: to sell us things that we don’t need. Advertisers may say that ads merely give people what they need, that they are a kind of public service. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. People will find what they truly need without advertising. In this case, a need is something that is essential to survival. Nobody needs advertisers to tell them that they’re hungry or that they need a place to sleep. People will naturally find food and shelter. By creating artificial needs, advertisers effectively instill dissatisfaction within its audiences. The other day, I turned on the TV and the first commercial I saw was for Riesen chocolates. Near the end of the commercial, we are told that “all you need is Riesen.” Moments later, an ad for Victoria’s Secret’s new pushup bra came on. The motto for this lingerie was “It’s you, only better.” Commercials like these constantly push a message onto us: happiness can be bought. And advertisers don’t want you to buy just once. They want you to keep buying.

In some cases, to keep the consumption rate as high as possible, companies will intentionally decrease the life of a product so it can be disposed of, and replaced with the newer rendition. Nike once made a shoe that was durable enough to last for years, but after initial sales, no one was coming back for more. To fix this “problem,” they diminished the quality of their shoes so they would break down sooner, compelling consumers to buy a new pair. Eventually, the newer pair will be disposed of, only to be replaced again. Public television reinforces a consumer culture in which we are convinced that happiness and fulfillment can be found in the disposable products that we buy. Advertisers would like us to think that we are not complete without their products, or that we shouldn’t be satisfied with what we have. They do not want us to find our own answers; they want us to buy theirs. However, they don’t always get what they want.
Today’s sophisticated TV viewers are more critical of advertising than their parents were. In response to this, the mega-corporations that advertise on TV are getting more persistent. Advertising is now venturing out of television’s virtual reality into our daily reality. For example, New York City was recently "purchased" by Snapple Beverages for $250 million so that Snapple could have the right to market themselves as the "official beverage of the Big Apple." Now they have the rights to advertise and sell beverages in New York’s 1200 public schools, in office buildings, police stations, and sanitation depots (Herszenhorn Online). It seems that America isn’t the land of the free after all, because every square inch of it is only available for a price. Those who can afford the high price of advertising use it to get us to keep buying their products.

The pressure to buy that is exerted in the commercials and programs of TV reveal the biases inherent within it. The sole concern of both advertiser and TV station owner is profit, so TV naturally exists to fulfill the desires of those who control it. Television is biased against those who defy the regime of capitalist consumption. A perfect example of this occurred very recently. During the 2004 Super Bowl, an independent organization called MoveOn.org vied for the placement of an advertisement that was considered controversial. The ad showed children working at blue-collar jobs. One child is seen throwing a garbage bag into the back of a dump truck, another is seen washing dishes. These scenes are followed by a question that asks, “Guess who’s going to pay off President Bush’s $1 trillion deficit?” Deemed by CBS as too controversial, the ad went un-aired. Another example of this is an ad by the magazine Adbusters, in which this question is posed, “is economic 'progress' killing the planet?” Both NBC and CBS rejected the ad for the same reason. They were just too controversial.

This intrinsic bias can also be found within the programs themselves. The Discovery Channel is running a new series about the Arctic in the High Definition format. The commercial advertises that it’s so real you’ll think you’re there. In their commercial, a sensuous female voice says “if you’ve been thinking about getting an HDTV, now’s the time buy one, because Arctic Mission premieres tonight.” Although the Discovery Channel doesn’t sell HDTVs directly, this still points out the fact that commercial television exudes consumerism. This is the also case with fictional programs. It isn’t often that we find a character on TV that embraces a lifestyle of minimal consumption. Anything that contradicts TV’s incessant message of consumption is deemed unfit for the public by those who control the medium. Thus, advertisers and station owners are predisposed to partiality because they will only act within the confines of what is profitable.
It seems that motivation for profit has allowed this country to prosper like no country has before, but at the same time, the money flow has been concentrated into the hands of the few wealthy that own corporations and control the advertisements we see on TV. The endless cycle of consumption that America seems to be caught in is the only thing that keeps the money flowing to these corporations. We buy their products, they earn more and more money, and then they spend some of it to advertise to us again. Maybe we as Americans can learn something from those that live on very little, but are still happier than most of us. If we all rose together and stopped buying corporate products, they’d have to try a different approach. The entire hierarchy of television would have to change, because we, the consumers, have the final say. They would have to accommodate our new demands. In the words of Zack de la Rocha, “It’s got to start somewhere; it’s got to start somehow. What better place than here, what better time than now?” (Rage Against the Machine). Let’s start by turning off the TV.

Works cited

Herszenhorn, David. “Snapple snaffles the Big Apple as mayor turns into marketer.”
11 Sept. 2003. The Sydney Morning Herald, 4 Feb. 2004.

Lichter, Linda S. and Robert, S. “Does TV shape ethnic images?” 2003. Center for Media
Literacy, 4 Feb. 2004.

Mander, Jerry. Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. New York: Morrow Quill
Paperbacks, 1978.

Rafuse, Shawn. “Television: Check your brain at the door.” Critical Mass Webzine. 4 Feb. 2004.

Rage Against the Machine. Guerilla Radio. Morella, Rocha, and Wilk. 1999. Epic Records.

“Study: Teens who watch much TV prone to violence.” USA Today. 4 Feb. 2004.

“What TV ratings really mean.” 28 Mar. 2002. Nielsen Media Research. 4 Feb. 2004.

The repercussions of pharmaceutical advertising

2003-12-08T18:21:00.000-08:00

by Cameron Gaut

Pharmaceutical commercial campaigns are a relatively new trend. In 1997, the FDA relaxed a prohibition on direct-to-consumer advertising, allowing pharmaceutical companies to market their drugs to consumers through radio, print, TV, and internet advertising (FDA Online). Pharmaceutical ads inflate the prices of drugs, misinform consumers, and encourage the self-destructive over-consumption of drugs. Direct-to-consumer drug advertising should be banned because it is harmful to the American public.

Direct-to-consumer advertisements inflate the cost of drugs, which takes millions of dollars from Americans who cannot afford the costs of living in addition to buying prescription drugs. Since 1997, drug prices have been soaring at a rate of 19 percent each year (Hahn Online). Compared to prior years, the amount that the consumer now ends up paying for drug advertising is tremendous. Approximately 43 percent of the price paid for prescription drugs is channeled directly to the manufacturer’s ad campaign. This leaves millions of low-income Americans with the choice of eating, paying the rent, or buying prescription drugs. The U.S. is one of only two countries in the world that allows direct-to-consumer drug advertising, in this lies a partial explanation as to why drug prices are the highest in the world in the U.S. (Barry online). Not only do DTC ads augment the cost of drugs, they also indirectly elevate insurance prices. By escalating the demand and price of pills, DTC ads cause insurance companies to charge their customers more to cover the inflated costs of the medication.

Some proponents of DTC ads might argue that direct-to-consumer drug ads play a helpful role in our relatively new patient-directed health care system. Before 1997, pharmaceutical industries solely marketed their products through doctors, who recommended the drugs to their patients. This system of drug administration, from pharmaceuticals to doctors to patients, can be thought of as doctor-directed. The doctor bases his or her prescriptions on examinations of the patient’s symptoms. With the recent explosion of the information age, it’s now simple to browse the internet to find anything we need to know about personal health; we don’t have to rely on doctors anymore. We are currently in the midst of a transition from a doctor-directed health care system to a patient-directed system. Those that argue for DTC ads might say that consumers come to their doctors loaded with information about their condition from advertisements. However, pharmaceutical ads are misleading, and they are the last source of information that people should use to diagnose their own health problems.

Direct-to-consumer ads often mislead and misinform consumers. A study conducted in February of 2003 shows that 45 out of the 125 studied DTC ads contained promotional statements that were not supported by their referenced literature (Peterson Online). Drug ads often rely on emotional appeal to convince people that the drug will work for them. Phrases such as “it works,” and “give it a try,” suggest that the drug will benefit most anyone. Imagine an angst-ridden teenager who watches TV every day. Every other day or so, she sees a commercial that connects with her. “Yes, I suffer from anxiety and apprehension accompanied by depression; that’s me,” she thinks. So she tells her parents that she wants to try this drug. Anxious to see their daughter smiling like she used to when she was younger, they are willing to try anything. Her parents take her to a physician, who tells the family that it’s perfectly normal for teenagers to have mood swings and feel depressed. The daughter insists that she needs the drug to feel happy again, so they “doctor shop” until they find a physician who will prescribe the drug for her. This scenario plays out all over America. In 1998, marketing data indicated that the number of prescriptions for antidepressants since 1988 had risen from 40 million to 120 million (Zito Online).

DTC Ads encourage over-consumption of damaging pharmaceutical drugs, which should only be taken as a last resort to health emergencies. They often present a problem that many people can relate to, and offer a quick fix. Are you depressed? Just ask your doctor for some Prozac. Overweight? Balding? How about heartburn? Do you have trouble “getting it up?” We’ve got a pill for that. Of course, some of these DTC commercials won’t even mention what the drug does. If we didn’t know what Viagra was, we’d have a difficult time deciphering its function from the commercials. One commercial shows a man walking into the office, his co-workers asking if he’d gotten a new suit, haircut, shaved his mustache, gone on a vacation, gotten new shoes, or received a promotion. The narrator says “no, he asked his doctor about Viagra.” This ad tries to win over consumers by convincing them that if they take Viagra, they will be more successful and appealing. A few weeks ago at Fred Meyer’s, I approached the “impulse” shelves next to the checkout section, and I was shocked by what I saw on those shelves. There were rows of boxes of what is popularly known as, “the purple pill,” or Nexium, a type of heartburn drug. Most ads for Nexium don’t even tell us what this mysterious pill does. One commercial claims “you don’t just feel better, you are better.” This slogan aims to make us think that if we buy Nexium, we will be better people. Another Nexium ad says to “treat yourself right.” Eating chemicals won’t ever be found under the definition of treating oneself right; the artificial compounds found in most pharmaceutical drugs are damaging to the human body.

Legal drugs are often just as detrimental as their illegal counterparts. Drugs are drugs, whether they are shunned in classrooms by the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, or advertised on TV as a panacea. Pharmaceutical drugs contain mixtures of potent lab-synthesized chemicals, which can often be deadly or severely damaging to the body. Years ago, before the drug industry boomed, most medicines were derived from plants. However, artificial synthesis is the pharmaceutically preferred method today for a few reasons. First, it’s cheaper to manufacture drugs than to extract compounds from plants. Second, a plant cannot be legally patented, and therefore one cannot own exclusive rights to sell it. While it is true that legal drugs can sometimes have beneficial effects, they merely treat the symptoms of health problems. What they do not do is encourage users to heal or correct the root cause of the symptom. Pharmaceutical companies have no interest in healing their customers; if people were healed from their ailments, they would no longer need to buy drugs.

Marketers may claim that expanded public information (advertisements) about prescription drugs encourages dialogue between patients and physicians, a factor that cultivates physician acceptance of DTC advertising.. It is correct that people talk to their doctors about drugs they see in ads, and almost half the time, doctors will prescribe it for them because they feel pressured to (Barry Online). However, 61 percent of doctors wish DTC ads would lessen or go away entirely (Pizor Online). Their reasons for disliking DTC advertising are justified; pharmaceutical companies conceal side effects of drugs while exaggerating their benefits, leaving their patients with unrealistic presumptions about the effects of specific drugs.

In the past, there have been countless incidents of drug companies concealing and misrepresenting fatal drug effects. For example, in 1976, McNeil laboratories was denounced by the FDA for concealing information on the side effects of an anti-inflammatory drug called Flexin, which was associated with 15 deaths from liver damage. In 1983, Eli Lilly and Co. was forced to withdraw the anti-arthritic drug Opren after it had killed 74 people in Britain in a one year span (CAFMR Online). How do pharmaceutical companies get away with murder? Part of the process a drug must go through in order to be approved by the FDA is extensive testing. And if a drug company gets poor test results from drug researchers, the results don’t have to be published. The company can simply look for another researcher that will give it the results it wants. Unfortunately, most fraud in clinical trials is unlikely to be detected because of the sheer secrecy in which the tests are conducted (Ryan, Online). The potentially injurious or fatal side effects of drugs are continually hidden from us, and as a result, we can’t always trust pharmaceutical advertisements.
The repercussions of direct-to-consumer advertisements are devastating. These ads are turning America into a “pill for every ill” society. Is this how we want to live? The government is fighting what they call, “the war on drugs,” and I can not help but point out the hypocrisy. Luckily, there is hope. As a result of the explosion of the information age, web sites such as moveon.org and truemajority.org have the power to concentrate and expose the real opinions of U.S. citizens, and with organizations like these, it’s possible to urge the FDA to revert the unleashing of DTC advertisements.

Sources Cited

Barry, Patricia. “Ads, Promotions Drive Up Drug Costs.”

CAFMR (Campaign Against Fraudulent Medical Research). “The Pharmaceutical Drug
Racket.”

FDA (Food and Drug Administration). “Direct to You: TV Drug Ads That Make Sense.”

Hahn, Kurt. “Unrestricted drug advertising and marketing.”

Peterson, Josh F., MD. “Does pharmaceutical advertising contain accurate promotional information?”

Pizor, Thomas C. “Don’t Forget the Gatekeepers.”

PMR (Pharmaceutical Medical Research). “Physicians’ Views on DTC & the Internet.”

Ryan, Robert. “Why do pharmaceutical drugs injure and kill?”

Zito, Julie Magno. “Rising prevalence of antidepressants among US youths.” Pediatrics. May. 2002.

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