Bread & Circuses

Hello and welcome to Plum Politics.

As this entry is our maiden voyage together, and you don't know me from Adam, I would like to take a brief moment to provide some background on what has led me here:

I think it's fair to say that the motivation for this blog originates in a passion for truth arrived at through a critical examination and intelligent discussion of the issues. In some ways this blog is a personal refutation of the aggressive, sound-byte brand of infotainment that has, unfortunately, come to embody the ethos of mainstream media news and political reporting. In my opinion, the once dignified quest for truth has been eclipsed by "bread and circus" political theater.

In too many instances, a media practice that delivers empty spectacle produced to enthrall rather than inform, distract rather than enlighten, sell a point of view rather than explore an issue, has supplanted sophisticated journalism. Of course, quality information is out there, it's just increasingly hard to find. In this regard, I believe cable television is a terrible detriment to the proper function of the American political mind. Nonetheless, I still watch a lot of it (and do enjoy some of it)- but my other motivation is more akin to the reasons a doctor monitors the course of a disease and soberly educates the patient.

This is not to say that this blog is by any means the antidote, rather it is my attempt as a student of media and politics to bear public witness and hopefully provide some compelling insights into this modern media miasma. At the risk of patronizing the reader, I think many people (myself included at times) approach media with a certain passive innocence rather than the critical awareness that is often necessary to manage and appropriate messages without being subliminally coerced. So in writing this blog, I will examine and critique the public debate, offer my own thoughts on these issues, and also direct the reader to outside information that I believe to be exceptional. At the very least, I hope you find my words thought-provoking.

For those interested, and as further background, I will leave you with a short doc (9 min) that I made on the modern notion of "Spectacle" as espoused by Guy Debord in his seminal work "The Society of the Spectacle". It's my amateurish filmic exposition of his compelling and underappreciated theory.