Hamas War

Friday, July 18, 2008

Readers' Choice: Choose Your Punch Line

Suppose an Arab terrorist group attacks the Kirya, the government office complex, in Jerusalem. They have surrounded the Knesset, Prime Minister's office and Supreme Court Building. The security forces have imposed a news blackout, but the Jerusalemites pass it along by word of mouth until, a short time later there is an extemporaneous demonstration of thousands of people at the perimeter of the captured zone. The people are shouting:

A) Blow 'em up, already!

OR,

B) Idiots! This isn't where they run the country, it's at the television up a little further north.

Comment, but not on the bad taste, I know about that.

My point is that we don't know beans about communications. The progress of communications has gone from oral to pictorial on stone to alphabet on paper to print to electronics. If there are any Torah sages who have any insight into what media are doing to our heads and our lives, I want to hear from them and talk to them. It is time to bring our age-old wisdom into the area which Marshall McLuhan dealt with in the '60s and '70s and Neil Postman in the '80s and '90s. If you don't understand it, you get hit over the head with it.

Doggone, I miss Adir Zik!

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