oh malaysia, you are the hero, you are the villain. your every move is on display!

Just how effective are idiot boxes in our homes that keep blaring all day and night in brainwashing us to accept UMNO/BN world view? I often wonder whether or not they really make the difference, especially in this cyber information era. However, on the surface I can see that average people tend to be quite affected by them. When I say average, I am referring to the not-so-educated lot, whether formal or informal because even the ones that graduate from the University of “Hard-Knocks” have proven to be resilient to propaganda mainly because they are naturally intelligent i.e. they have the capacity to think and the power to reason.

Eighty-Twenty rule always prevail. Maybe intelligent ones make up the top twenty percent but majority of the people are generally average. These people are not exactly docile and gullible but most likely in my opinion, they simply refuse to think and what more to reason. They are afraid that their skull will explode if they start thinking! These kinds of people are banal down to the point of boringly prosaic. But mind you, they make up eighty percent of a much needed voices that can help change our political landscape. So, to be able to reach them effectively is a key to garnering their support.

How do you reckon then the idiot boxes can be made mesmerising enough? Fox News USA, the right wing and Republican unofficial station for Bush junior lined-up a select few newscasters that were expert in using body language to influence viewers to vote for him. Likewise here in this third world country with fourth world mentality (to borrow LKS line) we are seeing a similar approach but unfortunately these novice newscasters “speak of disasters with gleams in their eyes”. This is a dead giveaway. They are either lying through their teeth or down-right sinister in their reporting. They must take us the viewers, intelligent ones or average, as idiots then. But when a government is so desperate to get their official version be taken as gospel truth, they are clumsy and stumble and fall miserably.

There is a line in a song that goes “There are three sides to every story; yours, mine and the cold hard truth”. But when there is only one side that is being blasted on air daily, we begin to wonder whether there is any truth at all. For an “ancient” figure like me, twenty five years of gibberish is making me cranky already. Even my teenage sons are going bonkers listening to blatant lies on the screens of the idiot boxes daily. This is interesting indeed given that they are only politically and socially aware round about less than five years!

Al Ries and Jack Trout, two prominent marketing gurus came out with a “Law of Hype” that says that “Everything is always the opposite of what appears in the paper”. The law I believe equally applies to electronics media as well (We can talk about the papers some other time!). When there is so much propaganda being shoved down our ears, eyes, noses and throats, it is little wonder that the ENT specialists and optometrists are having a swell time. Not to mention myriad kind of ulcers that we are getting.

There is however a positive side to this intense hype by UMNO/BN propaganda machines! I have become inert to the news but I begin to think. Yes, an average man like me who is lazy to think is now awaken and start to reason out. The news and the newscasters are so repulsive and revolting that they are having a reverse effect on me. The more intense the lies being propagated, the more inconceivable they become. The funny thing is that those propagandists behind all these hypes truly believe that their slanders are being swallowed unconditionally. We pray that they continue and it will not be long before the whole nation rebel and we will have our own “Mutiny on the Bounty”.

Oh Malaysia, you’re the hero, you’re the villain. Your every move is on display!