When I was in elementary school, it was a somewhat rare treat to have a television on in our classroom. In 1986, not every classroom had a television so when the teachers decided that we needed to watch the flaming wreckage of the shuttle Challenger with its school teacher cargo, we double- and tripled-up in the rooms with screens. For hours we watched these talking heads babble about shit we didn’t care about. It looked like fireworks to me. It might have been a national tragedy, but as Comrade Stalin put it: “One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.” The teachers lost ‘one of their own’ and seemed to think that we cared to see them in some context other than in our crosshairs. Dumb fucks will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

The talking heads (not the band, the news announcers) will be second. I think there is a filter on their voices designed as a sedative. The first overwhelming television media response followed the Kennedy assassination. For four days the country’s eyes and ears turned to this magic box for comfort. For four days, all other shows were cancelled as our nation tried to define itself. I don’t think our nation defined itself as much as the Fourth Estate consolidated its power. The newspapers had started flexing their muscles in the US during the Spanish-American war (I’m sure you can find much earlier examples, but this one sticks out in my mind as the largest policy driven by Media.) After Kennedy’s assassination it didn’t take television long to follow suit, affecting policies in Southeast Asia.

I was watching the late shows last night, no one interesting was on so I fell asleep early. My eyes opened sometime after 8am and I thought I might watch a Saturday morning cartoon then return to my repast. When I turned on the television, I saw 1986 all over again. I think it’s time I throw that box out the window.