Spenders vs Savers- Who are we supposed to be?

So we watch TV, listen to the radio, or play on the web and all we see are advertisements. It is said that TV exists for the companies that advertise to us, not for the people who watch it. We’ve been conditioned by all this advertisement to spend, to buy everything we need or want. We see examples of who we want to (or should)  be glorified by shows like Cribs or people who deserve better like Extreme Makeover or What Not to Wear.

Nowhere except in dry news reports about the government do we hear about saving money. The gov says we aren’t, as a nation, saving enough money. I’m not sure what that means for our economy exactly. I guess it means we are spending all we can, not planning for the future, maxing out our credit cards.

There are no TV shows with people who save a lot or spend properly.  How do you work that into Grey’s Anatomy or Desperate Housewives? TV has to start advising us. Work it into the news, work it into some kind of plot, do PSAs. We can still buy, just do it within a budget. Companies will still get our money. Can’t a teen character on Friday Night Lights say he can’t afford to party next weekend because he doesn’t have a job? Just like some groups want more minorities in shows, this kind of plot needs to be there too.

Review of ‘The Beast’

The Beast stars Patrick Swayze as a an FBI agent who is mentoring a new recruit, played by Travis Fimmel. I haven’t seen Swayze in anything since Ghost I think, so I don’t know if his current look is natural, due to aging, or induced by his recent illness. But the narrowing slightly wrinkled face and less than smooth voice rally adds to the character he plays. Agent Charles Barker is one who, after many years, has his own way of doing things, a way that some in the bureau are concerned about. He’s built a knowledge base about how people work and he may harm those he feels deserve it rather than bring them to the bureau’s justice. In one episode, a man who he was told would pay for his crimes was set free courtesy of the higher powers. Because the man was very deserving of some punishment and because the man would continue to do was he was before, Barker called on some ‘friends’ and the next morning’s news story was of the death of that man.

Fimmel plays the rookie Ellis Dove, who the bureau hopes will help them by corroborating their accusations of misuse of powers and probably other sins considered to be beneath a bureau agent. Fimmel’s Ellis is Barker’s gopher (get the coffee, get the car) but also backs him up as a partner. That Barker is crooked is in the back of his mind, but he’s still new, still learning, and finds that Barker isn’t yet doing anything so far off the charts that he can’t go along with it.

The plots, for me, are new and different. They are easy to follow and lead to surprises or logical conclusions. Although there is a main story along with the ‘Barker is bad’ subplot, you will be able to watch episodes out of order without feeling like you’ve missed anything. Definitely not a bad way to spend an hour.

Bono Heckles Mwenda

I like U2’s music, really. Well, Zooropa didn’t get my attention, nor did one other around that time. When I think they are being condescending to Americans or consumerism, which was my take on that album, I get turned off. And, as you saw in a recent post of mine, Bono’s outspokeness can be a problem. It was an interesting coincidence that Bono was mentioned in an article I was reading in the Parade section of the Sunday paper over the weekend that had nothing to do with him.

“They Can Kill Me, But They Can’t Kill My Ideas” was about Andrew Mwenda, founder and managing editor of a weekly newspaper in Uganda. He and his staff risk their lives to put together stories, such those that expose the government corruption, so that the country’s citizens are informed and able to use correct information to make sound decisions. He has been arrested or detained many times, his house has been looted and he has been threatened with a gun literally to his head. He says that when these things happen, he knows he is doing a good job. As a Ugandan citizen and a person who has spent many years reporting on the workings of the government, one would assume that when he says he feels “that foreign aid was undermining African democracies”, he has a fund of knowledge to base that on. Apparently Bono, not a native of Uganda and not someone who has had to struggle to survive, believes otherwise. The article notes that when Mr. Mwenda stated his opinion at a conference in Tanzania in 2007, he was ‘heckled’ by Bono. So we have a man risking his life daily to create a product that informs and assists the pople of his country under attack by a musician. I’m sure it was one of the milder encounters he has experienced as Bono wouldn’t have killed him for his opinion. But, if Bono knows so much and is so passionate about his desire for the world (or maybe just the US) to save all of Africa from itself, why is  he parading around the world singing songs that do not inspire anarchy or change rather than in a government position where his opinion might get action?

http://www.parade.com/news/2009/02/they-can-kill-me-but-they-cant-kill-my-ideas.html