If you’re a Gary Shteyngart fan, you’ll want to read this New York Times Magazine article where he writes about a week spent watching Russian television. Tough material to work with but Shteyngart succeeds in my opinion. If you’re curious to know about psychoanalysis, the article provides a window into the modern practice.
This is also a great article for Bostonians looking for ideas on how to spend the next few blizzards…
Related:
The article was kind of bleh to me – it seemed more like a boondoggle for Shteyngart than either a serious piece of journalism or a good effort at humor writing (and I generally like his work) . He mentioned wagyu beef and pinot noir a couple of times too many.
But what I found most interesting was the reader comments. Americans (for some reason, liberals in particular) have trouble understanding how bad things are in other lands or are eager to point out that we are JUST as bad. Maybe 1/2 the comments or more were variations on the idea that “yeah, but we have Fox News” as if there were a real equivalence between Putin’s Russia and the US.
At the end, Shteyngart made his most profound observation – to watch Russian TV is to live inside the head of Vladimir Putin – it completely reflects his view of the world. There never has been, and (I pray) never will be, at time in American history when our entire media was a total reflection of the will of one man – it is completely alien to our way of thinking. But people seem to be incapable of, or unwilling to, grasp the distinction.
My late father was a concentration camp survivor – the real thing with the striped uniform, etc. He once told me that not long after he came to America, he was working in a butcher shop and one of the customers figured out where he had been and told him (unsolicited), “you know, we didn’t have it easy here during the war. Meat was rationed and you could only get 2 lbs. per week.” This to a man who had nearly starved to death on watery soup made from rotten turnips.
Nice advertisement for Four Seasons, which is mentioned 7 times in the article.
Apart from that this is poorly written article – of course TV from politically oppressed country is propaganda. But on top of that watching 3 screens of TV 24/7 from any country would require prolonged visits to Dr Lacy, who makes house calls only to Four Seasons, so I’m not sure what exactly was the point of doing it.
Der Spiegel had an article in Jun 2, 2014
Title of which is
russia-uses-state-television-to-sway-opinion-at-home-and-abroad
how quickly americans forget when after Iraq War started
BBC and Al Jazira was deemed hostile to American Interests.
BBC now has American version of news in which only US version of things are shown.
NHK is practically mouths of American talking point.
France24 has tried unsuccessfully sell the ukraine war with so many 1 hour debates.
Lest we forget how these same channels pushed the War within Syria angle and
basically call for Muslims to go on Jihad.
and Now what are these same channels saying.
Tisk Tisk
Isn’t is strange, that the news that we see on BBC, NHK, France24 and CNN all resemble each other and the news on RT seems to reflect some sort of alternate reality? Could we have a rule that if 4 of out 5 sites scattered around the globe all agree, that represents the truth and the outlier is the one who is lying?
Truth is subjective.
It is not RT which is trying demonize.
It is the American elites so much so
that NCIS is #1 show in the states.
Didn’t have any russian adversary for last few years until
this fall. All of sudden things changed.
Real issue is that American people are not buying the warmongering
so they are blaming RT.
It is not like Americans looked to British Newspapers after 911
precisely for the same reason.
Before RT, it was wiki leaks was the problem, before that Al jazeera,
These people don’t like that the Russians are doing exactly what Americans
did for 80+ years to Russia. Including
CIA funding Modern Art to demonstrate how Russia was backward.
>Truth is subjective.
No, it’s not. When Putin says there are no Russian troops in Ukraine, he is flat out lying. Truth is subjective only to people who want to muddy the waters.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/ukrainian-government-no-russian-troops-are-fighting-against-us-sanctions-against-russia-based-on-falshoods/5428523
Yes, all those tanks, rockets, missiles, mines, etc. that the “rebels” have- they bought them on ebay. Are there any Russian troops in the Crimea yet, or just little green men?
Russia has a red line of Ukraine becoming a NATO state. In a similar manner US has a red line of Russian missiles being placed in Cuba, an issue important enough that it almost resulted in a nuclear war. Since Russian interests and “red lines” were ignored during the Ukrainian coup they’re supporting pro-Russian separatists rather than sticking to diplomacy.