From Paddy Cheyevsky's "Network," 1976

[shereads]

Inspired by Dr. M's thread about economic warfare/globalism, I googled up Ned Beatty's sermon on the global economy from the movie, "Network."

(For an audio download of Beatty delivering the speech, visit http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechnetwork4.html )

"Beale" (Peter Finch) is an aging network news anchorman whose idealism has become a nuisance following an on-air suicide threat that boosted his popularity. "Jensen," played by Ned Beatty, is the head of the corporation that owns the network. Instead of firing Beale after a politically explosive rant against Arab oil interests, Jensen decides to convert him.

Jensen: You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear?! You think you've merely stopped a business deal -- that is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity. It is ecological balance. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West! There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, Reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE!

Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?

You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen, and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and A T & T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state -- Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale! It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war and famine, oppression or brutality -- one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.

And I have chosen you to preach this evangel, Mr. Beale.

Beale: Why me?

Jensen: Because you're on television, dummy.





Beale:I have seen the face of God.

Jensen:You just might be right, Mr. Beale.

 

[Guest]

Pimp-daddio.

 

[rgraham666]

It's quite amazing how similar the world's various flavours of autocrats are.

 

[shereads]

It's quite amazing how similar the world's various flavours of autocrats are.

Vanilla mostly. It's important to escape notice.

 

[Seattle Zack]

I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.

 

[SummerMorning]

Vanilla mostly. It's important to escape notice.

Today you need to add a fruity swirl and chocolate chips, otherwise you're too bland to be today's unnoticeable brand and stand out as the ultimate Other.

 

[shereads]

I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.

You'll take it. We'll all take it. We've proven it by our failure to organize a revolt.

It's not as if there's a shortage of revolting people. Just a lack of leaders who aren't either mediocre or too revolting.