If we have any film producers/media people who are on DU, please step in here and hear me out.

[Skidmore]

I need you to hear something about us as a people...a working people.

They don't come more condescending or snobbish than Mona Charon. I was listening to "On Point" on NPR this morning in the car as I did my errands. Mona was the representative of the teabagger view--and she really has gone teabagger. She truly does not think that anyone in the 47% makes contributions of any sort to society; they are all sponging off of government. I don't even think she understands that people's payroll taxes go into the so-called "entitlement" programs; it is not just taking something wealth out of her designer pockets and moving into some elderly retired person's bank account or giving it to a disabled person to goof off. The moderator, of course, never broached that point with her. She punctuated her condescension with put-upon sighs and little noises of disgust when the person opposite her tried to interject some reality into the discussion. It is this attitude that the contributions downstream--whether in goods, labor, or monetary, have value and are essential to holding society together. Also that people who don't go to Georgetown cocktail parties and shop in the posh stores of Manhattan have integrity, dignity, and opinions about the nation that are worth listening to and acting on. And I thing this attitude is pervasive in the Republican party. The 1% who tried to buy our government believe they own it anyway.

Those who have been bamboozled in to the political agenda of the 1% do so because they aspire to be among them. Do they understand that after being exploited, their masters laugh at them behind the same closed doors with the likes of Mitt Romney?

How can we bring this to the public discourse as long as the media is populated by programs that push style defines you as a person, conspicuous consumption of the wealthy is aspirational, and working people are to be laughed at. Women are either housewives with rich husbands living in mansions and fighting over jewelry or designer whatevers, or they are Honey Boo Boo's mom. Men are either conniving Wall Street types in Italian suits who drive expensive cars, or they are toothless bubbas wrestling alligators and making moonshine. How can we change this image and demand that working class people be taken seriously? How can we have a serious discussion?

If you are from the media industry, is this type of discourse something you can include in your entertainment fare or do apart from it? I find it incredibly frustrating that we have to go back almost two decades now to find programming that deals realistically with working class people. We are not able to live in the same manner as the 1%. At best, some imitate it by buying grossly inferior goods produced by industries which exploit working people halfway around the world. What can you do? What can we do?

I don't know if I have articulated this well enough, and some may scoff that it is naive. The world is much more complex. Perhaps so but dignity and respect are precious beyond wealth. It has been steadily stripped from part of the citizenry while their pockets and relatively meager savings have been looted.

I'll get off of my soapbox now and let anyone who wants to contribute to a discussion.

[JDPriestly]

1. You said it so well.

I especially like this:

"How can we bring this to the public discourse as long as the media is populated by programs that push style defines you as a person, conspicuous consumption of the wealthy is aspirational, and working people are to be laughed at. Women are either housewives with rich husbands living in mansions and fighting over jewelry or designer whatevers, or they are Honey Boo Boo's mom. Men are either conniving Wall Street types in Italian suits who drive expensive cars, or they are toothless bubbas wrestling alligators and making moonshine. How can we change this image and demand that working class people be taken seriously? How can we have a serious discussion?"

Entertainment these days is pretty strictly about selling products and making money for big business. In particular, craftsmen, artisans and real farmers are almost never seen or heard from in the media.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

2. I think you expressed your point very well. The sad part is that 99.99 percent of our media is

commercial. It exists to generate profits for our corporate masters.

Why do you think the RW is so determined to do away with PBS? It's one of the few places we can find a bit of programming which sole purpose is to sell us something to enrich the 1%?

So, I don't know the answer, but I sure do understand the question.