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Howard Beale 30 years on...
Topic Started: Mar 3 2010, 07:29 PM (283 Views)
Quasimodo

Howard Beale:

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be.

We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'

Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.

[shouting] You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell,
[shouting]

'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it:

[screaming at the top of his lungs] "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"


[Still as relevant as ever...]
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genny6348
Genny6348
:thup:
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Quasimodo


Howard Beale:

[calmly strolling toward the audience]

So. A rich little man with white hair died. What has that got to do with the price of rice, right? And *why* is that woe to us? Because you people, and sixty-two million other Americans, are listening to me right now.

Because less than three percent of you people read books! Because less than fifteen percent of you read newspapers! Because the only truth you know is what you get over this tube.

Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube! This tube is the Gospel, the ultimate revelation.

This tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime ministers... This tube is the most awesome God-damned force in the whole godless world, and woe is us if it ever falls in to the hands of the wrong people...

[ascending the stage] So, you listen to me. Listen to me: Television is not the truth! Television is a God-damned amusement park!

Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, side-show freaks, lion tamers, and football players. We're in the boredom-killing business! So if you want the truth... Go to God! Go to your gurus! Go to yourselves! Because that's the only place you're ever going to find any real truth.
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Quasimodo

Howard Beale:

[laughing to himself] But, man, you're never going to get any truth from us. We'll tell you anything you want to hear; we lie like hell.

We'll tell you that, uh, Kojak always gets the killer, or that nobody ever gets cancer at Archie Bunker's house, and no matter how much trouble the hero is in, don't worry, just look at your watch; at the end of the hour he's going to win.

We'll tell you any sh-t you want to hear. We deal in *illusions*, man! None of it is true!

But you people sit there, day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds... We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality, and that your own lives are unreal.

You do whatever the tube tells you! You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even *think* like the tube!

This is mass madness, you maniacs!

In God's name, you people are the real thing! *WE* are the illusion!

So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now. Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off! Turn them off right in the middle of the sentence I'm speaking to you now! TURN THEM OFF...

[collapses in a prophetic swoon as the audience erupts in thunderous applause]

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Quasimodo

[last lines]

Narrator:

This was the story of Howard Beale: The first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings.
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abb
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"I was taught when I was a young reporter that it's news when we say it is. I think that's still true -- it's news when 'we' say it is. It's just who 'we' is has changed"
David Carr (b. 1956), US Journalist.
CNN "Reliable Sources", Sunday, August 10, 2008.

"This was not exactly the truth, but then, what is, exactly?"
Howell Raines (b. 1943), U. S. Journalist.
From his book Whiskey Man, 1977

"News is what your editor says it is unless the publisher says it isn't."
Carl Liberto (b. 1949), US Journalist.
Interview, Tuesday, February 3, 2009.
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foxglove

Well, you can't say Howard Beale didn't warn us... I've turned the tv off, for the most part.
Edited by foxglove, Mar 3 2010, 08:05 PM.
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kbp

Thanks for sharing Quas!
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foxglove

"So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now..."

"5 ways your TV is slowly killing you.
Too much boob tube also makes you weaker, research shows."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35646508/ns/health-behavior/
Edited by foxglove, Mar 8 2010, 02:14 PM.
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wingedwheel
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Watching MSNBC will kill you even quicker....
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foxglove

Yes, I avoid MSNBC like the plague.
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