When Thanksgiving arrives, the media coverage is mostly predictable.
Feature stories tell of turkeys and food drives for the needy. We
hear about why some people, famous and unknown, say they feel
thankful. And, of course, holiday advertising campaigns launch via
TV, radio and print outlets.
Like our own responses to Thanksgiving, the repeated media messages
are apt to be contradictory. Answers to basic questions run the
gamut: How much time and money should we spend on the holiday dinner
compared to helping the less fortunate? Is this really the time to
count our blessings -- or yield to ads that tell us how satisfied
we’ll be after buying the latest brand-new products and services?
Under the surface, some familiar media themes are at cross purposes
this time of year. Holiday celebrations that speak to the need for
compassion and spiritual connection are frequently marked by efforts
and expenditures that point in opposite directions. Within the media
echo chambers, a lot of the wallpaper is the color of money.
In its unadorned state, the idea of being thankful is on a collision
course with “Thanksgiving” the commercialized media phenomenon. To
explore the genuine realms of giving thanks is to pause and mull over
good fortune -- dwelling on it while hopefully mustering at least a
bit of humility and gratitude for life along the way. But the
prevalent emphasis on goodies for dinner-table consumption and the
big-hype kickoff of the holiday buying season are media cues with
widespread effects.
As a practical matter, in the media world, late November brings a
ritualized frenzy that makes cash registers ring (or whatever they do
these digital days). Anyone who takes thanksgiving seriously as a
potential activity for reflection is likely to sense a disconnect
with profuse media content that seems to be unclear on the concept.
Whether seen in religious or humanist terms, the deeper approaches to
“giving thanks” are distant from what has become the expected from
mass media this time of year. Actual thanksgiving might bring the
recognition that many people have at least all they really need --
and are damn lucky, too, given the circumstances of many human lives
on this planet. In contrast, a wide array of media messaging tells us
that we don’t have what we need -- and if we can just spend money the
right way, we’ll get it.
Television commercials are constantly making the case that we should
not -- must not -- be content with what we have. And the ads offer
innumerable ways that spending money can remedy the situation. In
that sense, much of media keeps stoking the hot coals of
unthankfulness -- dismissing what we already have as woefully
insufficient.
It’s easy enough for media outlets to supply something for everyone
at Thanksgiving time. We can choose to focus on replicas of some
heartfelt sincerity along with facile sentimentality in news
coverage. There are plenty of human-interest stories and recipes,
plus the obligatory tales of gobblers that encounter or evade the
guillotine. But overall, the commercialism pegged to Thanksgiving
provides the most powerful undercurrents for the holiday.
Meanwhile, the barrage of publicized attention to Thanksgiving gives
very short shrift to the original Thanksgiving. Newly arrived
settlers in their new world, we’ve been told, gratefully received
help from savvy Indians who generously shared their food and
knowledge of how to prepare for the oncoming winter. And that
oft-neglected story, in turn, is rarely examined as a parable for how
Europeans who arrived in North America several centuries ago were
glad to take from native people -- and then proceeded to plunder and
kill with a zeal that became genocidal.
Today, some people have bountiful tables while others have very
little. On the rhetorical surface, Thanksgiving marks a time of
appreciation. But meanwhile, most of all, media outlets encourage us
to buy -- and forget.
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Norman Solomon is the author of “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits
Keep Spinning Us to Death.” For information, go to:
www.WarMadeEasy.com