Sat
Oct 26 2024
06:10 am

YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE!
...
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.
...
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 bylaws of business.
...
And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.

Beale: But why me?

Jensen: Because you're on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.

Prescient? Be afraid, be very afraid.

bizgrrl's picture

We were watching MASH reruns

We were watching MASH reruns last night and saw season 4 episode 10 where Ned Beatty plays the Division Chaplain and provides a speech that could have easily led to the Network speech, in actions not words.

Col. Holister wants to turn mild-mannered Francis into Elmer Gantry.

The MASH episode was in 1975, the movie Network was in 1976.

Mark Harmon's picture

I'm Mad as Hell...

Paddy Chayefsky wasn't wrong, just early.

fischbobber's picture

Dude, he wasn't early.

We just ignored the obvious, and the warning flew straight over out heads. Reagan brought this upon America. Trump is merely the fulfillment of the Reagan promise. Reagan was 1980. Up until the Democrats ran me out of the party recently, 1980 primary, where I voted for Bush over the Reagan voo-doo economic plan and socially regressive policies (I mean seriously, who could have predicted Reagan using a pandemic (AIDS) to repress an entire population of people for multiple generations?)I always voted Democrat, both as a protest and to register my input on the direction of America. Now, America has no direction and the odds of this democracy lasting another generation are slim. Chayefsky wasn't early, just ignored. I know the feeling.

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