The United States as game show NORTH SPORTS FINAL, C Edition

• Published in: Chicago tribune (1963)
• Main Author: Ian I. Mitroff and Warren Bennis
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chicago, Ill Tribune Publishing Company, LLC 23.02.1989
• ISSN: 1085-6706; 2165-171X

Among Southern's many outrageous inventions was a game show entitled "What's My Disease?" The show featured contestants too poor to pay for medical care. The studio audience was required to guess the particular kind of operation a specific contestant needed. If the audience guessed correctly, the contestant received the operation free, right there on live TV. As a society, we have turned our backs on reality. We prefer to choose unreality every time. We invent fantasies that soothe our fractured egos precisely because reality has become too complex and too overwhelming for anyone to understand, let alone do something effective about it. We'd rather design, manufacture and sell political candidates the way we do soap and game shows. Like everything else in our society, politics has become just another branch of show business. The Reagan years elevated greed to the level of a national calling. It has become more than acceptable to flaunt our riches in the most outrageous ways in public. But greed can never serve as a worthwhile national purpose, for in the end it divides people from one another. When we need desperately to come together in a true and good common purpose, greed sets men and women against one another in the worst ways. If pursued to its ultimate conclusion, greed leads to what has become our new national motto, "I just want to get mine and then get out," a refrain that unfortunately is heard more and more these days.