Word: muzak
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...human side of the news." On August 30, "Offbeat" offered these "human" stories: "Iowa man munches 22 hot dogs in 2 hours" and "100 frogs are in woman's menagerie." And on September 6: "Residents are asked to adopt a pothole." Stories like these make USA Today the Muzak of print journalism. They won't challenge you, or make you think, but they'll pass the time in an elevator...
...good news for the television industry: Americans spend more than half of their leisure time in front of the TV set, an average of almost three hours per person each day. Now the bad news: most people do not pay much attention to the tube, treating it like visual Muzak or a cozy fireplace for the family to gather round. According to the authors of Where Does the Time Go?, a survey on leisure released last week by United Media Enterprises, television is "the new American hearth-a center for family activities, conversation and companionship...
Surf. Waterfalls. Rivers. Country Roads. Video Fish. Even Video Fireplace. Images to lull the senses and, in some cases, deaden the pain; Muzak for the eyes. Video entrepreneurs are selling 60 taped minutes of soothing pictures for folks to turn their televisions into environmental lullabies. Most of the cassettes were initially marketed to hospitals, doctors and dentists, but, reports James Spencer, president of Environmental Video Inc. of Manhattan Beach, Calif., "we are finding that the consumer is more interested than the medical market." The tapes are made to glance at, to distract, not to watch. Sitting down for a serious...
Intended as ironic comment and counterpoint, the 21 songs in the show offer only the anesthetic sounds of Muzak. When a low-flying Von Richthofen is machine-gunned down by the Australians, it is not the historical inaccuracy that counts (he was probably felled by a Canadian R.A.F. pilot) but the fact that his death touches no nerve. That is not John Vickery's fault, for he and the rest of the cast perform feats of acting valor with a script that goes AWOL from the curtain's rise...
...only in the past few years, Bernstein writes, that "the cacophony of real life became audible above the droning, monotonous Muzak of the regime." Both authors discovered a handful of brave Chinese willing to narrate the horror stories of their lives: scientists and scholars sent to "reform through labor" camps for dozens of years; women tortured and imprisoned for sleeping with their lovers; nameless men punished for their grandfathers' crimes; families murdered for a mere suspicion of disloyalty...