Windows, Mirrors and Walls

(An appendix of sorts to On America’s Imperial Delusion)

Last night whilst reading Naomi Klein’s collection of articles on the globalisation debate, Fences and Windows, I came across the following paragraph from The Brutal Calculus of Suffering, her speech to the Mediemötet conference in 2001, commenting on the prevailing socio-political climate in the US following September 11:

Just when Americans most need information about the outside world—and their country’s complicated and troubling place in it—they are only getting themselves reflected back, over and over and over: Americans weeping, Americans recovering, Americans cheering, Americans praying. A media house of mirrors, when what we need are more windows on the world.

Though erring on generalisation, that’s a fair point to make, considering the content of US network news broadcasts (we do get the likes of Rather and Jennings over here, so we’re not making presumptions). And yet, whist mainstream media channels are reluctant to open a window on matters beyond US borders, they appear equally reluctant to reflect the diversity of American society, bar the odd smattering of tokenism. It brings one to ask, doesn’t this help to perpetuate religious/cultural/sexual apartheid on the broadest scale? To reinforce the walls between different cultures and ideas?

Not only is mainstream America seemingly ignorant of the rest of the world, but it also fails to recognise its own dysfunction.

Thu 26 Jun 2003 at 19:20   ·