veterans that you wrote about, the VA and DOD do not want to discuss the human experiments using drugs and chemical weapons from 1955 thru 1975   MKULTRA was one of the many projects over the 20 year history   the government will not care for the veterans they harmed in "secret tests"  let alone in open combat

btw, i stopped watching television 4-5 years ago - have lost count now.  if you want some comradery, check out adbusters.  i got the idea from a letter to the editor they published back then.  the writer said how much more productive his life was without tv.  i decided to try it and have never gone back.  i finally threw the damn thing away recently to make more space for books.  good luck with all of the changes, but i don't think you will regret either decision.  thank you very much for taking the time to write about this.

Campbell: "Have you ever read Sinclair Lewis' Babbit?
Moyers: "Not in a long time."
Campbell: "Remember the last line? 'I have never done the thing that I wanted to do in all my life.' That is a man who never followed his bliss." (Campbell, 1988:117)

I quit reporting for a newspaper that even then I could see was headed down the same path. I loved working as a journalist. I went into the field for highly idealistic reasons and experienced a lot of joy and satisfaction in my work. But it got to be all about filling the "news hole," maintaining absurdly high profit margins while squeezing the staff, and reaching a demographic that would be more attractive to advertisers while abandoning those who most needed the attention of the press.

I still have a twinge about bailing on the field. Sometimes I think I should have stayed and tried to change things from the inside; been one of the "good guys." I still miss the work and the excitement. But it was costing me too much on a personal level. I'm happier and calmer now, but I wish there was a way I could have continued in newspapers without feeling like I was selling out.

I just read the section where you quit to my husband.  He too is ex-military (post-Vietnam to pre-Gulf War I).  And like you he now makes his living knee-deep in technology – though not attached to any media outlet.  It was the tenor of your dismissal I wanted him to hear.  There are similar tensions in his own workplace – people behaving as though they had a right to boorish, over the top behavior.  I see it as symptomatic of the rot infecting America in general.  Everything that surrounds us (information media, entertainment [both visual and cerebral]) celebrates and caters to the lowest possible denominator.  It has become OK to do and say things that were considered anathema thirty years ago.  Had a boss charged an employee as yours did you back in 1977, that person would have been hauled off to the hoosegow and promptly fired by the corporate big-wigs.  Now.....it took another employees intervention, and I’ll bet no one even thought to call the police.

My conversation with my husband touched on all these things.  We also discussed historical models presaging societal collapse, ruminated on his personal work situation.  Could it ever get that bad?  I think yes – but like many people, our options are limited.  Good jobs are scarce as hen’s teeth these days.  I’m glad you were able to get out.  And I hope your next employer follows the strictures of common decency – treating you and your contributions with the respect they deserve.  As for mainstream media in America?  Too far gone, I fear.  Those of us who give a good God damn are desperately trying to disinfect the Aegean Stables – but unlike Hercules, the task may prove too daunting by far.

Good luck, my friend.  Good luck to all of us.