LUMI: Living Under Media Influence
 

Buffalo, NY—More than ever, the media seems to influence the decisions of citizens in the free world. People of America who are otherwise impervious to influence find themselves utterly bereft of the strength needed to resist the media’s terrible influence. In other words, influence is all around us. One cannot help but note the connection between “influence” and “influenza”—or what is commonly known as the “flu.” Are we sick? Sick and tired of being influenced?
     For all intents and purposes, “media” is the same as “influence.” Whatever influences us, is media. Recently outside Regal Cinema, Mark Brandon explained the difference between media and non-media. He had just seen Shaft, Samuel L. Jackson’s new hit summer movie. Jackson plays a vigilante ex-cop. To Brandon, Shaft was “damn fine action entertainment.” When asked if he had seen last year’s Boys Don’t Cry, Brandon replied: “No. I heard it was about some chick who wanted to be a guy. What’s the point? I don’t need to be told that chicks who want to be guys have it rough. I don’t need that forced down my throat. I want to see a movie that’s happy with who I am, not a movie that wants me to change. I like who I am.” Mark’s parents, Mark and Ellie Brandon, who had been to Mel Gibson’s new movie The Patriot, agreed. “We came here to get away from the media. We came here to be entertained, plain and simple.” The people have spoken, and the people want a medium without a message.
     Groups of concerned Western New York citizens have begun to meet at mall, supermarket and movie theatre parking lots to raise awareness in their “Take Back the Influence” campaign, and pray to “the media,” asking, “Oh, why hast thou forsaken us? Protect us from ourselves.” There’s much for concern. “The devil made me do it” has been replaced with “the media made me buy it.” Once just artists and sons were anxious about influence. Now we are all are.
     Apparently “the media” looks much like “God” once did. No one has actually seen or even been able to approach this new “God.” Like “God,” the “media” seems to be invisible, anonymous, everywhere and all-powerful—saturating us, and, at the same time, completely beyond us. In the unending quest for answers, and for something to blame for the questions, “God” became, for us in America, two hundred or more years ago, “the government.” People turned to the government for direction. The holy trinity of “God” became then the people (the son), the government (the father) and the spirit of democracy (the holy ghost). However, for us today, “the government” has become “the media,” which seems to resemble something of an unholy trinity: betrayer, judge and cross—all in one. Like God—Government is dead. Media has taken over.
     Taylor Pulesky, senior at the local Holy Angels Academy, has pointed out that this hatred of influence goes back to the American Revolution, when the colonies announced their freedom from the influence of Britain and the British media. “The first thing the president did was ban all British books and newspapers,” Pulesky explained. “It was really important that America start without any media,” she went on. “Once the President got rid of all the media, everything started all fresh and new. We know now that of course the media never went totally away, and still tries to mess with everyone’s minds.” Other students at Holy Angels agreed, and added that everyone should—like they will in the fall—go to university so that they can really learn how to resist the influence of the media.

(For more information: www.theinfluence.com)