Ithaca Blog

Monday, September 26, 2011

NY Times Versus You and Woody Guthrie

We are following the demonstrations on Wall Street as avidly as possible, with the paucity of coverage in mainstream corporate media.

We got a kick out of this lead in the NY Times:

"Demonstrators who occupied Wall Street had many causes but seemed to have one thing in common: a lack of hard knowledge about the system they were fighting."

It reminded us of a quote by Woody Guthrie about music in the media, specifically, but really about the powers behind the media (substitute the word "story" for "song"):

"I hate a song that makes you think you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think you are just born to lose...

"I am out to fight those songs...I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and if it has hit you pretty hard... I am out to sing the songs that will make you take pride in yourself and your work... [not] the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think you've not got any sense at all."

Stephen Burke
for Ithaca NY Blog

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