Vietnam Protest

The war in Vietnam was the first television war, the media war, the media people said. Brought into the living room of the American people. Well, Graham didn't have a television and wasn't in America. Television programmed rubbish and offered no lures. Later it offered lures, though was no less rubbish. Later he adjusted to it, this the aim, the ambition, the pharmakon, the nepenthe, sitting in front of the beams hour after hour, wondering how to get in there, to be on the box. But that was after the war was over and there were no longer demonstrations and protests and readings and the alternative press to occupy the time. After the war was over television came into its own as the great domestic controller. And not only in the house, but in the pubs too, with its endless screening of horse racing and car racing and mud wrestling. And in the pubs where there wasn't television, and in some where there was, music was introduced so no one could talk protest and politics or anything else for that matter any more, the music was so loud.