Saba and Jeremy's PA7 #4

Bart Simpson: Prince of Irreverence
Douglas Rushkoff

1.  Rushkoff encourages us to question the ways institutional forces are presented to us through the media and urge us to see the fickle nature of our own responses. 

2. T.V. programmers have to be extremely creative these days due to  the remote control.  Previously, viewers were too lazy to get up and change the channel if the program didn't interest them, now, people can flip through multiple channels in seconds. 
Real events can have much less impact than constructed ones if the intentions are revealed.
The generational divide plays a large role in the type of influence that television plays on it's audience. 
The Simpson's uses satire of many current events in their programming to help people view the situation in a different perspective.
Media is a "feeding machine" that takes media culture, changes it, and spits it out again with a spin.

3. In Peacock's essay she mentions we must distinguish between multiple forms of comedy and Rushkoff agrees with this notion that individuals should recognize between different types of television programming.

While Johnson believes that sophisticated television makes us smarter, Rushkoff would add that this is limited by the type of programming that the network wants to display and how critically we analyze the programming.