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writing for godot

Occupy The Remote to protest our broken system

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Written by Robert Douglas   
Thursday, 09 October 2014 02:30

If your cable or satellite television provider offers a record function, it's your civic duty to use it as much as possible this fall to fast forward through those toxic political commercials that are polluting our once-public airwaves.

Doing so will not only minimize your sense of hopelessness that we're living in a failed democracy, but remind the evil forces let lose by the U.S. Supreme Court with its 2010 Citizens United decision that they're wasting billions of dollars if they think they can influence the way you vote -- or don't vote.

If enough citizens tune in to the logic of tuning out political commercials, perhaps we can claim it's a movement -- like Occupy The Remote. And we'll get a mention of progressive podcasts like Democracy Now. Such a movement would surely get no coverage in the corporate media.

Here's how you can get started:

-- If you haven't already set a program to record, hit the Record Button on your remote. (For DIRECTV, it's an orange circle right next to the label REC.
Press the OK prompts that appear on the screen.

-- Go to your list of recordings (LIST button on DIRECTV remote) to make sure the program you chose is recording.

-- Take a 10 to 15 minute break to allow for the all commercials that break up the program you want to see.

-- When you want to resume watching the program, select it from your list of recordings and press the back button to start it over.

-- Keep your remote in hand and when you see a commercial coming, hit the FastForward button.

-- Hover your trigger finger over the Play button and press when the commercials are done. (You may have to practice your timing technique to make sure you don't miss any of your selected program. Sometimes you may have to back it up a tad. Or sometimes you'll want to stop and see your favorite GEICO ad tucked in between the campaign drivel.)

An added bonus to following this procedure: It will free up countless hours over a campaign season to do something useful, like mowing the lawn, going to vote early or watching more TV.

It's not like you're apt to learn anything new in the campaign ads, anyway.

They all contain two basic messages:

-- The Republican one that says, "Don't vote for anyone who belongs to the party of President Obama who can't get anything done; and

-- The Democratic one that says, "Don't vote for anyone who belongs to the party who won't let let Obama get anything done.

And the truth is, it really matters little who wins either the House or Senate because elections have devolved into a variation of "Ground Hog Day": Whatever happens at the polls, on the morning of November 5, it will be business as usual. Wall Street and defense contractors will still run America.
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Robert Douglas is a former union official and former business editor for The Palm Beach Post and Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. You can contact him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , like him on RBDMedia.com on Facebook or followRBDMediaDotCom on Twitter.


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