Hegemony & Justin Bieber: By Jack Gohl

99.9 percent of the time I almost always dislike reading about Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels views, because these text are always way to abstract for myself and can almost always be summed up in one paragraph or at least the 5 page conclusion. This reading on Marx and Engels text, "The Ruling Class and the Ruling Ideas" gave me inspiration towards the last .01 percent. After reading and discussing in small groups I found these ideas to be quite enlightening and actually really got me thinking about our media powers and the effects they have on society.

In doing my comparison of the texts information to the media, I wanted to use the TV News as an example. More then ever in this day of age we see entertainers swamping the media with ideas and random bull. For example, Bonos (U2 singer) thoughts on how we can save the world or Mel Gibsons drunken anti-semitic slurs, which make top headlines on various news programs. In my opinion there are 1,000's of Bono's in this world, but only 1 gets our attention and really even though it is fun to make fun of Mel after his drunken buffoonery, who really gives a poop. Why could this be?? This (to me) is because entertainers/politicians are considered the elite beings in our society, which also have some of the highest paying salaries and power.

The power these few and very wealthy individuals display, whether outrageous or normal in the events captured on news programs can (to me) be a wonderful example of hegemony. These news programs sift through the material and choose what is of importance and what is not. Do many of us not give a poop to what and why Linsey Lohan is in court for each time she breaks top story (which is a lot), rather the kid that saved a cat from a tree or the many people that die from various issues around the states and world? I blame hegemony and Justin Beiber... But really, we can not blame Justin biebs for all our problems, because he has a great head of hair. Hegel was right on, hegemony or in his words our hierarchy in society is what controls various medias. But, I may be 99.9 percent off on this...