Mass Hysteria

[LARSSON at VAX1.Mankato.MSUS.EDU]

K. notes:
"The same sort of reaction occurred when CBS ran what was supposed to be an
homage to WOTW about two years ago.  Alien ships landed on Earth; assuming
this was a threat, the US military blew them up.  Then four more came in,
aiming for major world cities -- this time a definite threat.  (Of course,
"we" nuked those four and managed to celebrate for about 15 seconds before
seeing the 500 now coming in on radar.)
 
The entire movie was structured as a "live" news broadcast a la CNN, and
the next day the network reported having received hundreds of phone calls
from frantic people who thought it was really happening.
 
The only proper response was, of course, Letterman's:  "Yeah.  Earth is
being attacked by alien invaders and *CBS* manages to get the exclusive
story.  Right.""


On the other hand, about 10 years ago, a program called SPECIAL BULLETIN  was
run that deliberately played off the Welles WAR OF THE WORLDS broadcast.
This one was about a group of anti-nukers who had grabbed a nuke of their
own and were holding Charleston, SC hostage.  It was a pretty witty script
(by some of the same team behind ST. ELSEWHERE and similar series), but
apparently the most phone calls were from folks worried that *other* folks
would think it was real!  (Which is one of the stimuli behind censorship,
is it not?--that others will fail to see the Truth that we see?)

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)