THE MADISON AVENUE VILLAIN
587
willing to contemplate such action, we are left with a static situ–
ation in which American communications, which should be the
instrument of free expression, remains the instrument of "free"
enterprise, resisting all efforts at change. The inevitable inference
is this: while we all were happily hannonizing with America1;l
life, the system was tightening its grip. For the Wall Street
villain has not disappeared. He has merely had his face lifted.
And if that face
is
now unseen, it is because he hides behind the
anxious figure of the villain from Madison Avenue.
It is, in short, not a group of cynical broadcasters but the
economic system itself which accounts for the abuses of the
media, the greatest of which is, indeed, reminiscent of the old per–
fidy of Wall Street: regulated by business interests, the media
have turned into near monopolies, holding dire consequences for
the future of free speech. For just as the means of production were
once controlled by a few special interest groups, so this control
is presently exercised over the means of communication. The
communications monopoly, of course, is not a prosecutable fact,
since the media are actually divided among a number of com–
peting corporations. But since the motive of each is maximum
profits, the end result is the same as
if
all the media were in the
hands of a cartel. Here we touch upon the worst evil of the
system-not simply its effect on the mass mind but its threat to
the function of the intelligentsia, for the victim of this is anyone
with something to communicate. As Paul Goodman has described
it: "In American society, we have perfected a remarkable form
of censorship: to allow everyone his political right to say what
he believes, but to swamp
his
little boat with literally thousands
of millions of newspapers, mass-circulation magazines, best-
present system this would simply mean handing the media over to
politicians who, having their own products to sell, would
be
just as
subject to mass demand. A truly representative democracy might develop
levels of programming along the lines of the British system. But this
involves distinctions of cultural classes which American egalitarianism
might never countenance.
