Value(s)

At one point Scotty Nguyen popped out of his seat and said, “They get paid $5 million a year to hit a little white ball, and they can’t do it!” He was referring, of course, to the baseball game on the television across the room. He and Franklin were betting on the games, and Scotty’s team was losing. Someone asked Franklin how much he had riding on the game. “20,000,” he responded. Every time the Tigers got an out in the ninth inning Franklin gave a little cheer. As soon as the game ended Franklin hit Scotty up for his winnings. Scotty pulled out a thick bundle of hundreds, peeled off two, and handed them to Franklin. “I thought the bet was for 20,000?” someone said. “Yeah,” said Scotty, “20,000 Vietnamese.”

I couldn’t resist. Today, we had an interesting discussion about intellectuals and the media. I argued that, on balance, the commercialization of Vietnamese media would improve social welfare. Rylan, our RA and instructor, disagreed, stating that news sources should instead be funded entirely by public money. I countered by saying that having the government fund a newspaper is just as bad as having a corporation fund it because each scenario essentially produces the same undesirable outcome: biased reporting. He responded that several foundations donate to newspapers without trying to influence their substantive agenda. I replied that those foundations would immediately pull their funding if said newspaper were to actively criticize said foundations – he agreed. Finally, I extended my argument to say that governments act in a similar way, and that a publicly funded newspaper would feel existentially committed to preserving its beneficiary’s reputation, thereby diluting the quality of news in the same ways discussed before.

Ultimately, I think we agreed that the only way to become informed is to corroborate information with alternative sources. He still felt that the commercialization of media damaged society, and I still felt the opposite (I also used Imus as an example of commercialization producing socially beneficial outcomes), but the quality of our in-class debate was on-par if not better than any I’ve had at UF.

Speaking of quality… man, propaganda… too damn convincing. We went to the “War Museum” about a week ago and at the time, I felt like ripping up my passport. Walking from one exhibit to the next, one can’t help but feel terrible for what happened 30 years ago, and knowing that it was my government committing these atrocities… absolutely sickening. But once we were far enough away from the “museum” to question ourselves, I realized two things: first of all, I had just experienced an hour’s worth of hardcore propaganda, and second… it worked! If I understood half of what I read on the posters lining the streets of HCM City, I’m sure I’d trade in my flatscreen for a sickle and hammer and find a rice field to till. Ignorance is bliss.