Instant upvote.

Personally, I only ever started watching his show from time to time because I loved the Drew Carrey Show, but shortly after deciding that Craig Ferguson wasn't my first choice in the late-night lineup, I realised that he occaisonally decides to say 'screw the cheap laughs' (or the execs let him have a moment or two here and there) and he says something not only genuine and with passion, but he's really thought about what he's said.

It's not often you get a host that'll speak their mind when the time's right, but he'll do it.

Every word...so very true...

Fooh lalang Jonas Brothers!

Amen, my Scottish brother. Amen.

In a conservative society, all power structures were geared toward respecting authority and respecting age and experience. Your goal - your entire understanding of the world, in fact - was that tomorrow would be just like today, and therefore your best bet was to learn from people who had lived through the greatest number of these unchanging days. Old people were much more equipped to handle the world than young people, because old people had already seen it all once before. Obviously it was a somewhat self-fulfilling prophecy - the elderly, having learned and hardened themselves in a specific social mold, could only pass on that specific mold when they were respected ('deified', as Craig puts it), so they did their part in keeping society as constant and unchanging as possible. If you didn't have gay rights when grandpa was young, it's unlikely that you'd learn anything about gay rights from grandpa, and if he's your source of authority you will grow up to be as ignorant of gay rights as he is.

Naturally this has changed - advances in technology, in material well-being (for parts of the world), as well as in social and political theory and structures, have resulted in a more progressive Western society. Change is expected and welcomed; the experiences of your ancestors no longer apply to the reality your children will face, meaning that it's the young and the freshly trained who have the best chance of understanding what's actually going on. The oldest in our society are no longer best equipped to make sense of the world; the respect and deification they received has been passed down at least a decade or two.

I don't disagree that this has lead to a distasteful new variety of the already fairly shallow and unpleasant consumerist culture of the west, and I don't disagree that it has encouraged the rise of an 'imbecilic' (sub)culture, but I understand that if these are the negative side effects of actually, for the first time in history, having a society that's somewhat progressive, then that's acceptable to me. I'll work on reducing the negative impact of those side effects in my own daily life as far as I can, but I won't try to appeal to some conservative dream of venerating the old and the eternally stable.

Craig might as well be up there ranting about how being allowed to express yourself on the internet is dangerously undermining our respect for traditional experts and authorities - maybe so, but we can't exactly go back to only allowing a voice to one percent of the people.

The crowd sounds delirious. I like his idea, and have wondered before where our obsession with youth has come from.

mr ferguson lets the mass marketers off way too easy.the relationship that marketers form with consumers at a very young age is carefully planned and executed.
please take the time to watch this excellent doc from adam curtis:
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Century-of-the-Self-full-four-part-documentary
it's a pretty accurate account on how things have changed in the west's view of individuality and sense of self and how that sense has been manipulated by appealing to our "irrational" emotions.

knowledge by itself garners little but the act of aquiring.
knowledge in conjunction with experience,tempered with reason is wisdom.
saying that an older persons advice,thoughts or perceptions are no longer relevant due to their lack of understanding of all things "new"(translation:young)not only reveals a lack of historical comprehension,but is powerfully naive.
which is very much a "youthful" trait.

I think it was actually done a little earlier, 1920's or 30's. The idea of Fashionable Consumption, to get the public focused on the less important things so the planners could go ahead and run the nation without fear of interference.

He's also talking about "Imprinting" which if you watch a kids show all the advertising is geared towards imprinting the children with brands so you have them for life. There was a book about this, maybe it was called "Branding" whatever I'm babbling time for a Coke.

My own desire to be young and stupid manifested itself when I noticed his pronunciation of "deification" sounded like "defecation".

True.

*british

Adding video to channels (British) - requested by Zifnab.

I must share this with everyone I know.

In hopes to possibly reverse some of this. Somehow.

i think that "audience" is prerecorded laughter.

I think this is more of a symptom than a cause. The cause has to do with society accepting the false "American Dream" and the profit motives that come along with it. America pits its citizens against itself for purposes of corporate profits, and that resulted in the acceptance of targeting consumerism towards the young.

Good points anyhow, though the laugh track makes me want to punch my own balls.

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter!

this needs to, and will, make #1 - I'd just like to see it happen sooner

*promote

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 9:56pm PDT - promote requested by SlipperyPete.

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The Canned Laughter really subtracts from an otherwise fantastic rant.

Really excellent counter point, Babymech.

[redacted]

>> ^peggedbea:
i think that "audience" is prerecorded laughter.


It's a real live audience (as in real people, the show itself is taped). Admittedly though, the audience do take their cues for laughter from a warm-up-comedian guy.

My faith in the awakeness of our species is being restored by comments such as those above. Age based upon fixed measurement of one aspect of being such as rotations of the earth around the sun, however, cannot be the definer of a person. I am months away from being 70 years alive. I am asked for ID if I claim "senior price" for an item. My physical state is such that I can accomplish repeated Aikido movements not possible for men less than half my age, and my libido drives my active affections three to four times weekly, if you know what I mean. O.K, O.K, I also dye my hair!! I guess my point is that identification with Zeitgeiss is as much a copout as identification with religion, job title, gender, credential, or other measurements provided from outside youself. Roberto Assigioli, MD, developer of Psychosynthesis, provided a guided technique in which you disconnect from submodalities of perception arriving at a point in which you perceive your true center being. The technique allows ballancing of submodality heirarchies with your center self in charge. O.K, O.K, Laura says more often than three to four.

The premise of his rant *is* the topic of my doctoral dissertation research, for the Ph.D. I received in June, 2009.

Ah, I love it when a plan comes together.

Society sucked in the 50s.

If he rants like that I would watch his show. Otherwise, to me, he is a charismatic, unfunny man who flirts with the camera for the older ladies to gush over.

post 2000+ worst...generation...ever...

>> ^imstellar28:
post 2000+ worst...generation...ever...


You got that right...

I feel a "When I was a kid..." rant coming on.

i have a problem with this counterpoint babymech.
i hope you are not devaluing the lessons history can teach us.

and the first time society is "truly" progressive....
how about taking a long look at abolitionist history, the new republican party, the labor movement of the late 19th/early 20th century, rise of anarchism in america, the history of the naacp, populism movement, the womens christian temperance union, birth control, the great migration, womens suffrage, the new deal, womens refusal to leave their factory jobs after ww2, all the way up to civil rights, womens equal rights movement, and now were working on gay rights.

our history is wholly progressive. always. just because old foggies accomplished it before we were around and now it seems outdated, that doesnt mean it wasnt progressive. in fact, looking at the list above i see most of these events could have happened in one persons lifetime. how much social change has occured in my lifetime? instead of nirvana we have nickleback, mtv quit showing videos and now airs reality shows, cartoon network..... please someone add something redeeming to this list... oh wait... the end of the cold war, but noone my age had anything to do with it...

i do agree that a society relies on young minds for new innovation, but i think my generation would be better innovators if a well rounded education was easier to come by than pop culture trivia and material consumption.

>> ^Trancecoach:
The premise of his rant is the topic of my doctoral dissertation research, for the Ph.D. I received in June, 2009.
Ah, I love it when a plan comes together.


They actually gave you a PhD for that? Did you have to prove it to the level of Physics or did they just not see how dangerous this sort of analysis is to people in power?

^don't you mean "in the hands of people in power"?

[redacted]

^ He owes his existence to Conan Obrien tho. If Conan hadn't been there to do his own shit his own way, and fearlessly fall flat on his face more often than not, Fergussen's show would be just the same as Leno. Late Night talkshow was a formula, Conan -if nothing else- changed that.

^It's a doctorate in clinical psychology, addressing the stress that advertisers induce in adolescents.

[redacted]

He says words weird.

FYI -- that' s not canned laughter. He has an audience. A real audience. He proves it nightly and laughs at the numbnuts on the internet who accuse him of having a Teamster in the back room running the laugh machine.

The really brilliant thing about this rant is the pressure he has been under to appeal to the younger demographic. He talks about it periodically -- how CBS keeps after him to appeal to the valued 18-35 male segment, or whatever it is. CBS wants him to dye his hair, they want him to do SOMETHING to appeal to the money-making demographic.

And then for him to come out and do this rant, where he tells that same demographic that they are young and stupid is subversive, honest, brave. Maybe his cause and effect isn't 100% accurate. But this guy is didn't claim to be a historian.

I adore Craig Ferguson. He can be silly and tiresome at times. I don't expect perfection. He is honest in a way that I have rarely seen on TV. He may not be right, but he is honest.

Mirror just in case: http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid30780834001?bctid=31237963001

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Wow, Craig and a baptist preacher are in complete agreement:

http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=7111187262

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*quality I'm missing ya already....

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by bareboards2.

My take on the Craig Ferguson show is that it would be a lot better if he was funny. When your sidekick is funnier then you , that's trouble. And if you take out the gay insinuations, references to past drug problems, and hamming it up to the camera, there's little content left at all.

just sounds like an old fart moaning about 'kids'

his argument is dumb. Until recently 'kids' ie. teenagers WERE adults.
It's only since mid last century that people got to live as old as this grumpy old man

With youth having more disposable income than other demographics it no wonder that they are catered to by media. Besides gaining brand loyalty at an early age is cheaper.

Kids are not smart they just have the dollars.