THE 1976 VERSION OF "NETWORK" FEATURED A DRAMATIC, ANGRY ON-CAMERA SOLILOQUY BY FED-UP ANCHORMAN, HOWARD BEALE-----AN UPDATED VERSION WOULD PROBABLY BE CALLED "NETBLOG" AND FEATURE AN ONLINE RANT BY BLOGGER HOWARD BEALE
(My apologies to Paddy Chayefsky.)


"I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. There's a war going on in Iraq and there's a war going on at home against terrorism, Korea has nuclear weapons and the whole world is pissed at us, everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job and you get strip-searched every time you go to the airport. The dollar buys a nickel's worth of product and the quality stinks, gas prices are way out of sight, social security is in danger of evaporating, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter, kids are killing kids in our schools, parents are killing kids, kids are killing parents, punks are running wild in the street or writing computer viruses, you can't even have a cigarette with your beer at the corner bar anymore and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do-----and there's no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe, our food is unfit to eat and our medicines are unfit to take, we have to update our virus definitions twice a day, and we sit at our computers while some on-line pundit with a news Blog tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, a hundred more computer viruses are in the wild, suicide bombers have killed more Americans in Iraq and some kid just brought a loaded gun to school and is barricaded inside, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house at our computers, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my computer and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to Email your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the virus attacks and the terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq and the crime in the street and the WMD's. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.

You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. Leave your computers. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, get up, leave your computers, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell, yell to the world - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the war in Iraq and the terrorist threat and the oil crisis and the computer virus attacks. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it, SAY IT!!:" "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"