Posted October 30th, 2008 by Frank Maggio
NOTE: If you’re able to get through this post, I’d like to ask you to visit a website that every American with a passion for numbers (and life), needs to visit. The site’s address is www.ConceiveThis.
You see, there is no plasma in Limbo.
50 Million. It’s a staggering number. Even against the mind numbing $750 billion bailout, or the fast-approaching $10 trillion national debt, it’s a big number. For some perspective, 50 million used to be a barely achievable prime time TV audience, many years ago. Today, it’s reserved for major sporting events – and a road-blocked Obama infomercial, spread across seven networks.
Unfortunately, we can’t reach the 50 million I’m writing about today. In fact, all of Barack’s $605 million STILL won’t reach this audience, and truth be told, the day he meets them, Barack will long have stopped worrying about his pay grade.
I started running across the number “50 million” out of the blue, last week, when a friend sent me a link to a YouTube video called “Did You Know.” It’s been around a while, but I had never seen it before. It’s a pretty impressive mindblower about the expansion of our population, and our technology.
2 minutes and 36 seconds into it, the video attempts to explain how quickly each major media form achieved a 50 million audience. Radio: 38 years. TV: 13 years. Internet: 4 years. IPod: 3 years. FaceBook: 2 years. You get the picture. Interesting enough, but something inside distracted me; “Why 50 million?”
A couple of days later, my wife emailed me a link to “Just Tell Us The Truth,” a video produced by
What unfolded was a four minute stunner. I was transfixed because of the video’s palpable level of candor in its subject matter (which might be considered too controversial for some of our readers), but the perfectly timed soundtrack and raging countdown in the backdrop kept haunting me.
Until it ended, and the counter stopped.
At 50 million.
That’s how I was introduced to the missing 50 million. I couldn’t believe there were so many of them. So I dug into the numbers. I spent all day Saturday reading. Studying. Calculating. Verifying. Crying.
Sunday morning at 9:30ish, I was still immersed in research, and I came across the “World Clock” widget. It, too, is available on the ConceiveThis site. It is the most fascinating widget I have ever seen.
Among a vast myriad of info, the clock silently and methodically counts annual global deaths, every second, of every day. I happened to click the “Death” button between cups of coffee.
Do I need to tell you what milestone happened precisely on Sunday morning? Didn’t think so.
That was enough for me. I got it.
No, really. I got it.
To put 50 million further into perspective, I look at a much smaller number: 2,752. It happens to be the number of Americans who died on 9/11; for the record, they’re not a part of the missing 50 million. That said, as I recall, when we learned that we had lost these 2,752 Americans, the world stood still. Many couldn’t work. Wall Street shut down. The travel industry shuttered to a halt. We couldn’t even run an advertisement during a TV program.
It wasn’t just fear and anger that gripped us on 9/11. It was respect. Respect for life. How could anyone feel good about anything, while the memory of those innocent 2,752 Americans was so fresh on our minds? Smiling was impossible; commerce was disgusting.
4,186 is a larger number. As of today, it represents the number of American soldiers who have died in
4,636 is larger than both preceding numbers, and it DOES represent one small segment of the 50 million missing Americans. But with the exception of their mothers, some of their fathers, and a handful of “caring” butchers, nobody knows who they were. Having done the research, I at least know how many there were. They were the 4,636 Americans who died on 9/11, outside the view of the TV cameras. These are the Americans who died in abortion clinics on 9/11. And the same number of lives, on average, were muted each and every weekday that week. All year long.
The analogy helped me to realize that we have nearly two 9/11’s every weekday in
As members of the media, we need to recognize, acknowledge, and communicate. Members of the ad industry, we need to work together, creatively, to end this massacre of miracles. We ALL need to do something about it. We can’t keep quiet any longer.
I have made Life an issue this election. I agree it’s not the only issue, because saying that minimizes its importance. Life is the FIRST issue – respect for it is the litmus test required of a politician to qualify to represent me. Think about it - can we entrust a President that refuses to protect the most innocent lives, with providing us with elder care, economic stability, and protection from our enemies? Ask yourself - what will universal health care look like if it is managed by a culture of death?
Without getting Life right, no candidate has the proper moral compass with which to make any other decisions - at least not for me and the five little miracles that I am here to protect.
The rules of this game should be fairly simple:
Get Life wrong? Do not pass “Go.” Do not collect $400,000.
Make your vote this Tuesday about the protection of ALL life. I know of at least 50 million who would have agreed.
Frank Maggio is founder of several media concerns, including 7.TV, LLC, and erinMedia, LLC, a TV ratings company – but all that doesn’t seem to be important any longer. Frank can be contacted at FM@7.TV .
