Three Important Points
posted in General |Over on West 116th street, she’s taking a break from cable television. By “Taking a Break,” I mean — she’s cancelled her cable service and isn’t planning to renew.
The television irritates me. My favorite name for it is “the glass teat” (Thank you Harlan Ellison). Also available are “the idiot box” and “the boob toob.” Well, it’s not so much the television itself as staring at the damn thing for six or seven hours in a row. Oddly, the computer doesn’t bug me as much. To condense the West 116th entry, she has three points that the television does:
I conclude that television is an extremely effective and powerful way of controlling, manipulating, and distracting the American people. It works in three very basic and obvious ways:
- Making you the passive observer of current events.
- Making you a consumerist whore.
- Distracting you from the real problems.
I admit that there are times where I need to be distracted. But isn’t it a current media joke that the television media (Fox News in particular) hasn’t any news unless a young white girl goes missing under suspicious circumstances? I mean, I like my Battlestar Galactica as much as the next geek, but sucking on the pre-chewed entertainment for several hours at a time irritates me. And for a further “WTF,” who the heck wrote her and asked how their kid’s going to become a famous baseball player if they can’t watch ESPN?
