Being a person of the liberal persuasion comes with its own set of crosses which is okay because I'm more often cross than any other emotion most days anyway. so fair is fair. For the last couple of days there has been a torrent of what passes I suppose for thoughtful, thought-provoking articles and opinion pieces like this one.
Maybe I'm just Christmased out-or simply a greater black-hearted bozo (NOT my first choice of word, hope you appreciate that) but I'm entirely underwhelmed at the faux outrage of all of this (as I was for Paula Deen, Martha Stewart and at least a dozen other synthetic celebrity calamities) because none of them have anything to do with the world in which you and I live.
This is another air-strike we called in on ourselves. We invented innumerable channels of television, far more than we can watch in this or any three consecutive lifetimes, much less provide programming for, and ended up with shows about people who buy the contents of storage lockers, who repossess items people who couldn't afford them in the first place can no longer pay for, operate pawn shops so that those who are going broke and are about to be repossessed have one last chance at solvency preordained to be an epic fail, get up close and personal in tattoo parlors beyond what would ever be considered hygienic or sanitary and, last but not least, have programs with these guys, who resemble the Smith Bros Cough Drops meet ZZ Top. Seriously?
And we're amazed and disappointed at what comes out of their mouths when they are interviewed? We don't even wonder why they were interviewed because if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck it must be a duck.
I'm amazed it didn't happen sooner, more often, with more violence and virulence. It's goofy TV whose existence Newton Minnow presciently bemoaned sixty years ago. And here we are gathered around watching it like this was some sort of a seance and then Tweeting and FB'ing and Instagramming about it.
Wondering who's to blame? We are.
-bill kenny
No comments:
Post a Comment