Going for the Gulled
For someone who claims to watch little television, I certainly find lots to complain about on the boob tube. And in fact, I probably watch less than ten hours of television a week. Considering that the average American is watching about 30 hours a week, I suppose it could be said that I’m not pulling my weight. On the other hand, my brain is less washed than the average person’s. And I confess that I wish that there were more to watch; better mind candy, both information and entertainment.
Actually, I think information can be delivered in an interesting fashion, though you wouldn’t know it from watching the news these days. The media moguls tried to boost ratings and profits by making news more entertaining, but they went overboard, and now there is very little news and the entertainment isn’t very good either.
Linda likes relaxing in front of the television, although there is rarely a program that grabs her full attention. Usually she also has a newspaper or magazine — or at least a catalogue — somewhere in her line of vision with the television. Last week, she caught most of the Biography series entitled Absolute Power; they aired a series of profiles on Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Polpot, Nicolae Ceausescu, and Slobodan Milosevic.
How uplifting, er-hem. Five hours on these psychotic mass murderers, each crazier than the others. For Linda, who manages family law matters all day, it was probably something of a relief. At least she’s semi-inured to people treating each other horridly. But, she doth protested too much, she also picked up a lot of history that she hadn’t known before, and that is certainly worth something. These people did frame life for tens of millions of people, making their mark in a mostly negative way.
I suggest that someone might have capsulized the work of all five mass killers in a half-hour, and Linda would have learned more than she wanted. Plus they might have dropped in some truly significant information — beyond the statistics of the horrors — like the context of a world that failed to intervene to protect nations full of endangered citizens. After all, these horror stories were all written in the last thirty years. The United States, the United Nations, or others of the world community might have forced an end to these despots, but political cowardice and economic interests dictated complicity through incompetence or easier silence . Of course, you’re not going to hear that kind of perspective on Biography.
Linda has also been watching the Olympics, and she’s gotta be wondering if I should be allowed in the room if she has the television on. My complaint about the Olympics is the syrupy sports patriotism that has gotten completely out of hand. The hype and faux drama border on emetic; how ‘bout an event where the athletes pummel the commentators? If the networks were doing their job, they would cover the events on the basis of the best athletics. Instead, they focus on American competitors with such zeal that they miss some truly fine performances. Worse, the jingoism makes enemies of other athletes, and indeed of whole countries, and judges are vilified for their alleged anti-American decisions.
Our society is far too oversold on the narrow gauge of winning and losing, mostly as a result of television, which also seeds us with the belief that life is transient. If you don’t like the way things are going, change channels or tune in next week. That’s probably a fair call for most of the viewers and inevitably, the athletes, but it’s going to take more than that to rid the world of people like those who wielded absolute power on Biography.
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.