A rambling post about television.
This site may be called Iowa Liberal but I can assure you, our beloved readers, that when Jeromy and I talk privately and start complaining about liberals sometimes you’d swear you were overhearing an exchange on AM radio. When you live in Iowa City you live amongst an unlimited supply of smug, Sixties burnouts, unemployed, thirty-something grad students, and Prius drivers who are “very concerned” about the environment and think they deserve gold medals for getting another ten miles per gallon more than my Camry. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love this town, but the preening gets to be a little much at times. So to follow up on Jeromy’s post regarding his distaste for the lefty love of Che Guevara gear, I’d like to mention one of my peeves; people who make a point of letting you know that they don’t watch television.
Yes, I know that television programming exists in order to keep you immobile in between commercials and that it’s full of garbage and that it’s a public resource handed over to private industry and that it turns you into an out of shape, couch dweller. Believe it or not, I am aware of all these terrible things. But somehow the detractors know all this without owning or watching a television. It’s too bad for them because I doubt that the sense of fulfillment they get from lecturing me is as great as the enjoyment I get by watching an episode of Dexter on Showtime.
-mg
ps – One thing that I do make a point of steering clear of is cable news. FOX, CNN, MSNBC, it doesn’t matter. The android delivery, the generic gestures, the ham-fisted writing, I find it all just too excruciating to watch. And holy smokes, lets not forget about the phony issues they obsess over.
October 14th, 2007 at 9:53 am
Yeah Mike I mean – think back to my house when we lived in Iowa. Satellite dish, right? Full sports package, right? The whole nine. But when we moved to NC, the Dish network couldn’t get a clear shot at the house (too many trees), so we went cold turkey. And you may not like to hear it, but our lives improved significantly. I’m not anti-TV, it has its place, I make heavy use of it in hotel rooms around the country and the world. But a cable-free house? That’s got some value, and I’m talking from both sides of the issue – whatever I’m missing by never having seen an episode of The Wire, I have a feeling I get it back plus interest in the vibe of a cable-less household. I could see myself becoming one of the We Don’t Have A TV drones if it weren’t for these pesky videogames.
October 14th, 2007 at 11:55 am
Cable for us is something like twenty, twenty five dollars more than if we were to just have internet and I offset the cost of it all by charging the neighbors use of my Wi-Fi. I guess I could just BitTorrent the two or three shows I like but hell, what’s twenty bucks a month?
October 14th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
And how can you not miss Iron Chef?
October 15th, 2007 at 1:32 am
Thomas: I don’t have cable either…but we watch DVDs rather voraciously, and if there’s a quality show out there, I rent the DVD and watch it straight through without commercials (currently going through season three of “The Office,” f’ing brilliant show). It’s kind of the best of both worlds…I don’t get sucked into scanning channels looking for something, anything to watch. I deliberately choose what and when to watch. And I’m almost never bored.
And then when I go back to Iowa for two weeks of Tivo, I go freaking nuts and watch as much TV as I possibly can.
October 15th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
I would just like to add that those that let you know they dont watch tv usually dont hesitate to add that they listen to NPR,in a tone that has a certain borglike pretentiousness about it.
October 15th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Cuz NPR is so high-brow.
I listen to it during my commute to work just because I can’t stand THE MORNING ZOO WITH *BLAH* *BLAH* *BLAH*!!!!! That and I’m a pretentious, latte drinking, effete librul.
October 15th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Oh, and you can’t forget about Ira Glass documenting the trials and trevails of life in upper middle-class America.