I used to like Sunday mornings. When I was a kid, there was nothing more exciting than the Sunday comics. They had their own section, and i could sit at the table and eat my breakfast in glorious full color print. I didn't care what they were- 3G, Mary Worth, Ziggy. But then I got older, and I discovered that the real "funnies" were wrapped inside a lot of the ugliness euphemistically referred to as "the news". And suddenly Sunday's weren't so fun anymore. I mean, I still read the Sunday paper - it's like a ritual - like brushing your teeth or putting the trash out. But now, most Sundays are just full of more "intellectual pursuits." Like playing Warhammer, or watching the cat bathe his testicles for like THE BILLIONTH TIME.
In the old days, talk shows were considered forums for discussion - Jack Parr, Dave Garroway, Fred Muggs. To wit, once upon a time, there were actually people who fought to use the medium for a purpose. But that was before people knew rating and share numbers better than they knew their own children, when access to television wasn't limited by a pundit's TV rating, and success wasn't measured in terms of decibel level. They say that television is a visual medium, that somehow the fact of its pictures gives the medium an inherent truth. I mean, "a picture is worth a thousand words." But are they really worth anything at all?
The "news" blurbs that maybe coffee is bad for you again. It seems as if the research goes in cycles - one year its fine, the next its right up there with cigarettes and smog. Kind of like television. The funny thing is, the coffee itself never changes - just our perception of it.
Which, I guess, is kind of like television too. But that all belies the issues - the real point is money. Image. The picture. "Experts" reduce issues to glib sound bites and witty asides because they need immediate reaction and if they don't hold your attention, you might change the channel. Then ratings slip, and the dollars and influence and power start to slip as well. It doesn't matter what you say as long as you say it well. To accuse television of being shallow and all surface is an insult to things that are shallow. Because television never understood that the only pictures that really matter come from within. You can't watch them on a 42" screen. "Experts" can't tell you about them. You have to feel them. Feel what they mean. Feel the real, human pain behind the wisecracking and five second sounds bites. Television doesn't see things for what they are. it sees them the way those in control want them to be seen. They can translate the horrible into something out of a boy scout manual. They can pretend their way into solutions, trivialize a problem into a remote abstract, but the picture always has a face behind it.
And now, they have shows that are nothing but commercials, disguised as legitimate programming. Programmers wonder why their shares are falling - it's because they've lost touch with the people. Everything is so processed and refined. I mean, I don't want to see Angela Lansbury playing detective, or watch a bunch of whiny thirty-somethings moan about their tax returns and pathetic sex lives, or endure a panel of self-appointed "experts" reducing the issues of the days to pabulum. I'm sick of that shit. Screw the phony histrionics, the dumb laughs, the mock dramatic moment. Give me something real, something tangible, give me something that can get old paint off a table. We count on the experts. We count on them to tell us who to vote for, what to eat, how to raise our children. We watch them on TV, listen to them on the radio, read their opinions in magazine and newspaper articles and letters to the editor. We trust them to tell us what to think, because there's too much information out there and not enough hours in a day to sort it all out. We should stop trusting them right this second.
Maybe I'm pushing the analogy. Maybe its all a crock of shit. But just think about what I've said, the next time you see a news report, or a commercial advertising the next best thing, or really anything on television. Question everything, question the source of the info, and decide for yourself if "experts" really matter.
we build a future to honor the past we've left behind
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