It's the Moopy and Mopey Show

Read THIS.

Moopy and I have had many conversations about this issue.

Granted this guys descends into "the government/political class is trying to control you" a bit too much (I assume who he means by this is Bush and all those bad, mean Republican fat cats). There's no conspiracy theory explaining why there's "no wonder the federal government plans to spend billions of dollars subsidizing the transfer from analog transmissions to digital ones"--it actually has more to do with freeing up EM spectrum for other types of wireless services.

But I agree with the basic line of thinking. TV is wasteful on several levels:

• it is a profound waste of time,
• it saps your creative energies,
• it does NOT inform you; rather it does something far more insidious in that it misleads you into thinking you're informed when you are not,
• it provides a patina of social interaction with the world but no real interaction, and
• it drives people to engage in unoriginal, imitative behavior.

Most important to me is this point: why waste your precious time on this mortal coil vicariously experiencing a phony and warped form of life when you can live your OWN real life directly?

I make one exception for myself, however; I will watch tennis with the help of my trusty VCR. [Yes, we haven't bought a DVD player yet!] Four times a year, tennis basically absorbs two full weeks of my time (each Grand Slam). We all have our foibles. Oh, and I like to watch Pimp My Ride. Yes, I am weak.

But remember Ned Flanders from the Simpsons? This guy's kids are going to turn out like Rod and Todd if he's not careful. Since Moopy and I aren't going to have kids, this issue fortunately doesn't touch us. At least his kids will be able to read and will (hopefully) have attention spans of more than two seconds.

One last thought, I take issue with the fact that you have to make a black and white choice:

• Choice 1: you watch TV 100 hours a week like the rest of the cattle out there, or
• Choice 2: you kill your TV and consign yourself to receiving blank stares at cocktail parties for the rest of your life.

I'm relatively conversant with what's on TV and I accomplish it by watching a few hours a MONTH (again, this doesn't count tennis!) and by occasionally scanning Yahoo news on media/entertainment. Total sum of time invested: about 4 hours a month.

Thus the blank stares I get at cocktail parties must be because of something else. :)

Mopey