Two words always come to mind with Andrew, "Namby Pamby"

Every moment spent away from the television is a moment wasted

Uh, I got TV. (/Jethro)

Ace, you should read The Vision of the Anointed by Thomas Sowell. Wonderful book. You'd love it. It develops some of the ideas you are mentioning.

RD,

If they make a sitcom out of it, I'll be sure to watch.

Just kidding. I think I'm going to pick it up next time I go to my local independent bookseller. (I only purchase books from independent booksellers, of course; I like spending more money for the priviledge of having a 50 year old college-student look down on my book purchases.)

Thank you for your daily dose of hate, homophobe. I bet you listen to talk radio too, like the other bigoted racist brownshirted friends. Shame on you and shame on all you Repugs.

Whoa! Watch your step. Troll Droppings!

Yeah, nothing at all bigoted about assuming everyone who listens to talk radio is a racist and Nazi. Does that include people who listen to Air America, or does it only count as talk radio if it's available nationally?

Remy...is that Fench for "Akefa?" You should know your stale "Repug" jokes show you to be nothing but a foolish infidel. There will be an accounting.

Er, "French." But you knew what I meant.

Wow, did you think of that on your own? Actually, aren't you plucking from the grab bag of that mental giant, Al Gore? Brownshirts...people who engage in this type of pathetic non-debate are engaged in a form of holocaust denial. Last I checked, Ace never hearded Jews off into a crematorium, but, hey, who knows? It is also striking in that those who openly espouse anti-Semitism find their home on the Left.

Now Remy leaves andrewsullivan.com as the link in his name and says "shame on all you Repugs". Does it bother Remy that Andrew Sullivan holds Reagan as a hero and has written numerous paeans about him? Perhaps he and Sullivan should have a talk about that.

"Thank you for your daily dose of hate, homophobe. I bet you listen to talk radio too, like the other bigoted racist brownshirted friends. Shame on you and shame on all you Repugs."

Liberal leftie,
loonies gone off the deep end;
too dumb to make sense.

This haiku has been brought to you courtesy of Rob.

Remy, btw, you forgot about the evil scheming to disenfranchise poor and black voters. Don't you question the timing of Hurricane Frances? I sure do.

Before he passed away, my Dad was a faithful watcher of The West Wing. This was ironic in several ways. For instance, later in life he HATED talking about politics - because it bored him. More importantly, it was ironic because my Dad was somewhere far to the right of Rush Limbaugh. I'd walk through the room and ask him, "How can you watch that shit?" and all he'd say was, "Shut up!"

Last year, just before Bravo started showing the repeats, I thought I owed it to him to watch the show from the very beginning and try to figure out what made the dear, departed Old Man tick. I watched every episode they had in the can up to that point, every night, never missed it.

The show is awesome. Now, before I get the men in the white coats at my doorstep... After getting clued-in to The West Wing, I recalled another TV show my Dad used to like from my childhood: All In the Family. He loved it when that great American (Archie Bunker) would tell the traitorous, disloyal, ingorant Meathead where to stick it. When I was a kid, I knew who these people were and what they were saying, and I never got that either.

I now understand. Hollywood can make their TV shows, and write their scripts that tell you what to think. But they can't tell you how to watch TV. So when my Dad would watch the "comedy" All In the Family, he thought he was watching an action/adventure flick. And when he (and I) watch the "drama" The West Wing, we're really watching a comedy. And when you watch it like that, it's some of the best stuff on television. Even if the assholes that produce it think they're serious.

UPDATE-WITHIN-A-COMMENT: Whoa, I write a little novella and come out of Preview to see that even after a troll has come and gone, I'm still on-topic. How could I possibly enjoy The West Wing as a comedy, Remy, if I don't think for myself?

"There will be an accounting!" LOL..that Akefa was something. Remy could only hope to aspire to that level of trolldom.

Back O/T: "I only watch PBS" probably leads to the following statements being uttered:

"I only listen to NPR";
"The only magazine I read is the New Yorker, because if it isn't a hardback, it simply isn't reading!";
"I only drink French wine.";
"I only eat French cheese.";
"Excuse me, but might you have some grey poupon?";
"It just isn't a 'band' if it doesn't have woodwinds.";
"While Beethoven was good, he was no Bach.";
"And Bach, after all, was no Brahms!";
"Really..who wears white after Labor Day?";

Ace--

Great post, agree with it all.

Personally, I kinda regret not watching more TV. I think of all the episodes of Manimal and Automan and Jake & The Fatman I watched over the years, and how I'm still living large off all that pop culture. It's 90, 95% of my humor (it's the Google age-- why be original when you can link?)

But the fuel tank is emptying-- the 90's were a bit of a blur, and really, not all that cool. Seinfeld and the Simpsons and that's about it. This decade might as well have occured on Mars, at least when it comes to television.

I watched the first two Real Worlds (sorta), but by the time they got to Road Rules I was like "This is really effing stupid now that I have M2 on my cable system." But I don't even watch *videos* anymore. I remember the days of Top 40, when Casey or Shadoe or even Rick "Corky" Dees gave me a sampling of what all the cool kids were listening too. Now, the music marketplace is so segmented, I don't know if Ja Rule or Jo-Jo jokes are even funny.

A lot of this is probably due to my getting older, and getting new responsibilities; its a lot easier to sit in front of the TV all day when you don't worry about a mortgage, or bathing. I just don't have the time for According to Jim, or its spinoff ATJ: Miami. I pretty much plan my television viewing year in advance now:

"24? Check. The Sopranos? Check. Deadwood? Check, you cocksucker."

But I don't think it's all age; I think we've been witnessing the collapse of pop culture as we know it, and for some time now. 3 networks means everybody gets the joke; 500 networks means you rely on somebody else to explain the joke for you. Diversity and selection is great for scratching the itch, but it grinds away at our collective memory. Battle of the Network Stars ain't The Federalist Papers, but at building cultural unity it's better than nothing at all.

The other factor at play is that once we started shooting up with the opiate of nostalgia, we were bound to eventually suffer a crash. We've run out of decades to be nostalgic about (Proof: VH1's "I Love the 90's" No, you don't. No one did, except Enron). We've hit the wall, and we're waking up to the fact that the pop culture we're churning out today is pretty fragile when compared to Shrinky-Dinks or Sly & The Family Stone.

Anyways, just my two cents. But I'm with Ann-- I *always* want to watch more TV than I do, if only to remain culturally relevant to the youngins.

Cheers,
Dave
Garfield Ridge

Remy. Idiot.
Join Kerry's Kool-Aid Brigade™!
Remy. French name? Hmm...

Ace, you are SO on target! My mom would say she loves PBS, but I don't think she's watched a show (on it) in years ... it would interfere with all the TOTAL crap she watches. REally, I think she's given up the pretense of it all ... because she's so addicted to all the crap shows (I'm ready to give up my TiVo now that "Angel" and "Buffy" are gone.) It goes with the disdain for Walmart, and wonderbread ... cultured people just don't DO that. My best friend has been living in NYC for too long - now during EVERY event where I see and her artist husband, I hear about how they don't HAVE a tv. @@. Of course, they watch Sex and the City, and all that other crap, on DVD on the computer. Really, it's about what they SAY, and what they do. What's the difference if you watch something on DVD, verses just watching them when they're on? You're somehow superior?? Of course, Foxnews is reason enough to keep my TV forever. Of course, when Greta comes on, I have to turn it off ...

One word: Cops.

I'm watching it right now. Effing brilliant.

Dude. It's every American's God-given right to denegrate USA TODAY!. It's a @#$% paper of the first order.

Let me go way back up the thread. Thomas Sowell is one of the most important serious authors of the last 30 years. He's prolific and all over the map--topically speaking. He's brilliant. His writing is straight forward. And he is prescient in a way that few can hope to be. And of course, he's available at townhall.com a few times a week in 750 word essay bites. Everyone should read him.

/sowell fan

Mmmm, Ribwich.

Gosford Park was an awesome movie.

And you forgot one other hallmark of the pseudo-aristocratic Liberal Elite: complete oblivion to the fact that the rest of us don't give a Rattus norvegensis' hairy ass what they think.

I've never understood the media snobs. Hardbacks are somehow classy but so they retoactively lose that status when a paperback edition is released? Broadcast television is awful but the same shows on DVD with commentary covering the creation of each episode in excruciating detail is a fine investment.

This put-on elitism of the US left is an example of "Bourgeoisophobia" as defined by David Brooks in these two Standard pieces:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/102gwtnf.asp

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/165xqyni.asp

IMO, the insights contained in these two pieces are invaluable, explaining why the American is the new Jew, and how the contemporary, "don't just do something, sit there" left is related to Murderous Islam, Communism, Fascism, and every other ghastly, flesh-eating religion that has shown its malignant face since the enlightenment.

"I only watch PBS"

"I never fall, that SOB knocked me over"

i never get tired of telling people that, out of all the efforts i have seen put forth in the business of show, nothing has compelled me more than "america's funniest home videos".

there is nothing better to strip away the horror of beslan than to see dogs stealing frankfurters from 3 year olds, earnest young fathers taking a whiffle ball bat to the nuts, drunken wedding reception revelers eating shit while dancing on tables, etc.

i tried, really, i did. ken burns bored the shit out of me.

oh, and spiegelman is a fucking shitbird.

I second Ann Coulter! lately I have been steady on with 6 Feet under, Deadwood of course, Law and Order, Simpsons above all.
My favorite current quote [Marge, at a town meeting, is urging the town to give up TV for a month] Krusty: "A world without television? The living would envy the dead!"

Hey TBR--

You're absolutely right about not having to take these things seriously. When I was in law school we had a special showing for one class of "The People Vs. Larry Flynt". the prof was a cool semi-liberal and on the way out I told her, "you know, that film was the most eloquent argument in favor of censorship I've ever seen."

She told me to shut up, but she was laughing.

The WSJ had a feature this weekend or last weekend about how Bill Maher reproduced "Hell House", a fire-and-brimstone Christian morality play, but they did it all, you know, snarky and ironic. So I say turnabout is fair play.

Paglia on Sontag's assertion that she doesn't even own a TV: "Not having a TV is tantamount to saying 'I know nothing of the time or country in which I live.' Television IS America, and year by year it is becoming the world."

To be fair, Coulter watches Young & the Restless, which is just so inferior to Days of Our Lives

Personally, when it comes to the significance of television in this culture, I feel America's been on the downhill slide since "The A-Team" went off the air.

Kenny Blankenship rules!!!

Damn it! I'm late on this one, but just have to say that Remy is Phrench for Ream Me.