One evening lately, I decided to stop being an intellectual snob--or whatever someone like me who hates TV junk is called--and join the hoi polloi in their TV delights. My first stop was Real TV, with its endless images of carnage. You can relive your own moments with the crazed driver from H***, as he weaves through high speed traffic -- or even your own youthful experiences defying gravity. Bless the survivors of these episodes, as they always pride themselves on knitting up those broken limbs and doing it again.
Next up was The Blind Date. Here the humiliation of your adolescent years gets replayed in adult form. From the male braggart to the female tease, all the worst date scenarios unfold. Oh, you cannot believe the relief that I felt to be out of this 7th circle of Dante's Inferno. Is there a 7th circle? If not there should be. One male contestant actually took his date to a club in Atlanta called, Hell. Faux bondage was the club's speciality. You could just see the woman saying to herself, "Is this some weird prelude to the date's conclusion? Will I always be immortalized on A&E's American Justice--the Most Unusual Cases?
Real TV was making me extremely depressed, so I channel surfed until I hit the CBCs This Hour Has 22 Minutes. While waiting for yuks to start spreading through my necrotizing brain, I had to wade through a barrage of anti-conservative jokes. While the show might lampoon Chretien, CBC types never, ever lampoon the left's ideas. Somehow a lightning rod for satire such as Svend, has never felt their arrows of wit. (Sorry for the mixed metaphor I created there.). Depressed and then agitated, I skipped to Broken House, a homey-style show. That home did not look as broken as mine. I moved on.
My final viewing was of a CTV movie at 8PM. I wish I could tell you the title; but I tuned in five minutes late. Even if I could tell you, you could not remember it. It punched all the current PC buttons--child labour, whitey exploiting the poor innocent Congolese tribes, and, wait for it, the cynical redneck business types that fuel the factional fighting. I wanted to renounce my race immediately. And we thought only CBC could bring us such complex, in-depth dramas!
My final attempt to bond with the TV lovers out there will be my marathon viewing of Will and Grace.
The Bud just won't open to this crap!
* With apologies to Neil Postman, author of Amusing Ourselves to Death
