-->Disclaimer: Extremely long entry. For those of you who don't read, the shorter, severly dumbed down version is this: "Television is a waste. It destroys lives."<-- br="">
Picture this: 1:15 am. Nothing to do. Totally unable to sleep due to consuming 6 cans of Mountain Dew in something like 6 hours. Thinking of updating my diary. I get side-tracked reading through someone else's diary. When I stumble upon something that is so utterly true and more or less my exact opinion on the subject. The subject in question is stupidity on TV. Here is that little gem I stumbled across:
"MY SACRIFICE
I, (insert my name here), on this blisteringly cold second of February, have watched my last minute of cable television. I turned the channel from Law & Order, a very interesting and intelligent show, to a show called “Son of the Beach,” and felt my intelligence quotient fall significantly as I slumped in my seat in disgust at this waste of unheardof sums of money. Just to think that the American public demands shows like this… that there are children that don’t know where their next meal is coming from and millions are being spent on these horrific displays of what people used to call “entertainment.” Bleached blonde silicon-stuffed sex kittens that entirely antagonize the idea of “female role model” are plastered across this show, spread eagle to these awful steroid-injected, melanoma-skinned moron men. The main ideas on this show are sex, the beach, stupidity, sex, slapstick comedy, the beach, and sex. And stupidity. Money is needed for AIDS research, cancer research, revamping educational systems, and millions upon millions are being wasted on duplicates upon duplicates of shows with the same stupid plot (that doesn’t exist), and the same stupid characters. This new generation of reality shows… stranding people on islands, placing random people in a living situation together, putting people in a place where they’re told to screw around with as many people as possible, putting people under strange circumstances and make them answer questions. I think we can all name at least two shows for each description I mentioned. Utter stupidity in this country of waste. While on the subject, I’m going to tell you the story of a man, and his decline into popular culture. This man graduated from Tulane University, and got his law degree from Northwestern in 1968. He worked on Senator Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign, until the senator’s assassination. He was elected the mayor of Cincinnati at age 33, making him one of the country’s youngest mayors, to date. In the early eighties, his career turned to broadcasting, where he was named Cincinnati’s top rated anchorman, with his name engraved into seven Emmy statues. This man is Jerry Springer, the king of the most abhorring exhibition of humankind in American mass media. Whenever I flip through the channels, it makes me ashamed to be an American to know that this is one of the most top-rated shows in my country. America used to be the land of promise, the land of prosperity and hope… immigrants used to move to our country looking for a better life, and THIS is what we have for them? Welcome to our disturbed popular culture… where sexual experimentation and violent explosions rule the mass entertainment media. America is the country of freedom, as we all know, so under the amendment of freedom of speech, these shows will forever continue to grace our presence. God bless America. I am not arguing the freedom of speech. I’m using it right now. I’m arguing the fact that we air shows that are sheer stupidity. There are good television shows, there are outstanding television shows. There are television shows that are so good that I shiver to think of them. Great plots, great stories, incredible writing. Television shows can be a truly mastered art. There is no point to the Jerry Springer show. This is not entertainment. Anyone who finds this entertaining for more than five minutes has the intelligence of a pile of shit. I, (insert my name here), have officially given up with television. I want to hang myself from a large international television satellite and hope that my rotting corpse will intercept at least one show, one terrible, disgusting show, so that maybe one child, somewhere, wouldn't have to feel the gruesome shame of being an American in the new millennium."
::me again::
That came from defatigued.diaryland.com. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for so beautifully expressing my feelings on the subject of television. I realize that I seem crazy to be thanking a total stranger, but whatever.
It's not just reality shows. Have you seen or read (I am aware of the fact that reading seems to physically hurt so many people nowadays, but I reluctantly included it. So, if it hurts you, send me some hate - mail, and then look into an education. You illerate freak!) some of the things that actually make the news anymore? I have some examples in some of my older entries. The thing with the turtle for example. For those of you who don't know the story, go read it. It's one of the "Modern stupidity" entries. I mean come on. Get real now. A turtle loses the use of it's back legs in a shoot-out. Someone donates a TV cart. Turtle can move again. End of story. PATHETIC!
You have the talk shows like Jerry Springer and Jenny Jones. You have the reality shows like Survivor 1-27. We have an entire network dedicated to broadcasting almost nothing but mind rotting filth (The FOX network for those of you who have become mindless zombies!). You have the supposedly not fake sporting shows (i.e. WWF Wrestling). You have the movies that are horrible, yet rake in millions of dollars.
You have the actors and actresses of all of the above living like gods for basically being stupid for a few million people for a brief time. They, in turn, have the press hounding them during their every waking moment. So therefore they also end up putting their personal lives (i.e. that show on MTV about celebrities' homes) up for grabs in the public domain. And then, the afore mentioned celebrity can not find work due to the mind altering hallucinagenic drugs they end up being addicted to in order to escape the horrible existance that is associated with being famous. At which point the celeb drops off the face of the earth, and, in effect, escapes the horrors of being famous. Finally, after many months or years, the person gets cleaned up. Makes a grand comeback to the entertainment world. Cycle then starts over again.
Basically television is a waste. It could be used for good if people were not stupid. There. It's out. That's how I feel about that issue.
