Attack of the 27" Television

So, it's going on seven years now since I've stopped watching television. Don't get me wrong: we do own a TV and DVD player. We just decided we'd rather max out our Netflix queue than have any kind of cable subscription. Overall, it's been great. I can get all the news I want from NPR and the BBC, and the best TV shows eventually show up on DVD, blessedly commercial-free. So I'm only now working my way through season one of Heroes. I didn't mind waiting. Actually, it's been great: we get to mainline four episodes at a time.

The downside, of course, is that after seven years, our callouses have faded away: we've gone all soft and sensitized. Like in that episode of Little House when Albert was lost in the cave for days and was almost blinded by daylight when he finally found his way out. Plunk either of us down in front of a TV at an airport, a restaurant, or someone else's house and we have no defenses whatsoever. We sit slack-jawed and drooling, unable to turn away.

Last Friday I spent almost six hours in the waiting room at the MINI dealer in Albany while my car was being worked on. For that entire time, CNN broadcasted the same eight fun-sized stories in a continual loop and I was powerless to tune it out. Up until 9am or so, I was treated to Kiran Chetry on American Morning - a show that makes Entertainment Tonight look legitimate by comparison. When did E! takeover the morning news? I'm serious: it could well have been Mary Hart playing dumb and showcasing her boobs in a tight sweater while the cameras, lights, and animations panned and swooped like the finale of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. This woman may have been a competent journalist at one time, but now she's using the word "yucky" to describe a rat who surfaced in someone's toilet bowl.

Her favorite story of the morning was of Jayci Yaeger, a dying ten-year-old who wants to see her father one last time. Unfortunately, the warden at a South Dakota federal prison where dad is serving out a drug conviction has denied his request for the hospital visit. "Isn't that awful!" exclaimed Kiran. "Don't you just hate that?" What the hell? I know I've been out of the loop for a while, but since when does a news reporter have any business telling me what I should feel about a story? I'd expect that from The View, Bill O'Reilly, or local network news, but I somehow expected more from a CNN newscast. It made me think of that scene in Broadcast News where William Hurt's character films himself tearing up after an interview with a rape victim, then edits the emotional moment into the interview. It was viewed in the film as a serious breach of professional ethics, but that was what, twenty years ago? I guess we're long past that point.

OK, close the soapbox tag. I guess multiple hours of that shit is enough to turn mild distaste into outrage and heartburn.

I do seem, however, to be missing out on some cutting-edge commercials. Later in the weekend while I was glued to Sandra Lee on the Food Network (there's yet another TV personality that could induce the occasional seizure), I had the surprise of seeing this ClearBlue pregnancy test advert. As flashy and high-tech as a Gillette ad, we see the space-age stick glide across our field of view with all the grace of the Starship Enterprise during the opening credits of Star Trek: Next Generation. But it's the crystalline stream of pee arcing across the screen and splashing onto the stick that really makes it. So to speak.