I’m a liberal Vermonter, right? What that means, along with a lot of other things, is that I have to be smug about certain decisions that I’ve made, especially those decisions that somehow relate to the way “the rest of America” is choosing to live their lives.
I don’t enjoy being smug. But it’s what you have to do if you want to be a part of the Northeastern Liberal Elite. Some liberals choose to be smug about their hybrid cars, while others choose to be smug about their vegetarianism (god help you if you run into a smug vegan!). There’s the anti-Chain Store smugness, the kind where you refuse to shop at Wal-Mart, eat at McDonald’s, or drink at Starbucks. There’s even a literary smugness that shuns Harry Potter, Stephen King, or Nelson Demille.
But my smugness is saved for a very specific part of American society. I’m not smug about hybrid cars (though I would prefer to own one). I’m not smug about vegetarianism (though I would prefer to eat organic beef and free-range poultry). I’m not smug about chain stores (though I would prefer to frequent independently-owned establishments). And I’m not even smug about books (though I would prefer the lost tales of Borges or Joyce). No, my smugness is directed at something else. I save my smugness for television.
When people ask me if I’ve seen the latest episode of Lost, Deal or No Deal, or 24, I tell them (smugly), “I don’t have a T.V.” This isn’t exactly true, since I own two television sets, but it’s basically true, because both of the sets are in storage. When they were in my apartment, I said, “I don’t get T.V.” This would always bring a quizzical look to the person’s eyebrows (especially if the person was in my apartment and standing in front of my T.V.), and so I would continue, “I have a television set, but we only use it to watch DVDs and play videogames. I don’t have T.V. the service.”
There are a couple of reasons behind this decision. The first is practical. Both my life-partner and I are completely addicted to television. When we go to Boston or Chicago to visit family, we spend an insane amount of time in front of the T.V. Thanks to On-Demand, we’ll watch whole seasons of Real World in an afternoon and whole seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm in an evening. It’s terrible. Not only do we not get anything accomplished, but we also feel spiritually drained at the end of the day. We hate it. But like all addicts, we can’t help ourselves.
The second reason is because, once you’ve been away from the world of television for any length of time, it’s difficult to go back into it. Whenever I watch television now, I am completely amazed at how the rest of America has any sense of reality. Television-watchers live their lives under a constant siege of marketing. I’m not talking just about the commercials and the product placements. But also — and most of all — the marketing of ideologies. From the evening news to Oprah, from the tabloid television shows to MTV and VH1, the majority of television seems to be an attempt to convince viewers that the world is a very specific way. You’d think that with 200+ channels, you’d find some ideological diversity, but there seems to be only one reality that the television wants shows you, and it’s a very ugly and very petty world. The second reason we don’t own a T.V. is because we don’t want to live in its version of the world.
But there’s more to being liberal than smugness. There is also cultivating an open-mind about pretty much everything, and when it comes to television, I try to keep an open mind. I don’t shun T.V. for shunning’s sake. I shun T.V. because, more often than not, it disappoints me. There are counter-examples, of course. I absolutely loved Carnivale, Six Feet Under, Northern Exposure, M.A.S.H, Oz, The West Wing, etc. And even now, we regularly download shows from the iTunes Music Store. Along with The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, we follow Gray’s Anatomy and The Office, and despite the fact that it’s a terrible, terrible show, I’m still downloading Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip out of some sort of imagined obligation to Aaron Sorkin, a kind of “thanks” for giving me so many hours of pleasure with The West Wing.
So I’m not really anti-television. I’m just anti- the world depicted by the conglomeration of television. Thankfully, I think technology is tending things in my favor. With things like TiVo, Netflix, the iTunes store, BitTorrent, and YouTube, more and more people are walking away from the world of broadcast television. They’re rejecting the reality that would be forced upon them and choosing instead to select a world of their own. The absence of channel surfing that is created by these technologies means people are no longer subjecting themselves to ideological marketing by osmosis.
The danger, of course, is that by self-selecting your own reality, you’ll be blind to the actual reality. This was the (self-serving?) warning from NBC News anchor Brian Williams in TIME’s Person of the Year issue. In his op-ed, Enough About You, Williams wrote:
It is now possible–even common–to go about your day in America and consume only what you wish to see and hear. There are television networks that already agree with your views, iPods that play only music you already know you like, Internet programs ready to filter out all but the news you want to hear. The problem is that there’s a lot of information out there that citizens in an informed democracy need to know in our complicated world with U.S. troops on the ground along two major fronts. … The whole notion of “media” is now much more democratic, but what will the effect be on democracy?
This same concern — that by making reality democratic, we devalue reality — is also shared by Stephen Colbert, who in a “Word of the Day” sketch, called it “Wikiality,” in reference to Wikipedia (in philosophical terms, this is called “social constructionism“). With his trademark sense of irony, Colbert said:
…which brings me to tonight’s word: Wikiality. Now, folks, I’m no fan of reality, and I’m no fan of encyclopedias. I’ve said it before. Who is Britannica to tell me that George Washington had slaves? If I want to say he didn’t, that’s my right. And now, thanks to Wikipedia, it’s also a fact. …We should apply these principles to all information. All we need to do is convince a majority of people that some factoid is true. …What we’re doing is bringing democracy to knowledge.
This is a valid concern. The individual who would only watch those shows, read those books, and hear those songs that reinforce one’s own sense of reality could easily fall into the trap of self-delusion. For all the effect one’s own free-will is having on the flow of information, the individual might as well be kept prisoner by the networks. The trick to participating in a democratic system of media is to be conscious — and wary — of your own desire to feel good and right all the time. The responsible participant will expose oneself to opinions and ideologies that are counter-intuitive.
But what Williams (and perhaps Colbert) don’t seem to understand is that the dictatorial media system that we’ve had for the last 50 years has prevented the American populace from becoming a responsible participant in the process by denying us the freedom of choice.
In the book Infinite Jest, which is (in part) about a kind of television show that kills everyone who sees it by making them so addicted to its pleasure that they would rather starve than turn their attention away, a Quebecois says of the American concept of freedom:
Always with you this freedom! For your walled-up country, always to shout “Freedom! Freedom!” as if it were obvious to all people what it wants to mean, this word. But look: it is not as simple as that. Your freedom is the freedom-from: no one tells your precious individual U.S.A. selves what they must do. It is this meaning only, this freedom from constraint and duress. … But what of the freedom-to? Not just free-from. Not all compulsion comes from without. You pretend you do not see this. What of freedom-to. How for the person to freely choose? How to choose any but a child’s greedy choices if there is no loving-filled father to guide, inform, teach the person how to choose? How is there freedom to choose if one does not learn how to choose?
What Williams (and perhaps Colbert) don’t get is that, for the people of their generation, there never was a freedom of choice, and so, over the course of their formative years, they never learned how to choose. But for the children of this and later generations, learning how to choose will be the most important lesson of their lives. In order to survive with any sense of dignity, they will have to learn how to evaluate sources, how to discover motivations, and how to prevent themselves from, as the Quebois says, “choosing candy” all the time.
Sitting here, in liberal Vermont, I choose to be smug about not owning a television, about not subjecting myself to the force-fed information of an ugly and petty world that the networks broadcast twenty-four hours a day, seven-days a week. But I also choose to be mature and responsible for my own edification. I am not smug about making this choice. Rather, I am deadly serious.
16 Comments
I admire your will, which I have not. I don’t watch a lot of t.v., but I do feel the need to have it on whenever I’m home…it’s like a security blanket to me.
I would say I watch (because I know your all dying to know)
11 and a half minutes in the morning (while eating my cereal (Kashi Crunch) or scrambled egg beaters (with ketchup)) and extra large cup of OJ (With Pulp (which Sarah actually strains out with a hand strainer (cause she’s psycho)))
45 or so minutes between the hours 7:30 and 8:30 at which time Sarah and I have dinner and flip back and forth between Good Eats, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and The Celtics (for score updates)
Aside from the celtics, the other three programs are considered gender neutral and generally enjoyable by us both.
(Note: If I got to the gym after work (and before dinner), I’ll watch the full sportscenter (the 11 minutes from the morning +) interspersed (during commercial) with Celtics Tonight - which is some kind of weird NESN pre-celtics game program that provides very little actual information but entertains me at the barest of bare minimums (which is a pretty good summary of everything on NESN)
Then, depending on what else is happening, TV then comes on around 9ish for Netflix Stuff - Which used to be strictly movies but currently includes many more HBO shows, for instance right now we are plowing through The Wire (Season 3) and Carnivale (Season 1). Looks like (the movie) Sherrybaby is coming next week.
Things on my netflix coming up that I’m excited for: (cause again, your dying to know)
Evening Harder (the sequel to An evening with Kevin Smith)
When the Levees Break (still a short wait, but I can feel it getting closer)
Carnivale (Season 2)
And that’s about it - (for during the week)
During the weekends, I watch extended versions of SportsCenter in the mornings whlie Sarah is still sleeping (the highlight being The Sports Reporters on Sunday at 10). During the commercials I will usually look for the Phantom Gourmet (even though it feels like I’ve seen all 7 episodes a thousand times)
All in all, I feel like I shun TV for the most part, I don’t watch any network shows with any regularity (although I hear the office is great and people tell me Lost is amazing) and this is probably because I don’t have Tivo (wich I fully intend to get) - because then I could watch these shows on weekend mornings (While sarah is asleep) and I’m staring (like a zombie) at sportscenter watching highlights for the NHL, College Basketball, and many other sports that I TRULY don’t care about…..just waiting for Peter Gammons to come on for fifteen seconds and tell me that one of the new redsox pitchers is “special” and a “good person”.
So the real question is, what do I do with that time when other people are planted in front of the tubes watching tv shows….writing brilliant treatises (no), building incredible new inventions (no), cooking wonderfully delicious meals (not really), generally improving my self as both a citizen and pseudo intellectual (absolutely not)
more often than not, I’m sitting at my desk, organizing it, filiing papers, surifng the net reading news and sports articles, reading blogs, writing emails, watching youtube videos, and just generally killing time (like posting on this website)…
I’m not sure what that all means….
I forgot one thing:
KMN
I’ll tell you what I’m doing while everyone else is watching television: MYSPACE and FLUID IMAGINATION.
Back to the article at hand, Kyle this was a good read and of course I chuckled over the term life-partner, I myself could be considered a half-smug liberal or a smug half liberal or a half smug-half liberal, which entails owning a television but watching no TV, eating vegetarian except when pork lustfully calls my name, not owning a car, because there is no car to be had, not shopping at chain stores except for the slight Starbucks addiction (TWO on my street, one at each end of the block) and not reading those awful Harry Potter, Stephen King type novels unless I am visiting my family and need to zone into something mind-numbing.
Love the post buddy.
what’s KMN?
KMN means Kill Me Now.
unlike adam, i love tv and i refuse to feel bad about it. he is obsessed with sports and who is doing what on which sports team, and i am obsessed with watching the food network or project runway. we have had many arguments about the difference between being obsessed (or generally liking) tv and being obsessed (or generally liking) something else . .. and i still don’t see the difference. it is just that people have a general belief that tv is the devil and sucks your soul. which i am not sure it does. i think it has the ability to do that, but so do many other things in life (such as trash novels, which i also read and love) that people somehow feel ok about.
one can learn many things from tv (such as how to properly seed a pomegranate or how coral reproduces, or how to create a dress out of trash) and it is not all bad. and, watching tv through netflix does not mean that you don’t watch tv.
I hear you, Sarah. That’s kind of why I wrote this post, because while I’m smug about not having TV in my place, I probably watch about a five of hours of TV per week, what with downloading the Daily Show and Colbert and checking out the new episodes of The Office and Gray’s Anatomy (though sometimes Dawn and I will go on a tear and watch a bunch of stuff over the course of a night).
I realized that it’s not really watching TV that I loathe, as much as it is having access to bad TV…which is the majority of what’s on television. I’m talking MTV, the 24-hours news channels, VH1, and pretty much all the network stuff. But like, I love HBO, and repeats of Seinfeld, Friends, The Simpsons, Family Guy, etc.
Basically, what I’m saying is that I’d probably have a TV in the house if we had TiVo.
But of course…that would become it’s own problem, not because the shows would be bad, but because, as I mentioned in my post, I’m addicted to TV. So with that in mind, let me amend my last comment and say, TiVo or not, there’s no TV in the house.
How DO you properly seed a pomegranate?
Kyle you know there is a way to watch tv through your computer pretty much for free, oh wait you have a mac. Nevermind
Kyle,
There are plenty of things out there that you don’t actually like (let alone obsess) over that you could avoid and be smug about….why not be smug that you don’t eat a lof of chocolate…that would be easy, because you don’t like chocolate….or be smug that you work from home (I mean who would ever commute in this day and ag)
It’s funny that you chose one of the things that you are absolutely most fond of (to the point of obsession) to take away from your life and then become smug about not doing it…… that’s weird.
Sarah,
There is something about watching “general” tv - channel surfing if you will, that, to me, just feels like my brain is draining out of my head…for some reason, when I watch sports, or surf the net (watching stupid videos of people making mentos bombs or singing dick in a box) my brain doesn not feel that way…and then I logically make the conclusion that everyone must feel the same way that I feel, and thus I can’t understand why you like the feeling of your brain draining out of your head…right, I mean right?!?!?!
Believe me, I’m sure there are people out there who are smug about not eating chocolate…or rather, they’re probably smug about only eating chocolate from Switzerland or San Francisco. And while I’m definitely extremely happy about the work from home situation, I don’t think it’s necessarily something to be smug about.
But the TV thing has social cache, since a lot of people own one despite the fact that it makes them feel like their brain is draining out of their head. So my smugness is the smugness of a recovered alcoholic who stands over the drunk puking in the corner and says, “Man, I’m so much better than you, because I used to be there, but I got myself cleaned up.”
So it’s that kind of thing.
Dawn, to properly seed a pomegranate (according to Martha anyway) you cut it in half (or fourths, although Martha only scores it and then uses a knife to pry it apart - she doesn’t like to make any “blood”), then get a bowl and tap the pomegranate with a wooden spoon over the bowl until all the seeds are out. works like a charm!
I like Fox and Friends.
There’s nothing better than irritating the shit out of yourself at six in the morning when you’re trying to go to bed.
why are these words arranged in such a way?
it makes my head hurt…
please stop typing…
so much…