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Sunday, January 11, 2004
Life is Tough, Joe Joe Honig's dad gave him a big plasma TV for Christmas. It complicated Joe's life--for the worse. Can he give it back? Jerry Mander has an answer :: It was only after a long while and many half-steps of change in viewpoint that I finally faced the fact that television is not reformable, that it must be gotten rid of totally if our society is to return to something like sane and democratic functioning. Four Arguments for the elimination of television follow. Neil Postman [ Amusing Ourselves to Death] also provides some insights :: It is my object in the rest of this book to make the epistemology of television visible again. I will try to demonstrate by concrete example ... that television's conversations promote incoherence and triviality ... and that television speaks in only one persistent voice — the voice of entertainment. Beyond that, I will try to demonstrate that to enter the great television conversation, one American cultural institution after another is learning to speak its terms. Television, in other words, is transforming our culture into one vast arena for show business. It is entirely possible, of course, that in the end we shall find that delightful, and decide we like it just fine. This is exactly what Aldous Huxley feared was coming, fifty years ago. I say hock the big TV, buy a lot of these books and distribute them widely. (Honig, of course being a TV writer is not likely to take this advice.)
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