Musings of a Dumb Ass

Musings of a Dumb Ass January 20, 2006............. I am an admitted confirmed television addict. When I'm at home it stays on 24 hours a day. Even though I admit this behaviour I don't really watch it that much. There's only one weekly prime time show that I watch all the way through and stay up with, and that's 'Desperate Housewives'. The rest can stay or go with the exception of those I absolutely change the channel on of which there are several on that list. I don't subscribe to cable or satellite, so I'm not a news hound either and since I'm getting so damned old I'm one of the few people who can remember the first time I saw a television. I was 5 years old in 1949 and a man down the street in Bonner Springs Kansas had one outside in the yard and the neighbors had gathered around watching it. There was a baseball game on it and I didn't pay much attention to it at that time. I was 12 years old before my family managed to get one and my addiction started then. I can remember what my world was before and during the early days of TV, and the changes were slow. My world was a very local thing and all my daylight hours were spent interacting with local people. Nearly all the news and things talked about was of a local nature. The movie theaters still showed news reels of politics and global happenings on Saturdays. I remember when the Today Show started with Dave Garroway and later his monkey in the mornings. I don't recall any intense news being broadcast all though lots of intense things were going on in the world. I used to spend lots of time with my stepfather in a long distance truck and I remember in 1957 we were in Louisiana and hurricane Connie was blowing Florida away and killing people. That was what the local people in New Orleans were talking about while we were there. We left Louisiana and headed back to Arkansas. When we got back, not many people in my home town had any idea about a hurricane in Florida. Over the years, this medium that has made us next door neighbors to every event on the globe has in the process taken away our bonds with our neighbors next door and down the street. In a regular week we have little time spent with Joe down the street or anything locally but spend hours with the network morning shows, the evening national news shows then the primetime news magazine shows of which there are many. When it's all considered the average person probably watches an hour of Katie Couric or whom ever in the mornings, an hour of national/with 10 minutesof local news plus local sports and local weather each day then during the week acouple hours of the likes of 20/20 or 48 hours then the Sunday news and political shows and pretty soon you've racked up 15 to 20 hours a week of network offerings, delivered by the same talking heads in succession. Katie Couric has no relationship with reality in the world I live in nor does any of the stiff as a board counterparts she competes with. They probably have to go into therapy after each bowel movement so they can deal with the smell of the event. All the people of the national anchor type genre talk about the same things, interview and visit with the same self centered celebrities hawking the same mundane books and usually bad movies or 4th rate music and walking away at the end of the day believing they understand the first thing about the common mans world. They have no idea the common man holds them in such disregard. I remember when the multi-talented and gifted messiah of the media Bryant Gumbel, Today Show person, defied anyone to find a breakfast in New York City for under 30 dollars, and that was when gasoline was under a dollar. It would appear Mr Gumbel is totally unaware of Rosies diner a half mile from my house where you can do the breakfast buffet that must have a hundred items on it, all you want for under 5 bucks, current price. Of course Rosie's isn't in New York City but I bet she has a distant relative in the diner business there. The greatest damage the stuffed shirts and skirts of News TV has done to us is to bore us and make it uninteresting to pay any attention to them at all. We would be so far ahead if the schedule were reversed and we had 20 hours of local news each week and 15 minutes of World and National daily. Fat Chance......................