TV Since JFK by Jim Goad
Friday marks the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination.
Putting that aside, the most important question for the average American would be: How does the modern primetime network TV lineup differ from that of 50 years ago?
I don’t own a TV—yes, I’m one of those people—so most of what I’ll say about today’s fare will be based on inferences drawn from online synopses. I couldn’t even bring myself to watch sample clips on YouTube—I’m usually willing to bleed for you, dear readers, but there are some things I simply won’t do. Eating live insects is one. Watching modern TV or movies is another. We all have our limits. . . .
http://takimag.com/article/tv_since_jfk_jim_goad/print#ixzz2l2rPpx6fI do have a television, but it is only connected to a VCR and a disc player that I don't use either.
Well done, Goad, but if Miss Hathaway was a lesbian, she had a strange way of showing it, ardently chasing after Jethro at every opportunity. Rochester was often the voice of sanity contrasted to Jack Benny's comic miserliness. I guess the variety show was killed by having so many channels to choose from and, especially, the remote.
Mary Tyler Moore (for you younger readers, besides 'The Dick Van Dyke Show,' Moore starred in 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show,' about a young woman who benefited from white privilege before Minneapolis happily went Somali) has joked that she came out with a variety show (not 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show') right when that art form was dying. For better or worse, David Letterman was one of its writers and performers. But one wonderfully funny bit I recall was a recurring one called 'The Ed Asner Dancers,' where maybe five guys, obviously professional dancers, or had been, who looked amazingly like the stocky rumpled Ed Asner, who would dance around in the synchronized graceful manner that was common to dancers inhabiting variety shows at the time. Making it funnier still was that it was done completely straight, as if these were your typical beautiful svelte variety show dancers. Thinking of it still makes me smile.
Of course with a computer connection, good luck getting away from popular entertainment and its attack on the West. In the past I would try to briefly escape the world by streaming some action adventure film to let its special effects or CGI just sort of wash over me. But such movies as 'Independence Day' or 'The Avengers' are so over-the-top in propagandizing political correctness that I have finally given up. I should just laugh. I do, but it still disgusts me.
Out of endless examples, in 'Avengers' you have, of course, a black boss over all these superheroes, who, of course, need to call him 'Sir' five thousand times--how subtle! And it gets better. Above the brave, upright and all-knowing black boss there are murky on-monitor-screens white higher-ups, of course, 'The Man,' who naturally want to drop an atomic bomb on Manhattan. But this black boss, gosh darn it, will NOT stand for it! Things like this would be at least a little more acceptable if film and television stories did not absolutely predictably HAVE to always play out this way.
I have one of these free downloadable Kindles on my laptop. I have paid for some downloads, but I thought why not get one of their 'Action Adventure' titles from the books they advertise as free and just relax and enjoy a pleasantly mind-numbing few minutes a day following some fast-paced 'thriller' story line? I soon started noticing that such works of fiction, bestsellers that are strangely downloadable for free, always seem to have characters and plot lines that are highly favorable to the Tribe. Free downloads. They think of everything. You almost have to admire their relentlessness. Notice I said 'almost.'
"At least symbolically, JFK’s assassination marked the beginning of what would commonly come to be understood as 'the sixties.' What followed is known in many quarters as progress, 'although to me it seems like an ongoing process of deconstruction and outright destruction."
Well said. To add insult to injury, who would have ever thought that the destruction of Western civilization and an entire people, my people, often could be made to seem so boring.
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