Time Capsule Television

TV from a golden age .. - Pic courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
I’m enjoying a week of vacation -- just a “me” week. My usual travel companions are otherwise occupied so I decided to catch up around the house. “Me” week calls to mind my latest guilty pleasure -- MeTV on channel 24. MeTV gives me these great oldies all in a row: Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart and The Odd Couple. In 2.5 hours we progress from 60’s gimmick shows to 70’s sophistication.

MeTV takes me on an excursion to my teenage years -- an era of bell bottoms, fall colors, pimped out cars and resigning Presidents. Another station that I watch a lot of is TV Land on channel 66. This gives us more recent retro with Cosby, Raymond, King of Queens and The Golden Girls. At 55, some would say I’m pretty golden myself -- my viewing habits are age appropriate. Rue McClanahan was only @ 51 at the start of Golden Girls.

What all these shows have over current TV is that they are scripted, well-crafted stories. Each one is a slice of Americana that tells us a lot about who we were at the time. The alternatives now on broadcast TV are shows like The Voice, Idol, America’s Got Talent and Bachelorette. It makes me sad that TV has devolved to this point … talent discovery shows like Star Search and The Gong Show were considered the dregs of TV back in the day. They were mindless filler for non-prime viewing hours.

APP WORLD

In a related pop culture arena, famous author Stephen King was recently asked by Entertainment Weekly what he thought about the reading habits of young adults. He said, essentially that we’re a smart phone, sound bite society -- young people don’t really read anymore. Too much competes for young people’s attention. LOL and ROFL round out the new vocabulary. I can’t help but think that the same short attention span keeps young people from watching a TV show or movie that calls for maybe a 60 minute time commitment. Complex plot lines and cultural references might seem too much like homework in a world where book reports are Wikipedia cut-and-paste jobs … a world where conversations are a hastily thumb-typed “As if!”. More words fly by, but they are vacuous monosyllabic words.

There is hope actually -- a ray of light that breaks through the clouds of this dull, intellectual laziness. Not everyone is a fan of reality TV -- some very noteworthy Hollywood denizens (eg, Seth MacFarlane of Family Guy) would like to put reality TV out to pasture. TV Land, mentioned above, is also giving us some great new scripted shows like Hot in Cleveland and Happily Divorced. These shows are hardly intellectual exercises, but they have just enough wit, relevance, continuity and structure -- they seem like War and Peace next to The Voice.

Karl Marx once said that religion is the opiate of the masses. It turns out he was wrong about that … XBox, Wii and smart phones are the opiates that have turned so many Americans into distracted zombies.

Steering back to the TV Land topic, I’d like to briefly discuss my new, old favorite ...

GOLDEN AGE

Golden Girls ran from 1985 through 1992. I liked the show, but was put off by Betty White’s Rose character at first -- I wanted back the tart nastiness of Sue Ann Nivens from Mary Tyler Moore. But I got past that quivel and started to enjoy the centered qualities of Dorothy and Southern-style trampiness of Blanche. I figure that Dorothy was fairly close to Bea Arthur’s real personality. The show went off the air 21 years ago and continues to be hilarious. Even the Reagan jokes seem fresh from when I saw the shows originally. You don’t have to be senior or female to think the Girls are great.

IN CONCLUSION

There will always be a small subset of people who can rise above sexting and tweeting. Those young people who can go beyond that adolescent fixation will have the world in the palm of their hands. Maybe we’ve lowered the bar too much, to make that a standard for intellectual leadership. It could serve as a minimum requirement.

In the meantime, if you are a 50+ dinosaur like me check out MeTV and TV Land. Look at where we’ve been and where we might go again if we’re lucky.

© 2013 blogSpotter

Newsies

We are what we read .. - Screenshot by blogSpotter

by blogSpotter
Before diving into today’s topic, I’d like to mention my day’s activity. I visited the George W. Bush Library at SMU. The parking was overflow and that should have clued me in... the line for exhibits was a mile long, wrapping all the way around the main lobby. The facility is beautiful; the “lantern” section has a 90 foot ceiling with an LED mural. You can look at the public area and the museum shop without paying admission. I’ll come back on a less crowded day. To my liberal brethren, I’d like to say this museum can be fascinating to those of any political bent. In fact, if you dislike Number 43, you might find the exhibits interesting from the standpoint of how the exhibitors did spin and damage control.

Everyone’s a Newsy

When I was 7, I required adult supervision. Left to my own devices food-wise, I would’ve had M&M’s, fudge brownies, BBQ potato chips and ice cream for dinner. I would’ve considered the chips my veggie for the day. What! ... you (the presumed adult) say that diet lacks balance. There are no vegetables, no fiber. There’s nothing redeeming about it.

Now let’s flash forward to 2013. I live alone, but time has given me insight into my dietary needs. I get spinach, asparagus and vitamins daily. My adult sensibilities have even given me an affinity for these things. In an oddly similar way, we all need to be sustained with an “information” diet. We get our daily news mostly from TV and the Internet. A few of us dinosaurs still read Time and the Dallas Morning News. A friend my age laughs derisively at “dead tree” media. “Time’s stories are a week stale, the day it comes to your mailbox”, he says. Likewise, DMN is rehashing the CNN headlines you already saw last night on your iPad.

I won’t argue his points, but I have a couple of ideas to add..

1) I read the paper for Op Ed and essays as much as anything. An informed opinion about reasonably current events doesn’t grow stale like day old bread.

2) I read “mainstream” venues to get the other guy’s opinion even if I don’t love him or her. I’ve read many articles by Mark Davis, Pat Buchanan, George Will and even Ann Coulter. The Morning News offers guest opinions from opposing sides. I like to know what the “enemy camp” is thinking -- what arguments do I need to counter.

3) I read the dead tree media because my eyes will by happenstance land on ideas, issues and events I might otherwise tune out. I’m made aware of the Dallas City Council positions and Mayor Rawling’s GrowSouth initiative. Not everything is the substance of Firing Line but it’s worth knowing nonetheless.

My friend is conservative -- he reads web sites with names like “National Review” and “American Patriot”. He devours FOXNews.com as well as FOX news on TV. Liberals have their equivalent sites -- Huffington Post and Daily Kos. What I see happening is a segregating, silo effect. You and I may be next door neighbors and yet have such differing grips on reality. Our take on everything is slanted and possibly backwards. Then because maybe we both canceled the daily paper, we’re not even aware of a local election or fund drive.

Pandemonium

One web site that I like has a conservative label but it serves up liberal Op Eds as well: RealClearPolitics.com. You’ll find the offerings of Ann Coulter right next to Maureen Dowd. Liberal economist Paul Krugman will follow right after NeoCon Bill Kristol. It’s pandemonium in a way, but a good pandemonium.

What I’d like the reader to carry away is that news should annoy you -- when you see what the other guy thinks. It might also fill you with concern, obligation and sometimes remorse. There is a yin and yang to knowledge and knowing. If all you eat is M&M’s you’ll become a fat, complacent diabetic porker. Better to take in the roughage and variety that makes us mindful, sentient, sometimes disturbed but always hoping to have a better world. Sometimes the greatest insights come from the storm clouds of reasoned debate -- and we benefit when lightning strikes.

© 2013 blogSpotter