Possibly the most foolish medium

TV is possibly the most foolish medium currently in existence.

Movies, in order to be excellent, at least have a start, a plot, and an end. They go somewhere. They must have technical excellence. They have good acting. They have purposeful dialogue. A lot of people have put a lot of effort into them. The writer had something particular to write about, or at least came up with something genuinely amusing. If he didn't, it's generally a box office flop. The content may not be worth much, but at least it generally exists.

Television, as far as I can tell, has no particular purpose but to fill air time. It has no beginning but when you switch it on and no end but when you switch it off. Nor do pearls of eloquence drop from the tongues of newscasters. They say the most incredibly obvious things, sometimes obviously right and sometimes obviously wrong! Mockery barely begins to cover it. ("Lady Disdain, are you yet living?" "How can Disdain die, when she has such meet food to feed upon?")

They have no reference frame for understanding today's news: no Shakespeare, no Cicero, no Alexander Pope, no Homer, and certainly no absolute standard, such as a Bible. I guess it has to be democratic: you can't have prerequisites for understanding anything. It might discriminate against low-income families who couldn't afford a good education. (But I bet they could buy a used paperback of the Iliad for less than the price of a cell phone.)

All news is packaged precisely the same way, including catchphrase. The same plays are always made to the same three emotions: aw, isn't that sweet; oh, isn't that too bad; and ah, isn't that interesting? At least having molds saves us from original thought. What's today's disaster? A hurricane? A murder? A tsunami? A war? Excellent. We know what to do with that. We will report a little about the event, have a few survivor stories, and include a blurb about the science of hurricane formation.

Oh for the satires of a Juvenal! Oh that somebody would reform a culture addicted to this sort of thing!

I watch TV for great events and when I can't avoid it. I remember September 11th: by about three p.m. my tolerance had run out and I started researching Queen Boadicea, who revolted against the Romans in Britain c. 50 A.D.

I am not really a cynical person, but I am annoyed. I apologize for my third-rate sarcasm. But really: if medium determines content, and the content is foolish, perhaps the medium is too.