There's an old expression about locking up the barn
after the horse has already been stolen, and the recent
White House Summit of network executives was certainly
a bit of that, and less.
Our embattled President, searching desperately for an
area of public concern where he might have some impact,
having lost in health-care, foreign policy and the federal
budget, appears to have turned his attention to television,
hoping, we suppose, that even the Republicans running after
his job will be hard-pressed to oppose him there. Turns
out, there's no need.
The assembled brain-trust agreed to develop a rating system
which will purportedly enable parents to screen television
programming more easily, and thereby more easily determine
that a program like "Touched By An Angel" will warp their
children somewhat less than something like, say... "Silk
Stalkings." Thank God for government.
From our view, if television were all that pervasive
an influence on our children, they would all be selling
cars to one another. The truth is, it's just another
noise in a world full of noises, none of which mean
very much of anything.
Max is a reality already, television has become an
electronic wisecrack, broadcasters have lost any
sense of what they were once about. They've got to
move these re-re-re-frigerators, they gotta move
these c-c-c-color tveees.
So hell, yes, they'll make a deal. Stop the
violence ? Sure, as long as they can keep up the
mind-control. It's all about m-m-money, friends,
and if it's time to pretend that they're going to
care about the mental health of our youth, then
they wrote the book on pretending.
But why now ? Why not twenty years ago, when
it really mattered ?
Partly, it's because it's an election year, but
only partly. There have been elections before.
We believe the answer is here, right under your
nose.
It's under their nose, too, and the smell they've
caught is the smell of death... their death, and
it's making them nervous.
Networks won't die today, and cable won't die
tomorrow. There will always be people who don't
read, and don't want to think. Television will
always cater to them.
But they won't have the thinkers, not anymore.
They're all out here, or headed this way. And by
the time the networks really figure that out, it
will be too late.
Television lost its meaning to commercialism
a long time ago. Ratings won't change anything.
We'd rather see our government working toward
the physical health of our children than
pretending they care about their mental health.
You gotta love an election year, if only for
the laughs.
March 3, 1996 Charles Paparella The Shore Journal
So...?