Couch potatoes

Let me begin by saying I can do without television. For years I swore I would never sign-up for subscription television. Sad to say, my wife wanted it; so she got Cable. Since it is there I watch it. Ninety-nine percent of the channels broadcast crap, the other one percent broadcasts garbage. I don’t need all of those channels in order to analyze the government’s lies. The old analogue TV with three networks and a few local channels was good enough for my purposes.

Let me say that the Golden Age of Television is not a reference to programming. In the beginning, programs sucked, and the picture tubes in early TV sets were so bad viewers had to jump up so often to adjust the picture by hand there were no couch potatoes. I always thought early television sets provided so much exercise there was no need for all of those exercise parlors. I can’t prove it but better television sets created the couch potato who, in turn, created the fitness industry.

The Golden Age of Television refers to that time before the remote control device was invented. In those days the viewers watched and listened to the commercials the way that God intended they should, but the government still got its message out through program content and news broadcasts. It was a perfect world for one and all until the remote became part of the furniture in every household with a TV.

All hell must have broken loose at the Ministry of Propaganda on the day the remote control device showed up in retail stores. Then, just when the propagandists were learning to deal with the remote control, the VCR reared its ugly head. The Internet made life even tougher for government propagandists.

The VCR went the way of the dinosaur. Dumping analogue TV was primarily a scheme to kill the VCR. For instance, I had a VCR that automatically fast-forwarded through commercials. That was possible because commercials and programming were transmitted on different frequencies. You know the FCC and advertisers were not happy with that situation.

Recording programs is still possible on a CD. The last time I checked it was so complicated and such a hassle not many people use it to the extent they recorded programs on their VCRs. Some are probably more proficient at recording than I, but I believe most are like me.

In addition, there are so many channels available for Cable subscribers I assume most viewers just don’t bother with recording because so much programming is broadcasted over and over again anyway. The movie Forrest Gump has been broadcasted so many times in the past few months I got the impression it was running continuously. Let’s face it, how many people are watching after the first fifty times?

NOTE: AT&T Cable subscribers can record an unlimited number of programs right on their television. However, fast- forwarding through a commercial when you watch a recorded program is a joke because you can only fast-forward in three or four second bites.

Americans are spending far too much time talking to each other on the Net instead of sitting in front of a TV set listening to the Word from the Man. Is there no end to the indignities propagandists must endure? And all of those Techno-Nerds are not helping things either. Why can’t they confine themselves to inventing better mousetraps and stay the hell out of the Ministry of Propaganda’s business which is to promote socialism in an orderly and timely manner?

Way back in the days when TV was young, people were a lot smarter than they are now. Commercials on TV in those early years drove viewers crazy, but the public, for the most part, consisted of people from the radio generation —— they were used to electronic sales pitches. Of course, there was some talk about commercial-free TV programming. The term “Pay TV” was coined later because it was considered unwise to let the term “commercial-free” enter into the language; especially since Pay TV was not going to be commercial-free.

Back in the beginning, a few Americans said that they would be willing to pay a buck or two a month to watch commercial-free TV. “No commercials” was the one and only justification for even considering paying a fee to watch television in your own home. Most Americans just laughed at the idea and said, “I’ll be dam-ned if I’ll voluntarily pay for something that I’m now getting for free. After all, the airwaves belong to all of us.” Now a number of Americans pay for TV and get the commercials, too. Will any fellow poster on this board dare claim that so much education has made Americans smarter now than they were back in the days of TV’s infancy?

I know that the public will always fund their government’s propaganda efforts in one form or another, but does it have be for so much? If Joseph Goebbels would have had the level of funding that the FCC has, the Nazis would be running Europe today. (Socialists/Communists hope to eventually control the world by using many of the same techniques that Goebbels pioneered.)

How many people does it take to issue and monitor a few broadcast licenses? Certainly not the thousands that are on the FCC’s payroll. I don’t know the exact number, but Ministry of Propaganda personnel could govern a country if the need arises. And if you throw in all of the people that work in TV, radio, and Tinseltown, they could probably populate a medium-sized country with no trouble at all. I’d surely like to know what kind of mischief all of those socialist propagandists are up to in areas that I don’t even begin to understand.

Money aside: What is the true price that Americans are paying to fund the Ministry of Propaganda? The loss of an independent press, antagonistic to government, is just one part of the price. By antagonistic I mean a truly antagonistic press corps, and not just a bunch of media butt-suckers giving the illusion of reporting on government shenanigans.

Another part of the price that is being paid, and one that is far more costly, is a single federal bureaucracy that dictates all domestic and foreign policy. If the Ministry doesn’t agree with it, it just doesn’t get heard in prime time. On the other hand, nothing ever goes away that the people who control the FCC really want, even if private sector Americans clearly say that they don’t want any part of it. For example: Socialist programs like socialized medicine just kept coming back like a bad case of gonorrhea until it was passed.

Finally, television has been described as radio with pictures. Nothing could be truer. It is sound that glues the boob to the tube. Had television never been invented a large number of people would spend just as many hours listening to the radio as they now spend listening to TV.

 

Yea...

... when Uncle Ferd has his buddies over to watch football on TV...

... Granny calls `em his sack o' couch `taters.

 

Most people have a television and swear they never watch it but at parties, one of the favorite conversations is about television programs. How curious? My recent favorite topic is "reality television". That like "honest politician" or "jumbo shrimp".

There are a number of ways to break an addiction. I quit smoking by simply not smoking any longer. My sex addiction was solved by marriage. I was a workaholic but I quit that, too. I was hooked on television but I move, left my television behind, and went cold turkey. By the time I got a new home I had broken the addiction so I never got another television.

So, for you physical health and your mental health, get rid of your television. Give it to a Democrat. Encrouge them to sit at home and watch Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, and the ever popular Al Sharpton. See, no television does not mean uninformed. I even know who visited 57 American states and who said they could see Russia from the back yard.

Get rid of the television. Quit funding government propoganda.

 

To PatrickT: I agree. I would love to go cold turkey. I have television because my wife enjoys a few entertainment shows. Nevertheless, I’ve said that my TV sets will go out with the trash the first chance I get.

Analyzing the government’s lies is the only pleasure I ever got out of TV. It’s a pleasure I will readily forego.

Incidentally, during the years I went to sea, I did not watch TV at all, even when I was on the beach. I was just as informed in those years as I am now. In fact, a fellow seaman and good friend was the most politically astute person I ever knew. He never watched TV —— EVER —— yet he made the most astounding political predictions imaginable. We happened to be in Saigon when Diem was killed. Discussing events with him that day in 1963 are as clear in my mind today as they were the day it took place. He predicted exactly what was going to happen; right down to communist agitation at home and America’s eventual defeat. It was as though he was speaking about the past instead of the future.

 

You should sit down with your wife, and explain why your family is not going to be watching televission any more. Explain that people were perfectly happy and informed for hundreds of years without the televission. Explain to her the outrageous expense of subscribing to cable.

Offer to go out and do other family activities with her, instead of the televission. Televission has ruined many otherwise good marriages. Believe me, you will be better off later if you put your foot down now.