maybe it is rotting our brains after all

Hey kids, I above many will defend the right of the screen to coexist with our mental landscape. But some rational controls need to be put into place.

Capitalist culture tends to disallow overt tyrannies, at least in terms of identifiable individuals. What we have wrongly come to accept, however, is the use of television as a tool for the normalization of propaganda. When the American president can produce fake news reports and citizen round tables and have these lies spread by every major network, we're long past the days of the "inocuous" untruths of advertising culture (yes 1950s tv doctor, smoking IS good for me). What we have come to normalize as daily viewing is in fact the interpellation of a population to a specific form of citizenship, one in which individual judgement and agency is muted in favour of hierarchical values which ensure market profiteering. This hierarchy serves no politial purpose except the upwards mobility of wealth from abstract production units -- aka the citizenry -- to the luxury classes.

And here I was thinking that democracies were supposed to tailor themselves to the maximization of educational, political, and economic rights of every individual within the population in order to ensure long-term national stability and prosperity. Stupid, stupid Q.

When normal people live in a state of "i'm not good enough"-depression thanks to advertisers reinforcing and ultimately profiting from this nervous identity, there's something wrong with watching television. I mean, there seems to be a decent amount of people who actually can't seem to accept what their bodies are doing for them in the sexiness department. They complain about their looks and buy all sorts of bullshit remedies, while at the same time engaging in a lifestyle of shit-food and no exercise which ensures the necessity of the entire body-image industry.

When real social and political issues remain mute in the mass media and Janet Jackson's 0.876 second nipple flash is the topic of hours of public discourse and governmental censure, there's something wrong with watching television. I mean honestly people, are we still idiots about the nudity situation? Just turn on Showcase or Telelatino/RIA on any given night and boy do those babies deliver.

When tens of millions of Americans can be convinced to support an illegal government (re: un coup d'état avec l'ironie d'un silence assourdissant, November 2000) which continually (Iraq) and flagrantly (Guantanamo Bay) displays its brutal disregard for human life, while at the same time championing itself as the moral high-ground in the debate over medical ethics (Terri Shiavo), there's something wrong with watching television.

When people disregard the testimony of scientists concerning climate change -- the results of which they should be able to see right out their fucking windows -- or health risks posed by commercial and inductrial processes in favour of what the news media tell them are the Commandments of our collective business concerns, then it's time to switch off the damn television already.

There is quite a lot of well produced television which will stimulate, educated, and entertain. Like all aspects of culture, choose your exposure wisely and reduce the bullshit amount of time that is forked over to sitting and watching light move on a box. Far too many people, however, fall into the work-commute-tv-bed trap checked only be their increasing avarice towards themselves.

Take back the night, kids. Think of new things to do with your time, even if only for a night.