The first four paragraphs are about accidental moments in surfing on the TV. The last two paragraphs are about being subjected to a Republican TV debate...
In switching TV channels, I hit CBS, I think it was, on the evening of the Tony Award show. "The Book of Mormon" won the Tony for best Broadway musical play this past week. It is a play by the guys who created the cartoon series "South Park" on cable TV. At that particular moment, the song "I Believe" from the play was being performed, which noted that, among other proclamations according to Joseph Smith, the Moses with the tablets for the LDS church, Jackson County in Missouri is the site of the Garden of Eden.
One day, I landed on a TV channel where conservative author Ann Coulter was being interviewed. Semi-interviewed actually, as Coulter was avoiding anything personal. But she did repeat her idiotic statement about public school teachers being "tax-paid parasites." I wonder why Republicans never say she should apologize for her off-the-wall rudeness. Do they agree with her?
I landed on MTV one day with the show "16 and Pregnant." It apparently is a reality series about 16-year-old girls dealing with a pregnancy. I watched it for 20 minutes mainly because it was like watching a train wreck. Wow, parents should require their teenagers to watch that show. No teen would want to get pregnant nor hopefully even want to be around a potential loser of a boyfriend if they watched one or two of those shows. It is the best promotion for "abstinence" that I have ever seen!
I saw another bunch of talking heads on TV continuing to fuss over the Congressman Anthony Weiner scandal. I know I made my share of blog fun at his expense. I mean, geez, how many naked chest shots would someone want to take of themselves and then share? If you are a model, go for it. But if you are politician, I don't think a naked chest adds much to understanding the issues. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder why he should resign from his position. It is true that he will probably be rather ineffectual legislatively in being associated with tawdriness, though others have risen beyond their scandals and transgressions, such as Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich. I can see Weiner having to give up his cell phone with a camera and to stop using Twitter. Please do! I hope he's already done that. Beyond that, this "scandal" is sexless. At least as far as we know now. Maybe it is good if any "scandal" can remove a politician from office. But it makes me wonder if the media aren't just playing to tabloid mentality by chasing the congressman down the street. As they used to say about Bill Clinton and his scandal compared to George Bush and his war, "At least when Clinton lied, no one died." The Weiner scandal is a mere Vienna sausage in the realm of meaty matters. Sorry, I couldn't resist!
And do young people today also use immediate technology in various regretful ways...and will it come back to haunt them later on? The immediacy of technology in the hands of some college students in bars at midnight might mean the future of electronic messaging devices will include the feature of a breathalizer in order to prevent their use at ill-advised times.
Going to CNN for the recent debate by the Republican presidential candidates was not accidental. I always feel like it is my duty as a citizen to keep up with national politics...and consequently I have watched a lot of bad TV in process. I thought the TV debate on CNN was badly orchestrated for the most simplistic and boring sound bites yet to bite viewers. There wasn't much that the short-answer format provided, but it is understandable that if there'd been a longer answer period the candidates probably would have just droned on with canned rhetoric. So, it was lose or lose for the viewers. For the longer questions, often the wrong candidate addressed them. I already knew how Ron Paul, the only anti-war candidate probably up there, would respond to the Afghanistan War. The quick questions to supposedly give us more of the personal side of the candidates were stupid. "Conan or Leno?" Geez, who cares?! It reminded me of the famous "Boxers or briefs" question to Bill Clinton. Like that made a big difference, either. Better quick questions could have been "their favorite book, or most recent book they have read, or, like with some of those questions from Katie Couric to Sarah Palin, what Supreme Court case they believe in or their favorite Supreme Court justice. For more personal questions, I would like to know if all of Mitt Romney's sons are still Mormons and if they all married Mormon women. Just curious, as to see if the Romney immediate household is the least bit religiously diverse. The quick questions at the debate were just bubble-gum. I hate being bubble-gummed by the media.
In a word, I would define the Republican TV debate as "depressing." About the only issue that the candidates were for was cutting taxes for corporations. Otherwise, they were against almost everything. Against NASA, against the EPA, against the auto industry bail-out, against unions for workers, against separation of church and state, against the government spending any money on social programs, against abortion rights, against gay marriage, against...against...and against. If those candidates are the future, why did they sound like the past? And not just recent past, either but decades-ago past, if not longer. Wow! Depressing!
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