Ah, television. It’s like a box of friends in my living room. Friends who love me unconditionally, require no effort, never (or rarely) judge, and (perhaps most importantly) are always awake. Running ceaselessly (it’s still going even when it’s turned off), television remains ever-present in most people’s lives and, for better or worse, continues to make immeasurable impacts on our culture. From the beginning, TV had a mind-blowing ability to provide communal experiences. My mother still vividly recalls watching The Beatles appear for the first time on Ed Sullivan. More than 70 million Americans – nearly the entire television viewing audience in 1964 – watched on the night of the Beatles' American debut.
The writer John Leonard’s essay ''Ed Sullivan Died for Our Sins” ends with the following meditatively maniacal reflection on television:
''Sometimes late at night, in the rinse cycle of sitcom reruns, cross-torching evangelicals, holistic chiropodists, yak-show yogis and gay-porn cable, surfing the infomercials with burning leaves in my food-hole, I think there must be millions like me out there, all of us remote as our controls, trying to bring back Ed, as if by switching channels fast enough in a pre-Oedipal blur, we hope to re-enact some neolithic origin myth and from the death of this primeval giant, our father and our Fisher King, water with blood a bountiful harvest and civility.''
Immediate reaction: TV does not sound like a good thing.
