Television.... a rant

I love to watch television.  Though I'm a jazz singer and classical pianist, I rarely put music on when I'm home.  A TV's on somewhere in the house much of the day whether I'm watching it or not.
I love old movies, I love reruns of Frasier and Everybody Loves Raymond.  I watch a lot of FOX and CNN.  I watch some QVC and a lot of the Food Channel and HGTV.   I have always loved TV and probably always will.

AND, I think TV is the worst thing that happened to America.  I say America because they don't watch nearly as much television in any other Western country I've been in and I've been in plenty and lived in two European countries.  Rarely is the television on in most homes during the day.  Which is a good thing, since Jerry Springer reruns are shown in Paris just at the hour high school kids come home from school.  (and the leftist media wonders why Europe hates us...sob, sob)
I hadn't thought of the Springer when I'd planned to write this, but there it is, another good reason for no television.  Another is a show like Maury Pauvich, which someone told me is still on since last time I actually watched a whole show maybe 15 years ago in total disgust:  his show dealt then with nothing but young punks who come on and get DNA tests read so they can know who the girl's baby is.

Let's talk NEWS.  Remember "News at 6, film at 11?"  I think we should go back to that.   I think the cable news shows are angry, misinforming editorials pushed as truth.  I don't want to hear Rachel Maddow's scathing bias toward anything Conservative presented as information.  I don't want to hear a leftist and a rightist screaming at each other on Hannity's show while he butts in, adding a third pitch to an already unlistenable mess.  I don't want to look at Bob Beckel or Geraldo or Wolf Blitzer or Olbermann ever again (Is he still on?).  I don't want to see Joe Scarborough pass himself off as Conservative......I don't want to see people like Lawrence O'Donnell announce he's a Socialist and get his own show for it.  Not in America.  We don't go that far.  Oh, sorry...MSNBC does hire avowed Socialists, doesn't it.  Oh, and I'm tired of hearing Bob Beckel on THE FIVE wait for any chance he can possibly get to mention his alcoholism and drug abuse.  Who CARES?  That's a man of character? And I REALLY don't give a hoot about anything Shepard Smith says, either. Why should I care what he thinks?  His little add-ons of personal opinion at the end of news stories make me grit my teeth.  I turn the channel when he's on almost faster than I do when I see Obama. 
I swear I think the news being on 24/7 is SICK.  I don't WANT to know about yet another teen missing or another baby stolen.  I feel for them, but I think it's scary that we all have to hear and digest all that CONSTANT BAD NEWS. 

I don't want to see food channel competitions where 5 people are hoping they don't get CHOPPED from the cooking competition and have the cameraman hone in on the thrilled, smiling faces of other chefs as one gets excoriated.  It teaches bad character and it should stop.

I don't want to see dimwitted, good looking young men and women posing as stock experts on all the cable channels.  As if we need to know their reasoning for the DOW going up or down?  As Kid so aptly said in his blog post the other day, why don't they just say "Market up (or down) today, nobody knows why"!  They usually don't know, anyway.

I'm tired of seeing Late Night TV shows slam pretty near only Conservatives (and pretty near EVERY Conservative) and a public who thinks by now that that's normal.  Late Night TV is also free  DNC advertising, which bugs the $^#&@*; out of me.  I'm tired of seeing Joy Behar on THE VIEW doing her DNC plugs, too.  Oh, and Whoopi and Barbara Walters, and.......... oh, and then there's that lousy excuse for a conservative, Elizabeth what's her name.........she ought to marry Joe Scarborough; they're the perfect couple.

I'm tired of commercials where fathers' kids roll their eyes at them and mothers who lie about having borrowed their daughters' clothes.  I'm tired of a public stupid enough to think a man's going to take Viagra and be happy sitting in a bathtub on a lake holding hands with his woman who's sitting in a matching bathtub on the lake.  By the way, do YOU have a bathtub, let alone two, on YOUR lake? :-)  I also ask you to notice these Viagra commercials and tell me how many have the woman leading her man up the stairs because he's apparently just taken a pill.  100%.  I thought the pill was supposed to turn HIM on, why isn't HE doing the ol' Fred Astaire two-step up the stairs to the bedroom? :-)

I rarely watch Sitcoms (except the reruns I mentioned above) but the language is pretty amazing these days, only to be out-raunched by the SITUATIONS in these Situation Comedies.  From what I understand, nearly every sitcom has a gay character.  Do you know that many gays in your life?  I don't.  Nothing against gays, but there are NOT gays living next door to EVERYBODY in real life.  It's just not true, so why...? And who CARES if the people next door are gay?  Why's it so sitcom worthy?   How about the way kids speak to their parents and get away with it, or the really debauched story lines .....well, I could go on and on, but just think ROSEANNE and remember the situations SHE put in her show.  Do YOU know people like that? I don't.   But, it sure lowers the BAR (pardon the unintentional pun) for  society.  And don't tell me it doesn't do that.....the constant drip, drip, drip of immorality and bad language and disrespect and everything else portrayed in newer sitcoms is good for NOTHING but a cheap laugh.

I think they ought to take the P out of PBS because THIS part of that P doesn't want her taxes spent on Bill Moyers-types anymore.  And I don't want to be wooed into giving money to my BS station (Without the P, see what that station REALLY is? I TOLD you!  HA!)...anyway, I don't want to see them wooing viewers to SUPPORT BRITISH COMEDIES on PBS,  interviewing my favorite Keeping Up Appearances' cast, and then seeing they don't show that program again for months.  Bait and switch ticks me off.

I like Dr OZ, though I very, very rarely watch him (though a very close friend works with him; thankfully, she doesn't read my blog!)......but I don't want to hear about REALLY personal things the likes of which I don't even want to type here so you'll know what I mean. I think you know without my having to mention them..  And I don't want to hear Dr Phil, either......who can't tell these guests of his just want to be on television? Otherwise, why would ANYBODY tell the revealing things about their affairs, financial problems, unkindness toward others ON TELEVISION???


Please, everyone...don't tell me "You don't have to watch it if you don't like it."  I know that, and it's so not the point;  nobody has to say that to me, and I'm old enough and mature enough that I don't worry about indoctrination and debauched subject lines and I DO change the channel if I don't like something.  But people (and teens) DO watch all the junk I mention above or the shows wouldn't be on.  And people are influenced by those shows. 

Debauched, immoral, bad taste, too personal, bad influences, nasty language........American television today.   And yes, I know "hey, Z, who's to say what's bad taste?"....as if bad taste isn't recognizable anymore in America. OH, wait...it isn't. Which is worth another whole blog post.



How do you feel about it?  I love to watch television........but I think it's doing a lot of harm.   "News at five, film at eleven."   THOSE were the good ol' days.....
Do you agree?  And do you have another pet peeve than the ones I've mentioned?


z

Primetime PROPAGANDA admitted to..............and DAVID MAMET??!!

There's finally a BOOK telling the truth about what Conservatives have known for years;  Liberal bias in television/entertainment.  This is a book by a Conservative who interviewed ON TAPE some of the bigger names in Hollywood production and writes about their admissions of the totally unrepentant pushing of leftwing ideology not only through story lines but who they hire, and in adult and children's programming, too.  He mentions some of your favorite shows and the ideologies they pushed.  The linked article has a lot of information like:


The late Bruce Paltrow knew that Schultz was a fan of President Ronald Reagan. When Schultz showed up to audition for "St Elsewhere," a show Paltrow produced, to read for the part of Fiscus, Paltrow told him: "There's not going to be a Reagan [expletive] on this show!" The part went to Howie Mandel.  (Paltrow was Gwynneth's father, of course.)



The article linked above is worth reading.....Ben Shapiro is going to be releasing tapes one at a time to make the biggest impact ...he asked those interviewed if he could tape them and they agreed;  some say they'll be surprised and embarrassed when the tapes emerge.... but he says:


"If they're going to be shocked at something, it should be themselves, not me," Shapiro said. "They should be shocked that opinion is so one-sided in Hollywood that it's OK to say, 'I'm fine with discrimination.'"  "My whole book is a plea for openness in the industry," he added. "Hire people from the other side of the aisle once in a while, or at least stop mocking them."

As an aside, I happened to watch some of Imus just this morning.  He was interviewing a woman named Bethenny Frankel and said "you had a kid and weren't married, right?"    She said "Yes....I know that doesn't go over big with these people at FOX."   As if Don Imus is some social conservative? :-)  No bias, right?

I hope a lot of people buy Shapiro's book.....PRIMETIME PROPAGANDA ...we need to support people who tell the truth.   like........ 

DAVID MAMET, the Playwright who now admits he was a 'brain-dead liberal' and has written a book-length, raucous coming-out party: "The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture."  Here's a bit from the Wall St Journal article:

Hear him take on the left's sacred cows. Diversity is a "commodity." College is nothing more than "Socialist Camp." Liberalism is like roulette addiction. Toyota's Prius, he tells me, is an "anti-chick magnet" and "ugly as a dogcatcher's butt." Hollywood liberals—his former crowd—once embraced Communism "because they hadn't invented Pilates yet." Oh, and good radio isn't NPR ("National Palestinian Radio") but Dennis Prager, Michael Medved and Hugh Hewitt.   Check this out from the article:
Before he moved to California, Mr. Mamet had never met a self-described conservative or read one's writings. He'd never heard of Messrs. Sowell or Steele. "No one on the left has," he tells me. "I realized I lived in this bubble."

I thought the Shapiro and Mamet stories dovetailed nicely;   That 'big open minded Liberal' doesn't seem to be quite open minded, does he.  Until he recovers.

z