Friday, June 25, 2010

Purely Bureacratic Socialism

Through a seemingly weird confluence of events we are limited to watching PBS on my old TV from my days in the Army. The TV was built over 20 years ago, in the U.S. and works fine. It's the programming that's lacking.

We've been subjected to green-Loft-living, anti-War, anti-American, suicide voyeurs wrapped in pitchy tunes by bands of foreigners with no real stage presence. There is a steady onslaught of shows about arcane topics that explore mysteries like "did they smuggle a Warhol onto the lunar lander?" to which I say, "Andy was already on the moon without ever leaving earth and even if they did who the F cares other than people who willingly watch this channel." And even if the topics of these shows were about anything with a glimmer of interesting content they would still evoke sleepiness due to the monotone narration by pasty faced liberal know-nothings.

Their spy show is British but it is no James Bond. The villains are eco-terrorists. I guess that makes the mere notion of their plan "edgy" because the audience will feel it is morally ambiguous whether or not the British agents stop the terrorist plot. Go Global Warming enthusiasts! Force us to see the error of our wicked ways by killing a bunch of innocent people! All humanity is bad for the planet! I'll have to check the credits to see if John Holdren was a contributing writer to this episode's screenplay. Oh no! One of them has ties to the Katrina disaster. More moral ambiguity along with a tacit reference to Bush. And the lead agent has an acute hang-nail or some such nonsense and might not be stable enough to complete the mission. Split screens and sudden zoom-ins may be too much for septuagenarians on heart medicine. Maybe they should run a disclaimer every ten minutes to warn that demographic in their audience. "Warning: cinematic devices and not merely our wacky world view may be disorienting, troubling and cause heart palpatations."

The news is read not only with a British accent but with a European perspective, where the lead reporter is "on the ground" at the G20. I didn't know there was any other option but for them to be "on the ground". Then again, I hear they made a "fake lake" so maybe there is also an airship contingent at this year's G20 floating above it all. How fitting that PBS, which takes great strides to be about nothing tangible or meaningful does news reports on events that will have no tangible or meaningful outcomes.

When we are back to normal, the delivery man says it will be Monday, then I feel we will be back in a red, white and blue America again, with near lethal doses of entertainment, choices of programming, commercials that don't try to pretend to be corporate sponsorships and a big enough dose of this PBS drivel over the last five days that I won't even feel the need to loiter over this channel again for at least six months.

I've glimpsed into a future where Obama is not just President but where he becomes King for Life and even the preachy, good-for-you even if it is just not any good, government approved TV programming in this one channel future is enough to cause a revolution. At least progressives will have their sanctuary after 2012.

No comments: