Letters to the Editor
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Blogs and the Web are the new TV
I admit I still watch TV, for the US Open this past weekend, to Top Chef but I am trying to ween myself off of TC. I think YouTube and the zillion of blogs out there are really the new TV. I find out news quicker by reading the news blips on Salon and other news sites, I happened to turn on the news and the next day they were recounting items that I had already read.
CBS wonders why Katie Couric's ratings are so low, Network News Anchors are the new dinosaur...
BTW(Before the Web), growing up, I watched alot of TV, everyone seemed to have the TV on, now everyone seems to be behind a computer....ANd the blatant advertising of product placement now in shows just cheapens the shows. There are some good shows, I just don't have time to watch them and I don't pay for any premium channels....but I suspect the quality of television programming will continue to decline.....the people watching are the ones who don't own computers....
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In a perfect world
Every channel would be wealthy Marxists screaming at me to give all my possessions to state. Like those cannibal kingdoms in Africa.
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You're the first people
To call working class and lower middle class people rednecks, knuckledraggers, neocon assholes, religious zealots and fools.
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From this line one can only assume that Ms. Havrilesky has never actually . . .
. . . seen the Honeymooners or her dad was a bus driver and her mother kept telling her that this (and her dad's best friend who was a plumber) made them middle class.
Sept. 10, 2007 | From the "The Brady Bunch" to "Home Improvement," from Ralph Kramden . . , the middle class has always had a comfortable spot on our TV screens, . . .
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tv is garbage
I remain grateful that the best things in life are free: friendship, kindness, the beauty of nature, my church.
I used to tell people that I don't have a tv because I was too busy doing the things that people on tv were doing - so why would I want to watch instead of do? but after reading this article, perhaps this is no longer the case....
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The More Things Change…Bada Bling Bling
For those of us who do not see ourselves as others see us, there’s a centuries old anecdote from the French historian and author of “Democracy in America.” After de Tocqueville made a year's journey to our young country in the 19th century, he went home and wrote about America and its people, with some interesting observations.
“As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?” —Alexis de Tocqueville 1831
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You guys kvelled over the Sopranos.
Were they workaday joes?
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This article makes me happy to work at night
And get home just in time to watch The Daily Show.
We have basic cable, but neither my husband nor I watch any fictional programs. He watches Animal Planet, History Channel, and sometimes standup comedy or movies on tv. We have Netflix and a cabinet overflowing with DVDs, so watching some inane "drama" about rich people's problems is not on our agenda.
Thanks, Heather, for telling me what I'm not missing.
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But Paulie Walnuts...
... clipped coupons and complained about the cost of everything when he wasn't boasting about how much he was spending to keep his ma in that nice retirement center.
One of the many layers of "The Sopranos" was the obvious lower-to-middle class roots of the protagonists in their fancy cribs, cars, and Ivy League schools.
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I heard once...
... that a working class hero was something to be, but maybe just not right now.
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something wrong and something right
an etymological point, Anonymous, "kvell" always has a base note of personal pride. the archetypal case is the jewish mother at her son's medical school graduation. it is not simply "praise" or even "heart braking joy".
jb17,you've seen the future in the present. after all, we all could be watching TV now (those that aren't at work), but the interaction is totally engrossing. the arguments, the learning, the agreements and most of all, the connection. TV is for zonking out.
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It's not just money either.
Imagine having a new TV show featuring, as the lead character, a vocal bigot who isn't bright enough to avoid torpedoing his own arguments. This voice of wisdom is his dim-wit wife who he dominates. The liberal viewpoint is provided by his slacker son-in-law that he supports financially. I don't think you could put something like this on TV these days regardless of whether the setting is working class suburbia or east side penthouse society. Somehow the unseen forces that allowed a show like "All in the Family" to air are no longer with us. I remember hearing the term "Political Correctness" for the first time in my life on the show "30 Something". Maybe this was the beginning of the end.
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Perception and Projection
This week's ILTW is the most incisive piece I've read about television programming in some time (and I already thought HH has been on top of her game for awhile now). At her best, this writer is able to sum up the pros and cons of the latest mass-audience offerings, integrate their salient aspects into a wider thesis, and then serve all this up with witty asides that humanize the author.
Others have covered the topical material, so I'll skip over all of that and comment on what I find fascinating about so many of the letters. David Sugarman notes that "since i think heather probably has a nice car and a nice house and never had to accept second-tier health care, i think she's in the same boat." (The same boat, presumably, as many of the rich, "overclass" characters in the subject shows.) I am always amazed by how her readers will make such unsubstantiated statements in order to make their point (or, in some cases, simply to cast aspersions on or otherwise discredit the writer).
In fact, while HH sometimes shares clever anecdotes and occasionally seems to give away bits of information about her upbringing or attitudes, it appears to me that her style is faux-confessional, in that she rarely comments factually on her circumstances while at the same time evoking the image of someone doing just that. For example, HH writes "Most of us, particularly those of us who enjoy the conveniences of television and pizza delivery more than is reasonable or healthy, would sooner chow down a plate of week-old cow lips than attempt to scale Mount Everest. Yes, some of us dare to dream; others of us live our lives in our soft pants." (ILTW, 2006/12/03) Does HH eat too much pizza? Does she lounge around the house all day, a couch potato in "soft pants"? I suspect not. But it is the lack of hard facts mixed with frequent references (along with the ILTW couch potato graphic), I believe, that allow her readers to project such an image. In fact, Mr. Sugarman, I don't believe we actually have any information about HH's medical deductibles, past or present, the terms of her mortgage, or for that matter, her diet.
If you have observed her writing since the Suck.com days, you know that she lived in San Francisco during the dotcom boom, is a Duke University psychology graduate who grew up in the South, and is a rabid Duke basketball fan. In recent years, she has revealed that she is a newlywed and a new mother. She has two dogs. One of her dogs is named POTUS. She lives in Los Angeles. Living in LA and writing about the entertainment industry may seem glamourous to some readers. But radio stations seemed glamourous to me until I actually visited one.
We actually know very little about her religious and political views or about her current circumstances. My sense is that she has lived a somewhat bohemian life in Southern California, enjoying some lucrative years during the boom and some hand-to-mouth years afterwards. She has expressed both liberal and libertarian tendencies. As a commentator, she seems jaded in ways common to her generation, but not overly so. She aspires to cultural commentary; consequently, watching and writing about television is not something she considers to be beheath her.
I understand my own projection mechanism is in play here. But where tomreedtune projects a latte-drinking feminazi snidely snickering at his manhood, my own observations lead me to project a clever, insightful, smart-alecky but empathetic writer, someone who observes the beautiful people of the Southern California entertainment industry without falling victim to envy or awe. I continue to read her column because it is one of the best places to find out what is happening on television, which, for better or worse, is where American culture takes place.