The Vast Wasteland of Television

Preface: Popular culture and the society we (Americans) are becoming, for the lack of better words, ****** the ever living crap out of me. Through this piece I have written, I state my opinion regarding this nonsense. The place I happen to witness the digression of our society is in my beloved family room on my very own television. Through a series of events and short stories I will try to illustrate the horse crap that producers and most commonly the “young and hip people” of America try to shovel into my house. If you manage to make it through my paper without crinkling it up and pitching it to the nearest trash can, I hope that you enjoyed it (at least a tiny bit).
James Gross

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It was a Sunday evening, and there was nothing on TV. I was sitting around, my homework was done and I had absolutely nothing to do. My thumb began to cramp up on me from flipping channels, so I resorted to the TV Guide channel (horrible decision). The TV listings were scrunched on the bottom of the screen because the producers collectively decided that it was more important to analyze fashion…my immediate reaction was to discard my TV into the nearest dumpster. My second thought was why anybody would want to listen to fashion analysis? I began to wonder what the **** was running through the production staffs minds when they decided to broadcast analysis…of cloth. People were actually getting paid substantial amounts of money to talk about cleavage. Really the only question you need to ask is do they sag. And no, I’m not talking women’s cleavage I’m talking about Al Gore’s.

After complaining about the fashion team for roughly five minutes, my mom happened to mention that Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader was on. I should have taken a minute to think about the show: adults with alleged college degrees are on a game show and being out-smarted by fifth graders (should have rung a bell). Unfortunately I turned it on and tuned into what I later would call an hour of bull****. Soon after I switched my TV to Fox (a station that year after year puts on the greatest display of senseless programming) Jeff Foxworthy soon appeared on my screen. I did not take this as a warning sign (nothing against Jeff Foxworthy). It was celebrity night… exciting. Some blond haired celebrity from the south came on. I don’t remember her name because within ten seconds, her squeaky high voice reminded me of thousands of tiny pigs in a slaughter house. However, it was the first time in the show’s history that a contestant openly admitted that they were in fact, not as smart as a fifth grader. As the show went on, I became progressively incensed. The epitome of my anger came when this lady was asked which European country has the capital of Budapest. Somehow Fox Television permitted the contestant to open her mouth, which produced the following, “Wait a sec, I thought Europe was a country?” At this very moment, even the little fifth grade boy wanted to sock this lady in the face. She proceeded even further by suggesting that France might not be a country. I suddenly began to believe that it was not the politicians that fudged our foreign policy, but the millions of Americans that can’t even locate the USA on a map. Any diploma this lady received should be voided and incinerated. I quickly left the viewing area after this incident and started drafting an email that detailed the termination of the TV show.

The heart of the problem is something I will never understand, reality TV. I believe Survivor is entering its 90th season? Each year Survivor somehow reappears on television in some new place. This year when I heard they picked Survivor Newark, New Jersey the contestants actually quit the show because they deemed it “unreasonable”. The reason behind this is that CBS flew all of the contestants into the Newark airport (clearly a mistake). On the flight over, the septic tank in the belly of the plane (which was too full) began backing up into the toilets. Many passengers reported the cabin to be “foul” smelling and utterly disgusting. One passenger said he felt like he “just shoved his head up someone’s ass.” When the plane landed, the passengers frantically dashed off the plane only to be greeted by a new smell, New Jersey. The passengers quickly rushed back onto the plane to get some fresh air. This event drew the first ever cancelling of Survivor. MTV quickly picked up the show and turned it into a porno.

The real issue at stake here is reality TV. I really don’t like reality TV for a number of reasons. One reason is that everything is turning into reality TV. I really can’t get over the new History Channel TV show Ice Road Truckers. Seriously, Ice Road Truckers!?! That is almost as ****ed up as NASCAR. If you want NASCAR, go to your local parking lot and watch the cars. Dump some gasoline on the ground and it’s like you’re right at the track. If you’re really game, stick your mouth on an exhaust pipe and breath deep. Then ask the driver to throw the car in reverse (why have thirty-two teeth when you can have four!) Then after Ice Road Truckers (what are they thinking?), there is Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. I have nothing against gays, but honestly, I’m not sitting at home saying “Look at those clever homosexuals! And what they do with socks… fantastic!” I’m really not sure what is actually going through anybody’s mind when they choose to watch that. The way you can earn the highest smiting from Morgan Friedman (James don’t you mean God? Incase you haven’t noticed Morgan Friedman is God. You’re going to hell, God isn’t black. Right, because you know him, watch a ****ing movie once in a while. Keep telling yourself that you poke holes in your bed sheets to look like Casper.) Not to stray away from the point, God will send you south, to Arkansas, for watching the Simple Life. They actually watch this show for fun there, for fun. That’s ****ing bull****. This show stars Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. They both combined have the IQ of maybe, say, scotch tape. It’s absolutely amazing, the two of them basically go around the country corrupting the youth of America and “giving themselves away” to unsuspecting males. The United States Senate debated whether showing the Simple Life to prisoners of Guantanamo Bay was considered “cruel and unusual”. The Senate turned over the choice to the inmates themselves who said they would rather be water boarded.

A large portion of our time is wasted while watching TV. I’m not talking about programming either, I’m talking about commercials. I was watching TV one day and I was enjoying the program that was on. I was getting a little bit tired and began to doze off. Immediately after I shut my eyes this blaring sound shook me awake. Some company had decided to hire a guy to scream about their product (terrific advertising ploy). He wouldn’t stop. This guy was unbelievable. Every commercial this guy is on he’s yelling. He was yelling at a dog. The man was yelling at a dog. Yelling at a dog!!! Why does he feel the urge to yell? My brain isn’t going, “He’s yelling you must buy this product!” I just couldn’t figure out why this guy was yelling. Did he smash his thumb? Is he Irish? I couldn’t comprehend the yelling. It truly got to the point where the paid actors and actresses on the commercial had this perplexed look on their faces and were like “Why the **** is this guy yelling?”

One program that I expect to be high quality TV is the news. Who am I kidding? You really cannot get the news from anywhere. You can find the news on CNN, but only on the bottom of the screen. If you wonder why a high percentage of Americans have ADD, it’s because you’re always flipping your head to catch the words as they scroll away. It’s like a sick game that the people at CNN enjoy watching. If you don’t like the tiny writing at the bottom of the screen there’s always Fox. You know, this ultra-conservative station is really great if you want to hear about how good of a job George Bush has been doing. Yeah 50 more years! When people watch Fox and say they are getting information, they’re full of ****. Nobody gets any information. Whether you agree with them or not, it’s just not possible. When you watch Fox, you get ten minutes of O’Reilly’s No Spin Zone (No Spin Zone??? Who the **** are they kidding?), ten minutes of Sean Hannity calling Barack Obama a Muslim, three minutes of Britney Spears did what??? Another 3 minutes on a human interest story (footage of moose in a suburban swimming pool), two minutes forced, light, half-hearted banter and finally, two minutes of that squirrel who water skis. Fox is very consistent in making sure they broadcast the purist bull**** any American news channel can produce.

Just as all stories do (this very colorful account in particular), must come to an end. Even though the writing on this page will cease to exist after the final sentence, the spirit of these five or six pages will continue to hopefully evoke insightful banter amongst the elevated thinkers in which I will have hopefully touched with my account of America on crack (this is almost literally the case). When you get home from a long day of work or school, and you sit down on your couch and kick off your shoes and flip on your TV, and bull**** starts flying out of it, there is a problem. I want to watch sensible programming that isn’t littered with people fornicating in an intersection or old men singing about erectile dysfunction, smiling like they just found the cure to cancer. Hasn’t anybody ever heard of quality control? I watched American History X (which is terrific movie by the way) a few weeks ago and it said to always end your papers with a quote, because somebody else has already said it best. I think that is a very notable idea. James Gross once said, “If it’s bull**** I don’t want to see it on my TV.” Well there you have it, the truth in the sublime. With that being said, I bit you all farewell.

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Epilogue: I am sad to draw this story to a close, but there comes a time when a paper becomes too long and people won’t want to read it (Holy ****! Six ****ing pages!?! I’ll have an aneurism before I’m done with this). I myself get freaked out when I see gigantic stories. It’s hard to concentrate on the text because your thinking to yourself, “this better be ****ing worth it. Six pages, who does he think he is?” Unless it’s a great story and you’re glued to every single line, addicted, like a crack addict living on an island, where everything is made out of crack and they laugh at the addiction centers that are also made out of crack… Yes, I might have taken that analogy too far, but the point is; a good story is a good story. I’m also not saying that my story is the greatest thing ever (even though it clearly is), it might offend some people or they may disagree with some of my statements. Besides the controversy possibly surrounding this paper, I had a great time creating this satirical look at American popular culture. I hope you’ve had as much fun reading this as I had writing it. With that being said, I now officially bid you, for the absolute last time, adieu.
James Gross