Heck, all it takes are the commercials for other tv shows: Bacherloettes in Alaska, The Hamptons, The Bachelor, Blind Date; Fear Factor; etcetera, etcetera, etcetera........then you have regular commercials and the best (read: worst) of the bunch are the ones from the new liquor "beverages." Oh, then flip to professional wrestling for oh, I don;t know, 30 secs....The truth is those of you not watching are probably not far off in your "guesses" as to what is on. I do think you are missing some great stuff, most notably The Simpsons and Six Feet Under, and occasionally Comedy Central.
Jeffrey Fisher <jfisher at igc.org> wrote: i swear, sometimes i think the two of you should just play a poker game and settle this once and for all . . .
On Wednesday, June 5, 2002, at 04:42 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>
> First, we not only have a TV, we have a satellite service. But I still
> say you've gone over the edge.
>
> O.K. -- you don't have to watch every dumb sit-com. How many _do_ you
> have to watch? How many soaps? How many cop shows? How many hours of ads
> perday? What proportion of different products. Do you have to watch at
> least one snack ad (e.g. pringles) a week, or one a day? Or do you have
> to watch only 3 ads for 3 different snack products a year?
>
> How about magazines? Glamour etc. How many of them? People etc. How many
> of them?
>
> How from your x hours of TV watching to you determine the meaning of all
> that you've watched?
>
>
> You simply cannot say "One needs to experience X category of activities
> to understand American culture." That way insanity lies.
ok, this is what's called "reductio ad absurdum." it's reminding me of a fight i had in ethics class as a SOPHOMORE in college, where i was saying that in order to be responsible citizens, people need to do more than watch peter jennings or dan rather every night. the response from my frosh and sophomore classmates was, "what? you want us all to, what, read the NYT every day? the sunday nyt is *this thick*! what, are you nuts? [implicit: you hyperintellectual elitist!]" nevermind that plenty of people find time to read the nyt (or even better papers ;-) on a more or less regular basis. the point is that they respond to the point by simply pushing it to an illogical extreme and responding to *that* instead of dealing with the actual issue.
i would expect a more mature response to this dilemma than to throw the whole thing in the wastebasket by performing a terry-eagleton-esque reduction of your opponent to a straw man.
>
>> Besides, it doesn't all suck.
>
> Oh, you mean one need only view the superior productions to understand
> american culture. The culture of those who watch or produce the tve that
> sucks doesn't count???
>
do you always read what people say in the worst way it's possible to read it? why can't watching television you enjoy in part because you enjoy it co-exist with watching television (that you may or may not enjoy) in order to glean something of what's happening in pop culture from it?
jesus frickin' christ,
j
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