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On Wednesday, June 5, 2002, at 05:05 PM, eric dorkin wrote:
> 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 t! he 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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