Vidiot Syndrome

THE VIDIOT SYNDROME

When I look at the TV I know right away they're not addressing me. Television talks to stupid people. Look around, you can tell who they are. They imitate what they see on television. People may be more educated than they were before the was TV, but we don't seem to have gotten any smarter. If you want to be informed, television is the least bang for the buck. There is very little real, honest, useful information there. If you only knew what you were missing.
All you have to do is look at who owns the medium you get your information from. It should come as no surprise to find that the big three TV networks are owned by some of the largest defense contractors in the US. They are very large corporations who have a high stake in what you know and how you perceive reality. In a consumer economy, people have to be trained to buy products continuously or the system won't work. TV is the perfect brain-washing tool for this purpose. TV is also useful as a means to implant pre-engineered opinions in the masses. What is not on TV is more telling than what we are shown. If you only knew what you were missing.
I'm not saying television has to be all information. People want entertainment. So give us entertainment! Fun, adventure, excitement, art, music, nature. It can be serious, funny, silly, even crazy. Instead we get stupid,
violent, pompous, pretentious chewing gum for the mind. I am getting sick and tired of getting the hard sell every time I turn on my communication appliances. Yeah, yeah, there's some good stuff on television but, by far, most of it is crap and you know it. It's nowhere near what it could be. For cryin' out loud, look at what you're watching! If you only knew what you were missing.
AND NOW A WORD FROM THE SPONSOR
Hey, if Jenny Craig's diet plan is so great, how come we never get to see her on the tube selling her wares? Is she fat or ugly or what? And that Sy Spurling of the Hair Club for men? O.K.,... so now he's a schnook with hair. Oh, and there's that spray-on hair in a can for bald men. Have you noticed all those car commercials where the cars are gracefully skidding sideways? I don't care how graceful they are, I don't want a car that skids sideways. In those commercials the cars are always going too fast and there's never anybody else on the road. When they make car commercials, they close down a traffic thoroughfare so they can photograph the automobile. Think about that one for a minute. If you knew how much money they spend to make car commercials it would make you sick. Car commercials almost win the prize for pompous stupidity; cat food commercials beat them to it. I'd rather watch a test pattern.

We stink. That's what the American advertisers want us to think. You have B.O., bad breath, stink-foot, "feminine odor" and we're even challenged to believe our hair stinks. Not only that; your bathroom and kitchen stink. Your bedroom stinks. Your baby stinks. Your carpet stinks, your laundry stinks. Your dog stinks, your dog's breath stinks. Your car stinks. American manufacturers have come to our rescue with an armada of products specifically designed to alter the odor of everything we come in contact with in our daily lives. In the case of odors we cannot detect, we are convinced that we'd better deodorize everything just to be safe because others surely will notice immediately.
Beer is the elixir of the gods. The TV tells me so. Beer drinkers are way-cool, good-looking and have all the fun . . . in the commercials, anyway. You'll never see fat, belching, obnoxious louts fighting in bars. No, we have politically correct beer commercials. (Except for the rampant sexism.) They don't show people actually drinking; they're not allowed to show that. We only see responsible drinkers, smiling camaraderie, and the most bodacious babes on TV. I don't know about you, but that makes me thirsty. What's with this lite-beer stuff? Now there's this non-alcoholic beer. Hello, knock, knock, anybody home in there? That isn't beer. That's something else.
Oh, it gets better. Look at all those products that deal with, shall we say, sensitive issues. Toilet products, feminine products, hygiene products that deal with areas where the sun doesn't shine, geriatric diapers. Some strange euphemisms are invented to describe these unmentionables. "Serenity Guards." Imagine; you have a product and you can't talk about what it's used for.
This medium we call television is ludicrously crass and pretentious. Studies have proven that television hampers intellectual and creative development in its viewers, especially in children. It atrophies the creative and critical thinking powers in people who watch a lot of television. It doesn't have to be that way. Why is it that way? Because the people who bring this slop to us think we are less intelligent than they are. Of course, this is a self-filling prophecy if we don't complain about it. I predict that TV will be the world-wide drug problem of the next century.
TV insults me freely and I'm paying for the privilege. On the average major network channels, there are about eight hours of commercials for every 24 hours of broadcast time. Some channels have more. The Home Shopping network is nothing but commercials. Television was the rebirth of the door to door salesman. I want these people out of my house.