Monday, February 16, 2004
The Late-Night-with-an-Idiot-Puppet anxiety closet
We spent most of last night catering to a sick toddler instead of sleeping. The repercussion is the residual paranoia borne of time spent in the late-night anxiety closet between trips to his room.
The product of which is the mind-numbingly stupid notion that--get this--someone is controlling what we see and hear on TV and radio.
No, the impetus for this preposterous idea was not the shock of discovering we shared it with the comically dishonest William Safire--though that should be reason enough. No, it's worse than that.
It's not because we believe that the institution of a broadcast delay in live TV is an over-reaction to Janet Jackson's classless Super Bowl stunt. Although we do.
It's not even from learning that networks and cable outlets are now picking and choosing among political ads from interest groups and "public service messages" from the Bush administration. Though frankly we found that disturbing.
No, believe it or not, the last straw, the thing that pushed us over the edge into tinfoil hat land, was when we learned that the Canadians are now going to do the same.
In case you missed it (and who didn't?) Canada is currently in an uproar over two separate incidents of Quebecois-bashing on TV. The most recent came courtesy of the puppet Triumph the Insult Comic Dog during a Toronto taping of the Conan O'Brien show, and the previous from legendary hockey scold Don Cherry, who is sort of a cross between Ray Walston, a plaid blanket, and, well, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.
The result of which is that Canadian TV will now have a seven-second delay to "to suppress any future insults before they are broadcast".
Putting aside the chilling image of what hockey commentary--or any television, really--will be like when someone in a broadcast booth can delete, at his sole discretion, anything deemed "insulting", doesn't it strike anyone as odd that this happened within weeks of the same thing here in the US? What are the odds of that?
In the last month both the US and Canada have had incidents which caused network TV to institute broadcast delays of unscripted events--one to prevent "obscenity", the other to prevent "insults". Both result in someone, somewhere, being able to delete remarks from the public's hearing without, as far as we know, any publicly-discussed guidelines for doing so.
This at a time when US networks are actually choosing between political and public-service ads--airing some and refusing to air others while rival networks do the opposite--with one, ABC, deciding to air only an edited version of a government ad.
Meaning that a viewer's assessment of reality may literally depend on which network he or she watches.
It's bad enough for diversity of opinion and free speech that five companies own essentially every media outlet in America. Are we now being tricked into allowing outright censorship?
We await the men in the white suits to pick us up and take us to Happy Land. At least we'll be able to sleep in the truck.
The product of which is the mind-numbingly stupid notion that--get this--someone is controlling what we see and hear on TV and radio.
No, the impetus for this preposterous idea was not the shock of discovering we shared it with the comically dishonest William Safire--though that should be reason enough. No, it's worse than that.
It's not because we believe that the institution of a broadcast delay in live TV is an over-reaction to Janet Jackson's classless Super Bowl stunt. Although we do.
It's not even from learning that networks and cable outlets are now picking and choosing among political ads from interest groups and "public service messages" from the Bush administration. Though frankly we found that disturbing.
No, believe it or not, the last straw, the thing that pushed us over the edge into tinfoil hat land, was when we learned that the Canadians are now going to do the same.
In case you missed it (and who didn't?) Canada is currently in an uproar over two separate incidents of Quebecois-bashing on TV. The most recent came courtesy of the puppet Triumph the Insult Comic Dog during a Toronto taping of the Conan O'Brien show, and the previous from legendary hockey scold Don Cherry, who is sort of a cross between Ray Walston, a plaid blanket, and, well, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.
The result of which is that Canadian TV will now have a seven-second delay to "to suppress any future insults before they are broadcast".
Putting aside the chilling image of what hockey commentary--or any television, really--will be like when someone in a broadcast booth can delete, at his sole discretion, anything deemed "insulting", doesn't it strike anyone as odd that this happened within weeks of the same thing here in the US? What are the odds of that?
In the last month both the US and Canada have had incidents which caused network TV to institute broadcast delays of unscripted events--one to prevent "obscenity", the other to prevent "insults". Both result in someone, somewhere, being able to delete remarks from the public's hearing without, as far as we know, any publicly-discussed guidelines for doing so.
This at a time when US networks are actually choosing between political and public-service ads--airing some and refusing to air others while rival networks do the opposite--with one, ABC, deciding to air only an edited version of a government ad.
Meaning that a viewer's assessment of reality may literally depend on which network he or she watches.
It's bad enough for diversity of opinion and free speech that five companies own essentially every media outlet in America. Are we now being tricked into allowing outright censorship?
We await the men in the white suits to pick us up and take us to Happy Land. At least we'll be able to sleep in the truck.
