Well, I've been sick today. I didn't have any classes scheduled today, so I was going to be home anyway, but I did have a lot of work to do. My tonsil has swollen up for no particular reason and with no warning, and I'm feeling a general malaise. This has made me want to screw off and not do any of the work I had to do. I didn't really want to do any of that work anyway, and only needed the slightest of excuses to put it off.
So, what have I been doing since I got up? I watched some of the cable "news." I was particularly disgusted by CNN's Headline Prime "news." The segment I was watching was actually a talk show, run by an extremely conservative host who was spewing invective at the camera. His face and upper torso were featured prominently on the right side of the screen. Factoids and bullet points from his dialogue popped up on the left side of the screen, as well as relevant photos. And beneath his image was the news ticker, and a logo for CNN Headline Prime. A less than alert viewer might mistake this for a real news program, though admittedly they'd have to be pretty unobservant.
The turn that cable news has taken in recent years is very disturbing. Since when has it been the reporter's job to tell us how to think? Sure, there might have been a slight spin on the reporting, but there was never such blatant and unabashed opining as has been displayed lately. Despite the logo decrying otherwise, this was not news at all. It was editorial, and should have been unequivocally labeled as such. Newspapers keep opinions to the op-ed section where they are clearly marked. Such boundaries have been blurred to obscurity on cable news.
I actually felt like I was in some futuristic dystopian movie as I watched this guy spitting and thrusting his finger at the camera, surrounded by all the markers and indications of journalism. It was confusing and contradictory. Who was behind it all? Who wanted to project these ideas and images into people's heads? Who was watching and absorbing it all? Who would be parroting this fascist tomorrow because they saw this "news" program today?
People can't be manipulated quite as well through other forms of media as they can through television. Yes, radio can be pretty powerful, but it doesn't have the added oomph of visual stimuli to further distract our senses and slip in more subliminal messages. Newspapers and print internet have still images, but a person has to read the words and hear them in their own internal voice.
I guess we have to lump internet tv in with regular tv, but there's a bit more intention to using the internet -- a user has to point and click, and usually the segments aren't streaming. Usually they are short clips, and as such leave room for more thoughtful digestion after viewing. Soon enough though, technology will catch up and there will be streaming video for all "news" channels online.
Long story short, I changed the channel. I went searching for a nice, decent movie to while the next 2 hours away. But I couldn't find anything that I either hadn't seen already, or that seemed entertaining. Daytime tv can be so drab. So I put in a video instead. I'd just bought it from the thrift store for $3. I'd seen it before but it was a favorite of mine.
Eventually I lost interest in the video too. And I noticed how very depressed I was feeling. I don't know if I would have been feeling depressed anyway, because of my tonsillitis, or the boring work I still have to do, or the general gloomy weather outside, but I thought maybe the tv had something to do with it.
So I turned it off and started typing out this blog entry. Writing this has been therapeutic for me. I've felt productive, and I've felt like I have some control over my life, and what I do in it. I don't have to watch tv all day just because I'm sick. I don't have to watch tv just because I have a bunch of work I'm procrastinating. I can do something else. Right now, that something else is writing this entry. Once I'm done, I will do another something else.
As I mentioned in the last entry, I can look this sucky day in the face, and say "Hey, you sure do suck a lot. I'm going to find some way to make you suck less." And I can guarantee that one way NOT to make it suck less is to turn the tv back on.
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