{"id":209,"date":"2010-03-17T17:41:47","date_gmt":"2010-03-18T01:41:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisabravermoss.wordpress.com\/?p=209"},"modified":"2022-06-07T20:31:03","modified_gmt":"2022-06-07T20:31:03","slug":"in-defense-of-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lisabravermoss.com\/in-defense-of-tv\/","title":{"rendered":"In Defense of TV"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I\u2019m not one of those literary types with a \u201cKill Your Television\u201d bumper sticker on my Volvo station wagon.\u00a0 I don\u2019t own a Volvo, I\u2019ve never quite identified as a literary type, and I happen to like TV.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">There are juicy dramas like <em>Mad Men<\/em> whose writing is better than most current movie screenplays.\u00a0 There are some brilliant comedies.\u00a0 There\u2019s Rachel Maddow for brains, charm and guts, Bill Maher for well-informed iconoclasm, and Jon Stewart for wit and cuteness. \u00a0There are even a couple of decent classical music stations on cable.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Indeed, most of my favorites are on cable, something not everyone can afford.\u00a0 But there\u2019s a lot to be said for the regular stations, too.\u00a0 In fact, mainstream TV has been an important vehicle of progress over the last generation, bringing us into an era in which we can talk about previously taboo topics.\u00a0 Some would argue we\u2019re talking too much and thinking too little.\u00a0 Nonetheless, we can\u2019t very well champion the idea of positive social change and then turn our noses down at it because it came from TV.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">In just a couple of decades, things have gotten dramatically better for gay, bisexual and transgender people, battered spouses, incest survivors, mixed-race couples, sufferers from psychiatric conditions, physical disease and disabilities, people with learning differences, and alcoholics\/addicts and their families. Thank you, Phil Donahue, for blazing the trail, and thank you, Oprah, for paving it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The effects are apparent even in thoroughly awful shows.\u00a0 The very presence of out-of-the-mainstream characters in comedies and dramas, and the ubiquitous exploration of previously closeted issues, probably sends more of a message than overly earnest \u201ctolerance\u201d indoctrination in the schools.\u00a0 I\u2019d even argue that a crummy drama involving a domestic abuse survivor or an openly bipolar person is as valuable in its way as a well-written, nuanced show from a less psychologically sophisticated era.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">There are times, too, when TV is uniquely able to convey the impact of a major event.\u00a0 I remember the morning of 9\/11, when a family friend\u2014clearly disoriented\u2014called and said she\u2019d never liked the twin towers anyway.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I ignored the offense.\u00a0 \u201cTurn on the TV.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\u201cI\u2019m listening to KQED radio,\u201d she protested.\u00a0 \u201cI don\u2019t get my news from\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\u201cTurn it on!\u201d I repeated.\u00a0 There was no better way to grasp the situation.\u00a0 Stations were criticized for airing the footage over and over, but in a way, the looping helped it all sink in.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">But it\u2019s not worth it, you say.\u00a0 \u201cNews\u201d shows give airtime to shrill insanity.\u00a0 \u201cReality\u201d shows are\u2026well, unreal.\u00a0 Pharmaceutical ads include baffling disclaimers narrated by some guy on uppers.\u00a0 It\u2019s an assault, it\u2019s crass, it\u2019s insulting.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Hey, I\u2019m not suggesting you attempt all this without the Mute button\u2014or, more to the point, the on-off switch.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">But if you can\u2019t sleep and keep reading the same paragraph in <em>The New Yorker<\/em> over and over, there are always reruns of <em>That 70\u2019s Show<\/em>.\u00a0 The only drawback is, you might wake up your entire household by laughing out loud.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Published in <em>The Piedmont Post<\/em>, March 17, 2010<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m not one of those literary types with a \u201cKill Your Television\u201d bumper sticker on my Volvo station wagon.\u00a0 I don\u2019t own a Volvo, I\u2019ve never quite identified as a literary type, and I happen to like TV. There are juicy dramas like Mad Men whose writing is better than most current movie screenplays.\u00a0 There&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[109,110],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>In Defense of TV - Lisa Braver Moss<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lisabravermoss.com\/in-defense-of-tv\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"In Defense of TV - Lisa Braver Moss\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I\u2019m not one of those literary types with a \u201cKill Your Television\u201d bumper sticker on my Volvo station wagon.\u00a0 I don\u2019t own a Volvo, I\u2019ve never quite identified as a literary type, and I happen to like TV. 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