Michael Moore Was Right: Progressives Don't Watch Enough TV
By Vanessa Richmond,
AlterNet. Posted October 9, 2009.
Why TV is ground zero for understanding American culture -- the 9 best shows on air that you should be watching.The following is the first article in a three-part AlterNet series appearing on Fridays on television and culture by Vanessa Richmond.Do you know what's wrong with the Left?” asked Michael Moore about a decade ago at The Media and Democracy Congress. “They don’t watch TV.” If anything, the number of those in the anti-TV army has grown.
Some people who have things like jobs and kids and marriages and friends (and even the luxury of hobbies or regular workouts) think they aren’t watching TV because they don’t have time. It’s gone on the list of things they might do if they were suddenly, say, retired. Along with getting a long-haired dog. Or taking up snowboarding.
But that’s not really why busy, progressive people don’t watch TV. It’s that somehow TV’s image has become associated with the Right and the average. I’ve asked anti-TV friends and they say TV is nothing but 24-hour infotainment, like Fox News, comin' atcha with flashing lights and jingles. And to those people, it doesn’t seem as rewarding -- on a personal or even civic level -- as reading a newspaper or book, or watching a good “film.” Or, even, eating ice cream, drinking wine, or catching up on sleep. They’d rather, in fact, pour lemon juice on their cuts, they tell me, than tune in.
But listen, as I tell those (sneering) friends, TV is back. Some critics are even calling it the golden age of TV. And not just because of HBO, which is even now sometimes called "HBOver" due to the new, good competition like AMC.
Whether you’re watching an hour of Mad Men on your laptop in bed, getting into a couch-coma on a Sunday with a rented series on DVD, or tuning into Letterman or Colbert at night while checking your email, TV can be a rejuvenating, stimulating, and rewarding experience. And don’t underestimate the zone out aspect -- it can be the antidote to this over-productive, perfectionistic culture. ............(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.alternet.org/media/143178/michael_moore_was_right%3A_progressives_don%27t_watch_enough_tv 
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