Ancient Rome Anyone?

Initially they were there because during times of fragmented audiences and runaway production budgets they were cheap and easy.  I don't think anybody at the networks had an inkling of how, like pigs to slop, Americans would belly up to dreck like Survivor, American Idol, Big Brother, and countless other witless and dippy examples of human discomfit.

REALITY BITES!  Face it, these shows are squirm inducing monuments to narcissism and man's unique ability to ignore what the rest of the world recognizes as a complete void of talent and personality.  It's train wreck television and in the age of idiocracy it is a ratings winner.  Damn, it is awful!

I checked out the first episode of Survivor.  I thought it might be an interesting change.  By the first commercial break I found myself hating ALL of the participants and wondered where the network was able to find such a massive collection of complete (sorry) dicks to be on the show.  An hour into the program I was ready to take a flame thrower to the entire cast and, if I could have found it, my shotgun was prepared to "Elvis" the TV set.  I was enraged.  Was America really stupid enough to watch this crap?!  The answer was, of course, in the affirmative.  Troubling.

Apparently there are enough nimrods willing to watch other nimrods embarrass themselves on television and, bingo, ladies and gentlemen...we have a hit on our hands.  Now it's everywhere.  Even shows like the Tonight Show incorporate elements of reality TV into their traditional format.  "Jay Walking" is a very disturbing feature of Jay Leno's nightly gabfest.  In case you've missed it, this benchmark has Jay asking people on the street questions that any D minus third-grader should be able to get right.  Naturally, they don't.  Am I the only one who finds this infuriating?  It's NOT funny.  It's sad.  It makes me wonder  how our schools can consistently be so horrible that we unfailingly  graduate a nation of functional illiterates who, though well into adulthood, have no clue about...ANYTHING.  I fear for a country full of women who can't complete a simple sentence without the word "like" and men who dress as if they're still in grade school and sport spider neck tattoos and pants that appear to be toting a load.

Bringing back the draft might be a step in the right direction.  Maybe a couple of years in the Army might pound some intelligence into these dopes.  It worked in the sixties.

Maybe I should just give up on TV.  Now that I reflect on it, the only shows worth watching lately are on premium channels like Showtime, HBO, AMC and FX.  The Sopranos, Rescue Me, Rubicon, Damages, Louie, Mad Men, and others require that you at least have your GED.  Perhaps the lame stream programing of ABC, CBS, and NBC deserves to be the home of the slag heap that is reality TV.  Watch if you must but know that for every hour you spend viewing shows like Survivor your losing at least five IQ points.  There goes the Mensa picnic.

Fast food and HDTV...bread and circuses anyone?

"Stupid is as stupid does." - Forrest Gump