You never hear anyone say, "I God damn watch a lot of television." People often preamble their references to television with a justifying conditional. I don't normally watch a lot of TV, but... A recent anonymous posting to Blog Day Afternoon illustrates this phenomena, "I ended up watching more TV than usual which is almost to say none at all..." People do not normally expend additional effort to make themselves look bad, so we assume these efforts are meant to make themselves look good. Who are they trying to impress?
The rise of television's popularity was accompanied by its stigmatization. During the mid 1960s, the phrases "idiot box" and "boob tube" entered the lexicon.1 Implicitly one who spent a lot of time with this media was either an idiot or a boob. Has the broad acceptance of these terms left people scrambling to prove that neither label applies to them?
There are many websites and associated organizations whose purpose is to reduce or remove television from your life. Turn Off Tv offers some trite facts and research to back their assertion that television is bad for you. (It makes you fat while it disenfranchises you.) And offers some helpful hints to "TV proof" your home. They suggest moving your televisions to less prominent places in the house and hiding the remote controls.2 Of course if you can't remember where you hid them, then maybe passive entertainment is your bag and you should probably increase the dose.
TV Free America sponsors an event called National TV Turn Off Week while LimiTV suggests you apply their type of parental guidance. (Make sure their rooms are clean before they watch TV.)3 Most of this prescriptive advice appears directed toward parents. Since these groups hold the view that television is bad for children, then the parents whose children watch a lot of television perform poorly in their role.
No parent wants to be percieved as bad. And with advocacy groups stigmatizing television as detrimental to children, we could understand introductory clauses that tempor statements concerned with television and their children. My kids don't normally watch a lot of television, but... This of course doesn't explain why Anonymous, et al, feel compelled to tempor statements about their own viewing habits.
Few people like to say they watch a lot television. Yet according A.C. Nielsen, the average American spends almost four hours a day watching it. And while the person who just prefaced a statement to you with a pronouncement of less than average television viewing may indeed be telling you the truth, odds are they're lying. We can't all have less than average viewing time and there simply aren't enough unemployed loafers to skew the national average. Plus 134,000 of the loafers will merely offset the Amish population.4 It's not likely that you've made many mentions of television content that drew blanks stares from the other party. People know what's on TV. You can quickly mention television shows without the need to establish a common point of reference.
So who are people trying to impress with claims of limited television association? My guess is mommy. We all want to please our mothers and mothers don't want to be bad parents so we lie to our co-workers at the coffee machine just in case they might have a direct line to her.
Listen, I'm not going to kid you, I God damn watch a lot of TV. I can watch three football games a day in the fall. And I love the Jerry Springer Show. Jerry introduces me to freaks without actually having them in my living room. The Daily Show alone is worth the price of cable. I told Matt that my favorite shows were The Simpsons, The Daily Show and 60 Minutes. Without missing a beat he replied, "You watch the Simpsons for philosophy, The Daily Show for news and 60 Minutes for entertainment." See we all watch TV, I just don't know why we have so much trouble admitting it...
1. From the Oxford English Dictionary,
1965 Lancet 2 Jan. 46/2 Often they may be found, in semi-hypnotic state, watching the ‘idiot box’ with its endless stream of images and fullness of sound, all signifying nothing.
1966 Current Slang (Univ. S. Dakota) Fall 1 Let's catch the late show on the *boob tube
2. For a complete itemization of home TV proofing, click here.
3. For LimiTV's suggested set of television rules, click here.
4. The total amish population is 134,000 but only adults count as members of the church which numbers 30,000. For argument's sake we'll assume their children do not regularly watch television for lack of electricity in their parent's home.
