Happy Birthday Idiot Box

Today is the anniversary of one of the most important events in all of history. This is the 79th birthday of perhaps the most powerful invention to ever change the world. On January 27, 1926, a Scottish inventor named John Baird gave the first public demonstration of a television in London.

Baird operated two ventriloquist dummies in front of a camera. He just showed their heads, so that viewers couldn’t see him working them. a German scientist had actually patented a television system in 1884. Baird also made the first trans-Atlantic broadcast from London to New York over phone lines and came out with the first color TV in 1928.

Frequent broadcasts to a few homes began in New York that same year. Regular television broadcasts began in the United States in 1939, and permanent color broadcasts began in 1954. By the late fifties, televisions were in a majority of American homes.

Television had a unifying effect on the nation for the second half of the twentieth century. Since there were only three major networks and the Public Broadcasting System in the airways, Americans had television in common. Southerners and Northerners both watched ‘I love Lucy.’ Easterners and Westerners watched ‘Dick Van Dyke.’ City dwellers and country folks all watched ‘I Dream of Genie.’ Television wore away at regional differences and cultural divides. TV made the myth of a “melting pot” a reality. America was no longer a deli tray of Monterey Jack, Cheddar, and Provolone; it was finally becoming a Velveeta fondue.

Television shed light on our wrongs and influenced us toward reform. Television exposed Northerners to the injustices of Southern segregation. It brought the horror of the Vietnam War into comfortable suburban living rooms. It chronicled the Watergate hearings.

We all remember fondly gathering around our families sets to mourn President Kennedy, to pray for the Apollo Astronauts, to listen to Bing Crosby and laugh at Bob Hope and Johnny Carson, and to cheer for our Olympic Hockey team.

When people my age were kids it was clear that there were patterns we could count on from TV. Local news at five and six, world news sandwiched between at five-thirty. A lively game show at six-thirty was followed by “the family hour at seven;” kid-friendly situation comedies like ‘Happy Days’ and ‘the Brady Bunch.’

Younger Elementary school kids were sent off to bed, or at least bath, at eight so that the grown-ups could watch those more edgy sitcoms with mature themes like ‘Maude,’ ‘All in the Family,’ and ‘M*A*S*H.’ Once those kids were safely asleep, adults settled in for the romantic dramas, detective shows or mini-series. Local news again before bed, Carson and Tom Snyder if they couldn’t sleep.

Weekdays were filled with soap operas. Saturday mornings were always cartoons. Sunday mornings were public affairs and weekend afternoons were sports. That structure made you feel like you knew what to expect and where and when to look for what you wanted or what to avoid.

Back then we believed that America owned the airways together, so our government regulated them. Who could own TV stations, how many they could own, no obscenity was allowed, both political parties had to be given equal-time, even a minimum amount of children’s and educational programming was required.

Then came the advent of cable, and now satellite- not to mention the Regan, Gingrich, and Bush W “revolutions” of de-regulation and corporate welfare. Television wasn’t a utility, it was a commodity. If viewers paid for programming, then there were no limits for content, language, or nudity. The government could stand between the trash and your living room so long as it was over the airwaves that everybody owned, but if you pay for it, you’re inviting it in- if you didn’t want it, you wouldn’t have paid for it.

Today reality shows are on some channel any hour of the day. Daytime talk show guests air their dirty laundry all day long. And we are bombarded with commercials for lingerie, birth control, venereal disease treatments, and erectile dysfunction aids at any hour on any channel. If American culture has declined, if we are more coarse, less civil, more sensual, more violent can we blame each other or do we have to blame ourselves? Of course there is the age old question, does TV REFLECT society, or SHAPE it?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m the first guy to support the First Amendment. I enjoy the edginess of’ Law and Order’ the witty sarcasm of ‘the Simpsons’ and the gory details of ‘CSI’ as much as anyone. I’ve even been drawn in by the relationship dynamics of ‘Sex in the City’ on occasion, but would it be so bad to have at least SOME boundaries? Would it be so difficult or some how Socialism to have well structured guidelines for when certain shows are shown?

The anniversary of TV may be a good time to remember what Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Newton Minow had to say to National Association of Broadcasters back in 1961.

He’s the one who called TV “a vast wasteland.”

“When television is good, nothing--not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers--nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you--and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.

You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience-participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western badmen, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And, endlessly, commercials--many screaming, cajoling and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you will see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, try it."

Minlow believed that television should serve "the public interest?" Some say the public interest is merely what interests the public. And in a day and age when so few corporations own and control the media, their bottom line is the bottom line. GE owns Universal/NBC, which includes USA, Discovery, History & Learning channels, MSNBC etc. Viacom owns CBS, MTV, VH1, CMT, Nickelodeon etc. Disney owns ABC, ESPN, HGTV etc. FOX and AOL/Times-Warner own pretty much everything else. They pander to our lowest common denominators. What makes money.

Government has been complicit in this corruption. The current administration’s philosophy is less regulation, less oversight, less competition, less law and order, more law of the jungle, more law of natural selection (Darwin); the survival of the fittest TV network, and fit means fat. Get kids hooked early on sex, violence and consumerism and you guarantee the advancement of your feces (I’m sorry, I mean species). Minlow had a better vision:

“Television and all who participate in it are jointly accountable to the American public for respect for the special needs of children, for community responsibility, for the advancement of education and culture, for the acceptability of the program materials chosen, for decency and decorum in production, and for propriety in advertising. This responsibility cannot be discharged by any given group of programs, but can be discharged only through the highest standards of respect for the American home, applied to every moment of every program presented by television. Program materials should enlarge the horizons of the viewer, provide him with wholesome entertainment, afford helpful stimulation, and remind him of the responsibilities which the citizen has toward his society.”

This will no doubt be one of those columns that will have my Republicans saying things to me like, “Clean up TV? Ted, you’re starting to sound like a conservative!” You’re absolutely right. I’m a social conservative Democrat. The current government, controlled by people who call themselves “neo-cons” are the radical libertarians at least where culture is concerned. Minlow was appointed by John F. Kennedy.

Reruns; Punishment for dumb TV shows

Simply put, “sin” it is anything selfish and short-sighted that damages our relationship with God or others. It can be something that we do, or something that we should but don’t. It can be deliberate or it can be a mistake. It also happens to be a state of being, something that we are, that we can’t help. Basically it’s our defective human nature that separates us from God.

Okay, I guess that’s not so simple.

Way back in ancient times a Greek monk named Evagrius made up a list of sins that he felt were particularly harmful. (Of course, it seems like there was already a top ten list in Exodus, chapter 20.) Later on, in the 6th century, Pope Gregory the Great gave this list a catchy name that stuck. He called them “the Seven Deadly Sins.”

Back in the golden age of cheesy TV sit-coms, somebody came up with a great idea of adding a laugh-track to a story that could’ve been something that French Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre could’ve wrote.

Believe it or not, the characters of ‘Gilligan’s Island’ represent the Seven Deadly Sins. After their own personal Armageddon, the castaways are eternally damned to live in unceasing torment with each other.
Gluttony is an excessive desire to consume more than one needs. Most people simply assume that this sin was symbolized by the Skipper, because he’s the fat guy. My problem with this sin, is that everyone can tell I have a problem with it just by looking at me. All of the other 6 are sins you can hide.

Another view is that Mrs. “Lovey” Howell is certainly gluttonous with all of her clothes and luxuries. Who takes that much for a 3 hour tour? Is America a glutton? We make up only 6% of the world’s population, yet we possess 60% of it’s wealth.
Ginger, the movie star is pretty obvious, right. Hubba hubba. Lust is an inordinate craving for pleasure. There’s an urban legend that says that the average straight man has a sexual thought every 3 minutes (one version had it at 8 seconds). The Kinsey Report does claim that 54% of men think about sex everyday or several times a day. What do you do with that when Matthew 5:28 tells us that looking is the same as cheating? Can we help it? Is it God’s fault for making us this way?
Sin is like gravity. Galilleo discovered that in a vacuum, a feather and a stone dropped from a tower both drop at the same rate and will reach the ground at the time. So the straight guy who wants to see Ginger in a wet t-shirt contest at Hooters goes to Hell just as fast as the two guys who got married in San Francisco last year? Ouch.
If you had to be marooned on a deserted island with only one of the 7 castaways, who would you choose? Yeah, me too. Sorry Beth, I have to be honest. But what I don’t get is how’d she keep her makeup and sequined dresses looking so good after three years? Have you seen what those girls on ‘Survivor’ start looking like after 3 weeks? Sunburn, insect bites, no decent shampoo. Blech.

Envy or Covetousness is the longing for what other people have- and that’s not just their material positions, it also applies to their traits, status, abilities, or situation. Mary Ann was Envy. She wished that the guys would lust after her like Ginger. She wished she was as rich as the Howells. She wished she was as smart as the Professor. She wished Gilligan would go away. I gotta tell ya, I don’t know about you, but while people can see the results of my gluttony, they’ll never know how much of my life is wasted coveting.

It’s pretty obvious that Mr. Howell’s big sin was greed. Greed is the desire for material wealth or gain, ignoring the spiritual realm. Come on, who brings a steamer trunk full of cash on a 3 hour tour? Was he planning on some money laundering? A clandestine business deal like weapons or drugs? Do you love things and use people or love people and use things?

Anger was either the Skipper Mrs. Howell. I’d say Skipper, after all, he was always shouting and hitting Gilligan on the head with his hat.

Someone once told me that anger is depression turned inward. That’s one way to think about it. I think it’s a natural reaction to injustice. It’s also a natural, maybe even medical reaction to feeling like you don’t have any control or that you needs or wants aren’t being met. Think about it. When a baby needs to be fed or changed- scream time. When somebody cuts you off and almost kills you in traffic- whammo.

Yet it’s selfish. Look at the first four sins- if you’re frustrated by your gluttony, envy, lust or greed, doesn’t it tick you off? It does me.

Anger is when someone rejects love and opts instead for rage or wrath. When you think about love as it’s defined in the Bible, (1 Corinthians 13) you’re going to be pretty selfless, you’re going to be living out Jesus’ teachings in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). “God is love.”. ~1 John 4:16

Sloth is avoiding work, either physical or spiritual. It’s also a two-toed mammal that lives in trees and moves really slow. Gilligan is not a sloth. People who park it on the couch and watch a ‘Gilligan’s Island’ marathon all day on ‘TV Land’ are sloths.

The Professor was very proud. I would be too, if I could create a working short wave radio using only a few wires and coconuts. Pride is when your own abilities, that prevents you from recognizing God’s grace. It’s been called the sin which all others sprout from. “Pride goeth before a fall” ~Proverbs 29:23

In the show, it’s almost always Gilligan who unintentionally sabotages the castaways' attempts to be rescued. This has led many scholars to speculate that rather than representing sloth, Gilligan actually represents Satan. Hmmmm.

Pope Gregory ranked the sins in order of how bad they were. Gluttony was the least abhorrent to God, and pride was the worst. That would be a relief to me, but I think that anybody who calls themselves Gregory “the Great” should be nervous.

The truth is that all sin is equal. ”For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” ~James 2:8-10. Ouch again. I’m just as doomed as Charlie Manson? Exactly.

But we’re in good company because, none of us is perfect. We’re all selfish and short sighted and we all make ourselves out to be our own god. Me, you, Mother Theresa, Jerry Falwell, Bob Denver, everybody. But thank God, he sent His Son to forgive our sins.

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” ~Romans 3:23-24

Be that as it may, I personally think that God ought to prepare a special place in Hell for whoever created the Gilligan’s Island show. And if God takes suggestions, I think that a fitting torture would be for them to have to spend eternity locked in a room with a TV, watching all 98 episodes over and over again.