The Postman only rang once

Whew, you’d think summer was still here huh?

I was reminded by my brother this morning that I forgot to mention Tell Me You Love Me in my little reviews yesterday.

I’ve watched two, not sure I can watch anymore. I might watch one more, just to torture myself, but after that, not sure. What a depressing show this is. It’s not a bad show, not at all, the acting is wonderful, the emotions elicited from me are more intense than Bum Notice, but for god sakes, if I want to watch everyone go through the complexities of life and love in the most depressing way, I’ll just hang out at my mom’s nursing home. What a painful show this is, almost too painful. There is no joy there, not even a little…and even though I believe it is a relevant, important show, I’m not sure I can watch it.

Which, just because I’m talking about TV, brings me to my next point.

I just finished reading Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman.

What a whiny little fellow he is.

He goes on and on about the dangers of television. About how no one reads anymore. About how no one knows anything about what goes on in the world anymore because our minds are getting too used to quick flashing images and non-stories. How in the old days, people would watch Lincoln debate for 7 hours and how amazing and smart all those people were because they could do that. How the news (I hate the news on TV, I really do, so he can whine about that if he wants) literally gives us no news we can actually use or that matters to us anymore. How politicians are now image-makers and it matters more how they look than what they say. How we as people don’t have the drive anymore to learn the truth, so the truth will dissipate.

Now, I’m not going to argue with Mr. Postman about his points, he’s right. Life is different. We don’t have the attention spans anymore to watch anyone debate for 7 hours. The politicians of old would never make it in our culture, because they were fat, or ugly or whatever.

But the fact is, this is the way it is. Mr. Postman spends 90% of the book telling us how stupid we are and how things “used” to be, and 10% of the book telling us how to “fix it”. And I can’t even remember what he said, because it didn’t mean anything to me.

I can’t help but think that Mr. Whiny sounds like a man who can’t let go of the past and move into the future. He wrote the book in the 80’s, so the book doesn’t discuss the internets and all that gibberish, but no matter…my point is, this IS evolution. Whether he wants it, or regards it as positive or not, is not the issue. It has already happened. And if you talk to other critics (like my friend who wrote Everything Bad is Good for You) then you know that there are maybe different ways of learning now. Maybe our minds are moving faster, maybe we are learning to read images rather than words, maybe our politicians are changing, but maybe…just maybe…it’s not as horrible as he imagines. Maybe our minds are moving faster, quicker, processing information faster than ever before (bionic minds?).

So stop whining Postman, stop trying to hold on to an age gone by, flip the switch, tune in, watch some Buffy and stop calling me stupid. Dangit.