Change? What change? Oh, you mean change the channel ...

To begin with, I wanna say I'm really glad to see Bill is still with us - I'd been worried for a while there. (Would have commented on his last post, but commenting on Blogger still confounds me, refusing to let me do so, no matter under what profile I make the attempt ...)

Now, to the point of this post:  I recently stumbled across some statistics on TV viewing in the USA, and, as a result, I am now finally and utterly devoid of any hope that there's ever going to be any change at all in this country - even cosmetic change, never mind anything substantive. Dig: 99% of American households have TV (Yaay! I'm finally in the 1%!); 65% - nearly 2 out of 3 - have 3 TVs or more; and over a 70-year viewing lifetime, the average American will have watched nearly 23 solid years' worth of TV, 16 hours per day, 365 days per year. I could not be more profoundly disheartened or discouraged by these numbers ... No damned wonder people like Rand Paul or Ted Cruz get elected, or the likes of Mitch McConnell keep getting reelected ... or, given that there are, according to these figures, only about 1,200 households without TV in the city where I live, why I find it so hard to relate to nearly everybody I talk to ... Well, as my momma used to say, even if everybody else sticks their head in the oven, that don't mean I gotta do it too ...

For those of you who still read and haven't already read it, I cannot recommend highly enough Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, by Jerry Mander. Though written 35 years ago, its arguments are more cogent today than ever - far and away the best treatment of the evils of TV known to me. The absolute sine qua non for pulling your head out of your ass, it will give you all the justifications you need to take the plunge, if you haven't already.