Late last month, a 20-year-old New Jersey man and his 17-year-old male companion were arrested for beating a homeless man bloody and senseless.
They punched him, stomped him and wished him a “Merry Christmas.” We know this because they videotaped their assault then posted it on YouTube.
According to reports, the older suspect’s Facebook page identified “Jersey Shore,” “Jackass” and the raucous, marijuana-centric guy-movie, “Half Baked,” as what he favors in his entertainment.
Unless you were expecting “Masterpiece Theatre,” it would be difficult not to make some sort of logical connection between this fellow’s leisure time tastes and his leisure time activities.
Years ago, it was a standard practice among social commentators to blame television for many of the nation’s social decay. Such claims, then, as those old claims seem now, were overblown, so much so that those who took those positions risked scorn as radical conservatives, assorted religious nuts and, perhaps worst of all, old fuddy-duddies.
But what about now? Now that such broad indictments of TV have been lost to the fear of being labeled “out of touch” or the ridicule of the remorselessly and relentlessly “hip,” where is the blame for TV when it so clearly and sensibly deserves it?
In other words, it’s time. It’s past time, probably too late, but still worth a shot.
Is there any social commentator or clinician who today watches a broad range of TV who can state that there is no price to pay for what TV has done, continues to do and promises to do more of, only worse?
Consider that every teen and young adult-reliant network is now loaded with programming, advertising and promos that at least tacitly encourage viewers to behave like a remorseless creep.
Watch for yourselves. A partial list: MTV, truTV, Spike TV, FUSE, BET, USA, Comedy Channel, E!, FUEL TV. Then throw in the “edgy,” “pushes the envelope,” “outside the box” programming presented by the major commercial networks. How could the young and the vulnerable not be affected and afflicted?
Heck, prime time on truTV, which used to be Court TV, is now predicted on becoming more indescribably vulgar — not funny, not clever, but vulgar — every night. (The staged violence within several of truTV’s prime-time “reality” shows finishes a close second.)
The fresh additions to the Game Show Network lineup all have one category in common: crotch talk.
For crying out loud, on Jan. 9, the ABC Family Channel presented a show, “Pretty Little Liars,” that was rated PG-14 and titled “A Hot Piece of A.”
TV’s sports presentations, promos and advertisers now exploit sports to encourage conceit, selfishness, self-aggrandizement — especially in team sports.
For some sorrowful reason, the TV-preferred, taped moving images of athletes no longer stress athletic achievement but after-the-play acts of self-congratulations, self-smitten chest-beating and trash-talking — often shown in slow motion, for emphasis.
And if you don’t think those twisted TV images have packed a wallop, well, so many of the newer rules in organized youth and scholastic sports have been legislated to try to combat kids copying what they see — over and over — on TV.
And if golf was supposed to be sports’ last bastion of civil comportment, even The Golf Channel now includes a show, “The Big Break,” featuring a competition series among aspiring pros who are encouraged to knock, mock and trash-talk one another.
Blame TV for what ails us? Put it this way: How can you not?
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Time for Ch. 7 to remove the false pretense. Just call it, “The Eyewitness 11 O’clock Weather (with a little news taken from that day’s newspapers thrown in).”
Anchor Bill Ritter: “Twelve dead, scores injured, but first, the Ch. 7’s Accutrack Weather.”