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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
Sure, TV in 2001 got all serious and stuff. This year we reconnected with what's really important: Hard bodies in hot tubs, public humiliation and more "Law & Order" spinoffs.
Dec 26, 2002 | In 2002 America put the trauma of Sept. 11 behind it and got back to the business of watching television. Many of us thought America would never be the same after that terrible day in 2001. I ask anyone who still believes that to consider the fact that the CBS sitcom "The King of Queens" remains a popular show and get back to me.
No, America is snoozing soundly once again. Would Dick Cheney dare to foist Henry Kissinger, who can't go out for coffee without getting arrested by foreign authorities, and John Poindexter, who's lucky he's still able to vote, upon anything but a safely somnolent American public? I didn't think so.
But I'm too cruel to my comrade with the big glowing screen. Television is our friend. It is what we watch while pretending to listen to our loved ones. It is where the 30 percent of us who vote go to get information from trusted news professionals, until we remember that they're a bunch of jabbering idiots and turn it off in disgust. Yes, truly was it written over and over on a haunted hotel's walls by the patriarch of "The Simpsons": "No TV and no beer make Homer go crazy."
Television is so thoroughly ingrained in our daily lives it's hard to get a handle on it in any objective way. The growth of TV has changed the way we think and perceive events. Many young writers' styles are influenced by the medium, specifically the attention span and information processing habits it induces. At a recent literary event in San Francisco, Zadie Smith, author of the acclaimed novel "White Teeth," joked that she instinctively incorporates ad breaks into her prose.
However, while TV certainly has a profound effect on our culture, let's not get carried away. Upon winning the Emmy this fall for best supporting actor, John Spencer of "The West Wing" called series creator Aaron Sorkin "one of the great writers of all time." So where would that put him, John? After Joyce and before Dostoevski?
Speaking of Dostoevski, did you see Jennifer Lopez reveal her engagement to "Sexiest Man Alive" Ben Affleck in an interview with Diane Sawyer on a November installment of ABC's "Primetime Thursday"?
Unfortunately for America, Sawyer did not inquire into the scuttlebutt that J.Lo had a male assistant on the set of her recent music video, "Jenny From the Block," squeeze her nipples so that television viewers would be able to see her aureolae more clearly through her mesh top while she grabbed her crotch.
We did learn this, however: J.Lo is no diva. She said so. And she seems to really, really like all this money she's making.
One of the more interesting things in the land of television this holiday season was something that didn't happen. Namely, gangsta-pimp rapper and XXX video producer Snoop Dogg's appearance on the Muppets' Christmas special. In the end NBC edited Snoop out of "It's a Very Merry Muppets Christmas Movie." Even though Snoop professes to have given up smoking dope. The marriage of children's puppet shows and West Coast gangsta rap may be inevitable, but the world will have to wait at least another year.
In other end-of-year television news, Al Gore appeared on "Saturday Night Live," an event that was designed to be the final phase of his mission to reinvent his image prior to declaring his intentions with respect to the 2004 presidential election. As it turned out, Gore had already decided not to run by the time the show went to air.
It's too bad, because the new Al Gore was pretty appealing. He acquitted himself well on "SNL" (which so far has failed to plug the hole left by Will Ferrell's departure). Gore was particularly effective as Willy Wonka's brother Glenn, a fastidious accountant exasperated with Willy's childish schemes: "I put up with a lot working here: Riding that insane psychedelic boat to my office every day! Having to step around piles and piles of Oompah Loompah dung!"
But we're talking about the end of the year here. Let's go back to the beginning.
The year of television 2002 began with the second thrilling Super Bowl in three years, in which the underdog New England Patriots kicked a field goal as time expired to defeat the St. Louis Rams. (In 2000 the Rams denied the Tennessee Titans a game-tying touchdown on the final play.)
That game also reminded us that television is the best medium for disseminating propaganda, as it served as the premiere for the Bush administration's ad campaign claiming that anyone who purchases marijuana may be financing terrorists. I humbly submit that, rather than shifting blame for mass killing and a national security fiasco onto recreational pot smokers, the administration should maybe shut the fuck up and think about tracking down Osama bin Laden.
