I don’t like it when pundits make a big deal out of the “what’s your favorite” answers, but personally, I find the actual answers very interesting. If the answer is honest - and some of them are – and they themselves explain why they like it, it can be very revealing about the person. I’m not going to vote or not vote for someone based on those picks, though, and answers that are obviously BS earn no points!

When Gorbachev was still in power in the Soviet Union, he called up the Moscow Art Theater to find out when the next performace of Uncle Vanya was. After he saw it, he called up the artistic director and talked about the performance, the play and how he related to Vanya for about an hour. Russians highly value the arts and knowing the great books and plays. JFK had dinner with a number of artists and authors, and the Clintons did too somewhat. Clinton also participated in America’s Favorite Poem Project. I would like more discussion of the arts from the more thoughtful public figures. I’d even like to hear what Bush got out of reading his “three Shakespeares.” I understand the reticence in the U.S., because politicians lie or have their PR flacks come up with stuff, and pundits will play shallow psychologist. (Or there’s Bob Dole condemning films he hadn’t seen.) But the real discussions, yeah, there’s a place for that.

Obama’s community advocate work (post-Harvard Law degree, even) and inner city Chicagoan ties have long been my favorite part of his resume. If, as some commenters suggest, his answer to the TV show question is a dog-whistle to a certain base, I have to say I am incredibly proud to be smack in the middle of his target for the comment.

The night of the Philadelphia Democratic debate, not a single candidate addressed a single urban issue, nor did the matter come to the attention of the moderator — despite being in one of the most crime ridden and impoverished major cities in the country. That same night, as the debate progressed, a young black man became involved in an altercation with the Philadelphia Police. The man drew a gun and shot one of the officer’s involved in the altercation. This was a traffic violation; but it had escalated. The shooter proceeded to flee on foot, eventually diving into the Schuylkill River, literally adjacent to the debate venue. And not one comment. That same weekend, four Police were shot. One died.

Meanwhile, another young black male was the way to his own murder, anonymous as nearly every other slightly-more-than-one a day victims.

I don’t blame the candidates or even the moderator for their willful reticence. But I, among others, comprise a special interest group: our cities are our pet issue. One of the things that turned me off to John Edwards — and yes, I know that the logic adapts right-wing Republican frames — was what came across to me as insincerity in Edwards was and continues to be his Two Americas platform, in which one America consists of the corporations and wealthy elites, and the other rural and ex-urban/suburban voters’ perceived interests. If Mr. Edwards were speaking truth to the social construction of inequality, his rhetoric would feature a prominent urban plea.

Mr Obama is the only of the candidates who has ever shown any consideration for the *true* underclass of this country, those in our cities. His interest in The Wire has to be the moment well targeted dog whistle to folks like myself.

” If nothing else, the show is relentlessl brutal to the Democrats, painting them as sniveling cowards to the very last one. Republicans don’t even register, both for real world reasons and because the writers aren’t interested in blatant evil so much as corruption.”

To be fair, this is also partly because Baltimore is a heavily Democratic city. The mayoral race portrayed in season 4 is actually the Democratic primary, but everyone in the city knows it’s basically the mayoral race, because the city’s something like 90% Democrat (I’m pulling that stat from memory, so anyone feel free to correct me). That’s pretty much what I remember from living there, as well. Nobody really cares about the actual mayoral race; it’s the primary that’s important. I’m not disagreeing with your overall point (in an interview that’s on one of the the season 4 DVDs, David Simon basically says, “we’re not interested in questions of good and evil”), just wanted to point out this little demographic hiccup.

I don’t own a TV. I’ve considered going the TiVo route, but, basically, I’m really cheap. I also don’t like accumulating physical things that I don’t use often. I also hate, hate, hate being advertised to. I’m not very good at visual media because I have a lot of trouble recognizing faces — this makes following a TV show or movie very difficult for me. Also, as mentioned above, I’m cheap — so I don’t want to spend the money to buy a TV when I have all these issues. Basically what I want is a TiVo that connects to my laptop and also adds little nametags to each character in a show. Is this possible? : )

Gotta admit, though, I don’t watch TV. I don’t have a good reason, though; I’m just a poor college student without time to watch or money to buy a TV set. Problem is just that I read really fast, but I can’t watch TV any faster than anyone else, so it comes down to efficiecy a lot of the time. Although speaking of Wodehouse, I did just borrow the first season of Jeeves & Wooster, though, and oh man is that a good show.

And nobody had better be dissing trashy serialized-format novels. I just largely prefer picking up old novels better than new ones because the really bad ones tend to get filtered out over the course of a century or more. As someone said upthread, we read Cervantes and not all the other people who published at the same time because Cervantes was writing good novels. Of course, there are exceptions and the way to do that seems to be to find people whose taste you like and read what they recommend. I may end up taking a similar approach to television, and only watch the stuff that is still being recommended after 10 or 20 years.

“Sight and sound easily become very concrete memories, and my head gets filled up with countless stories that I did not experience and which should have no emotional meaning for me. Throughout my actual life experiences, I find events involving my friends and loved ones reminding me of television shows! These damned canned memories are highjacking my personal narrative.”

Oh, and this point is also something that could be applied to any fictional storytelling medium. To me, a book feels a lot more like telepathy and supplanting memories than the external sensory bath of TV and cinema–it’s absorbed through the more intimate internalizations of written text.

Is it any different in principle to compare your life to a character from a novel or a movie or a TV show? I don’t think so.

Prose just offers a different kind of stimulation, but one that’s no less potentially insidious. That’s why the stories of Ramsey Campbell, for example, give me chills of a different kind when compared to watching Night of the Living Dead–the horrors are experienced in a different way, more like a cold hand under your shirt than an axe blow to the head.

“I am sure that I am lazier, greedier, more fearful, less informed, and less sociable than I would otherwise have been without this box in my life.”

I disagree with a lot of your post: let’s just call it a difference between subjective experiences.

But I disagree most strongly with the above snips: I personally don’t feel any discontent in my life that’s based solely on TV stimulation, and I am sure that I’m not lazier, greedier, more fearful, less informed, and less sociable than I otherwise would have been without this box in my life.

From Tom: “… until the introduction of cheap paper to Europe in the 15th century, all novels were written in verse in order to save parchment.”

But paper was scarce in the New World, so Pilgrims continued to use verse.

What, you never heard the one about “There Once Was A Lass From Nantucket”?

Another interesting actor-invention: Hedy Lamarr worked on a torpedo radio-guidance system that, to my knowledge, had no effect on television/film production.

It isn’t just the ads, though the other problems are mostly related. Advertisers are by default economic conservatives; they’re almost all corporations. Their values cannot be too often attacked or they will not sponsor; there’s a barrier to free speech. They are reluctant to fund shows that might offend the wider society, so they prefer shows that are slightly more conservative than the mean; there’s another barrier.

The profit motive inevitably marches toward more and more advertising time; shows I used to enjoy can’t even be fully rerun these days because they’re longer than modern timeslots; writing for shorter and shorter slots is yet another barrier to free speech.

A show is a vector for advertising; this means news programs have to be entertaining or terrifying or otherwise captivating first, and informative only second, if at all. Any show, news or otherwise, that can utilize emotional tricks to keep me watching what I would otherwise flip away from will make more money; consequently, I am beset by emotional pollution far worse than piped music in shopping centers.

The advertising now seeps into the shows themselves, via product placement. One can rarely separate the show and the ads, even with a DVR. More widespread use of DVRs just drives further product placement.

The whole bundle is always, always geared to make me discontent with what I have, and desiring of more. I have no doubt that this effects at least a subtle detriment to my mental health.

The above could all be resolved by different funding schemes; I would favor a mixture of patronage and pirate broadcasting. When you consider all the possibilities of the technology that are stunted by the constraints of the profit motive, it becomes clear that TV does suck hard in comparison with its potential. And jfpbookworm will note that several of these issues were not present in the clumsy and sincere, amusingly outrageous adverts of olde timey print magazines and serials.

I have other bitchings and moanings too. Sight and sound easily become very concrete memories, and my head gets filled up with countless stories that I did not experience and which should have no emotional meaning for me. Throughout my actual life experiences, I find events involving my friends and loved ones reminding me of television shows! These damned canned memories are highjacking my personal narrative. I don’t always object to this; if a particular show is truly a masterpiece and taps into some archetype such that it actually helps me better understand humanity, I’m not necessarily bothered to see my life through these artists’ lenses. But most shows are trite shite, and they all get stuck in my head, regardless of quality. The worse ones, then, actually degrade my quality of life.

The nonstop barrage of sensory input easily tricks my lizard brain into thinking there’s real information there that needs to be attended to (it’s right there in the room with me, so it must be relevant). I get caught up in watching crap I don’t even like, just because it came on after something I did like, and I can easily waste a half hour or more. If I’m trying to read or write or work in a room where someone else is watching television, I have a hard time focusing on my exclusive tasks. That noisy box of colors is damn captivating. I’ve got pounds around my midsection that are solely attributable to my time in front of it. I am sure that I am lazier, greedier, more fearful, less informed, and less sociable than I would otherwise have been without this box in my life.

I’m not certain that I’m saying that it is a net detriment to me, but I could not imagine being sure that it’s a net benefit. I wouldn’t be so ambivalent if TV didn’t suck, in its myriad own special ways.