Television

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My taste in television is hardly inspiring. I confess that I watch some PBS, much of it imported from BBC. We have been watching Grantchester, which in that annoying British way just completed a season of six whole episodes. Sometimes I watch Father Brown, although these often irritate me because they have nothing to do with Chesterton's stories. I also watch The Big Bang Theory and several Disney Channel and Nickelodeon shows designed, I think, mostly for middle school kids. And other stuff that even I can't think of off hand. Says a lot.

Lately I notice that American commercial television (which may be all we have in the near future because Republicans seem determined to do away with the public in public broadcasting) is dominated by faux reality programs (which group can be said to include about 50% of so-called news programs) and now programs derived from comic books. 

I have nothing against comic books. After all, Sheldon Cooper and the nerds on Big Bang reserve every Wednesday night for visiting the comic book store. And I was a huge comic book fan when I was younger. Many  of these comic book-based shows (and movies) are very popular and exciting.

On the other hand, what does it say that so much of our cultural input is from comic books? Not based on characters and ideas from G.K. Chesterton, for example, but Stan Lee. Not plots derived from literature that people have been reading for a century but from stories that are the very epitome of ephemera.

And surely only someone who watches way too much PBS programming would use a phrase like "the very epitome of ephemera."

Okay, Michael, weren't you going to stop complaining? 

I am grateful for shows that make me laugh, for those that make me smile, for those that enlighten me and make me think, and those are available if I take the time to seek them. And I can, and do, turn the box off and read instead.

Also, not everything has to be intended for the ages. It is okay for some things to be for this age alone. It's not like people a hundred years hence will be guffawing over the misfits in WhoVille.