PBS >> CNN

Look. It's not easy to look.

Look. It’s not easy to look.

So. Tonight CNN is revisiting sixties television when everything was tolerant, lovely, and great. The Smothers Brothers. Star Trek, meaning the first interracial kiss. The Twilight Zone, which was continuously worried about the varied ways humankind would destroy itself. And, of course, TV’s role in educating all of us that Bill Cosby and Robert Culp got along just fine, given that those of us who made ‘I Spy’ a hit were all terrible racists.

Guess the CNN show isn’t having the effect it should. It reminds me of PBS. Years old BBC series recycled late and sold on DVD during pledge drives for five times their value. Always the same shows: the blind tenor, the three now dead sighted tenors, the E-channel guy who sings in the Grand Canyon, well, you know the drill. The rest of the time, we’re expected to put up with idiotic political documentaries — oh yeah, starring fossils like Bill Moyers and Dick Cavett — hating the U.S and promoting Global Warming in fruity tones with that infuriating finality PBS has always had because the next show is going to feature Oxbridge pretenders who live in great estates that can’t possibly be as ugly as they obviously are. (One plaintive bleat from my younger self — watched Inspector Morse because I’m supposed to, and I can report that compared to Harvard, Oxford is Lena Dunham. The former is lovely and inspiring. The latter looks like a slattern and a pile of ugly g(r)ay fortresses designed to keep her out.)

We men shouldn't be attracted to women. They're too good for us. The gospel of the left.

We men shouldn’t be attracted to women. They’re too good for us. The gospel of the left.

Dreary, sorry, awful, ancient, and did I say awful. Oxford. Like America, Harvard is lovely.

Beyond Oxford.

Beyond Oxford.

‘Cause, you know, Harvard is lovely. Why John Harvard sits there in the spring. Nobody else can be so relaxed.

Oxford don't got The Yard in springtime.

Oxford don’t got The Yard in springtime.

Sigh. PBS. Sigh. Which leads us to Great Performances.

Have you figured out that I’m pissed and tired and probably deader than PBS? All the public stations in our area keep rerunning the same shows. Everything the party of America’s progressive future does with its public broadcast dollars is a celebration of a very mundane, even antique, past. Barbara Streisand a decade or two ago. Communist Pete Seeger celebrating his ninetieth birthday and three quarters of a century of loving every enemy of America. Bob Dylan caterwauling on some stage somewhere sometime from a decade no one remembers. I could go on.

But I won’t. If I started, I would never stop. Anyone want to hear what I’d ask of all of you if life as we know it were on the line? No. Of course not. I’m the lance for a painful boil. That’s all. Life goes on. You live life. Life is for the living, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.


You know. Same old male white privilege problem.

But sometimes the dying know something too.

Unfair, you Oxbridge types? The equalizer. Google. You tell me which is more beautiful. Oxford or Harvard.

P.S. Harvard. Rub my tummy. I’m the killer you’ll never know.

5 thoughts on “PBS >> CNN

  1. Re: Lena Dunham.

    When did the aggressively unattractive people take over television

    It must have been post my “I give a shit about television” days. I bailed on lame “shared experiences” shortly before the Frenz finale, because I figured that the Frenz had already turned 30 with a Special “Turning 30” Episode, and I would be DAMNED before I found myself turning 40 and having to share another “milestone” episode with these leftist tools!

  2. Just FYI: I quit watching Frenz when Aisha Taylor was still in the cast, so my hope for the Finale was that Ross would finally ditch that manipulative skank, Rachel, and move on with his life with the token Afrian-Amerian chick.

    I heard rumbling since, that that was not the case, however…

  3. No. Why would I talk about Friends?

    It’s so stupid and 90’s, like Hilary.

  4. This 90’s nostalgia must have been brought on by the Lewinsky Vanity Fair article (I didn’t read that, or watch the last season of Friends).

    We’re about to have another Bush vs. Clinton race, sponsored by the donkey-and-elephant-headed-hydra, so I’m thinking about growing a mullet just to fit in.

Comments are closed.