Idiot Box

This was my Facebook status this morning:

Hey morning news program, I don't need you to spend five minutes reporting on Black Friday and advertising deals. That's what the 10,000 commercials you've
already run and the 20 circulars in yesterday's paper were for. Report the damn
news. Oh wait, the news right now is obnoxious jackasses who crash D.C. parties.
... Uh ... just go off the air and run a test pattern. That's more useful.

I wrote this about five minutes after I turned off Good Morning America, which I did for two reasons: I was getting sick of wall-to-wall Black Friday coverage as if it were the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Brett was paying way too much attention to it. The former is indicative of the attitude I've taken toward the Christmas shopping season lately -- yes, I like shopping for my family and friends, but this insane "BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY" yelling at me every single second of every single day on the television makes me hate America. The latter? Well, I've been finding that a little alarming lately.

Brett, inevitably, was going to like watching TV. And I have no problem with some of the programs he watches on a regular basis. Yo Gabba Gabba! is a lot of fun and I've been able to avoid most of the other shit that's out there (mainly because we're never home all day to watch all of that shit). But as time has gone on and he's started to identify what's on television and ask about it (i.e., when we watched It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown! the first time, we wound up watching it about 100 times ... I've watched the rather lackluster A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving twice already since yesterday), I've wanted to watch television in front of him less, especially things that are violent and/or scary.

That sounds completely hypocritical of me, who grew up on freakin' Tom & Jerry cartoons wherein characters not only tried to kill one another on a regular basis, but also were seen smoking and drinking (that episode where Jerry goes into the city and winds up getting completely shitfaced was one of my all-time favorites as a kid), and I don't want to raise a kid who's sheltered and naive ... but I don't know if it's unreasonable to say that the most "adult" programming he sees is Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!

I don't think there's any reason to panic, though. This isn't Maggie Simpson smacking Homer in the head with a hammer after watching Itchy and Scratchy. Brett would smack me about the head even if he wasn't watching television. But I think there's something to be said about what he watches and consumes; it's just another way in which I continue to be aware just as he becomes more aware.