I usually find myself posting about my personal life, friends, family, and the crazy things we do, but not today.  After having an up close, personal, and distasteful incident  with my television I feel the need to vent. This posting will be a tad longer than most but unfortunately for all of you I have a lot to say. Bear with me for a few minutes.

What I’m about to post may piss off a few people.  I’m not a card carrying member of any special interest group advocating non-violence on TV or elsewhere.  I’m just a regular guy who’s concerned with viewing trends on TV and in the movies. I take my responsibilities as a citizen seriously as accorded by the Bill of Rights which gives me the right and responsibility to voice my displeasure about things I’ve been seeing.

This is the time of Obama’s dysfunctional presidency and more importantly the end of Mad Men, the end of Sons of Anarchy, and worst of all the end of Justified.  What will we now do to satisfy our deep, dark, and secret needs for illicit sex, adultery, criminal activities up to and including murder and mayhem? 

We may be forced to feed our disturbing need for uncontrolled violence with the next generation of those gritty, realistic, murderous, and graphic programs like Hell on Wheels.  Who doesn’t want to sit at home after a hard days work to watch rape, murder, and worse on their 60” big screen HD TV. Fortunately we still have our old list of favorites to fall back on if we can’t find enough blood and guts to satisfy us. That’s what Hulu Plus and Netflix are for, don’t you know.

We now have Dexter the serial killer who spends his off-time killing other serial killers.  How much more graphic killing do we really require on TV before we begin to realize that our kids and ourselves are being desensitized to all this death and destruction.  Watch a few seasons of Criminal Minds where the ever increasing number of serial killers justifies the continued ridiculous story lines that include everything up to and including cannibalism.  We can’t see enough blood and guts I guess and there seems to be no limits of decency any longer. Anything is acceptable as long as it keeps the ratings where they need to be and the revenues flowing. 

The politicians certainly did their part by making the famous "V" chip mandatory for manufactures.  Just another politically correct gimmick used  to quiet the critics and maintain the status quo.  Do you know anyone who’s actually ever used a "V" chip or even knew there was such a thing?

Let’s watch more of that continuous  stream of murderous zombie programing that seems to be the latest fad. There you can fill your need to smash someone’s skull and splatter their brains and blood everywhere.  If all else fails we’ll always have those thousands of werewolves out there to rip out some throats or tear some hearts from chests for our viewing pleasure. It’s just so damn exciting. Also, there’s nothing hotter than a graphic sex scene between a human and one of those romantic and super sexy killing machines. It’s just so freaking cool. Start shining up those pretty trophies to prepare for next years round of award shows where we applaud and award the stars and producers of this nonsense.

I guess I’m old-school enough to appreciate television when it was just entertainment.  The need for censors was minimal and the programming was easily watched by everyone, children included.   I liked it better when the good guys won and the bad guys lost.  No gray area that required the good guys to be recovering drug addicts or alcoholics who’d been rehabilitated and continued to fight that good fight.  I didn’t need the bad guys to be portrayed as good guys who were mistreated and abused throughout their entire lives giving justification to their inappropriate and criminal activities.  Good is good, bad is bad, it’s that simple.

It wasn’t until “reality TV” arrived  on the scene that things started really going to hell.  I for one like to see bad guys pay for their sins.  If it happens that they’re shot fighting with the good guys, I can live with that.  What I can’t live with is the perverted need to see the slow motion bullet flying through the air, entering the body, and sending blood and guts flying in all direction. 

I also refuse to watch as attempts are made to convince viewers that the good guys were at fault and shouldn’t have shot the bad guys in the first place. They should have handled him with kid gloves, shown empathy for their terrible childhood, and then set them up in a comfortable jail cell with cable TV, Internet access, a gymnasium, conjugal visits, and an attorney to file an endless list of appeals. 

To me it’s all interconnected and as always a steady stream of propaganda works.  I hope some of you agree but I hold little hope for that as well. As in the book 1984, when Big Brother controls the Media, we are screwed.

I’m done with this.  I’ll be back to writing about my semi-boring life tomorrow.