11 September 2008

Non

Watched an old video of Phil Donahue smacking down Bill O'Reilly. Something I learn every three months when I'm lured into watching a BO smackdown: his show has no redeeming value. No truths are revealed; no insights are gleaned; no contradictions exposed; no facts are upturned; no entertainment is delivered. Even when he's portrayed on his own show as an ass (something I'm biased to enjoy), the experience leaves me with nothing. Ya know when you watch a completely worthless movie? How after the hour-and-a-half-or-two-hours you just feel like an empty, nauseating cigarette ash? That's his show.

And yet some people thrive on it. One group, those gun fetishist pseudo-libertarians, simply enjoy the appearance of dominance that O'Reilly provides. If you're economically weak and are--let's say this charitably--less than well equipped to understand the world around you, you're going to hitch your wagon to the angry agression of the first person that you feel can take out your enemies. When that person then tells you who your enemies are, all the better! Another group watches him as a kind of Dadaist theater, and yet I can't even enjoy it as that. Absurd should surprise you; his show is more like futurist nihilism.

All this time, and I still don't get it.

[ posted by sstrader on 11 September 2008 at 11:07:57 AM in Culture & Society ]