CANNED LAUGHTER RAMBLE

This time we're in makes me think of Herman Melville's Moby Dick warning a country that did not read his book when it was new that a civil war brought on by white racism was at hand. It was. We're back there again, a century and a half later, our so-called leaders at odds with each other over Reaganism (another spelling for racism) that I hope to see coming to an end. I was hoping the Obama election would be the end of it. No. It's the continuation of it. Now this "sequester" bashing of our economy consciously by Reaganistas, taking it to that place Boner said in the recent past, "gave us 98% of what we wanted." The Reaganistas let the "sequester" happen because it's what they've been working toward for the last 30 years. They're like the Bush-Cheney-Rummy-Rice Junta that took power by judicial fiat in a Reagan court, they don't care about majority. They have learned how to screw us against our will and us like it. How can we get pregnant from a rape? Isn't it their belief that the trauma of rape shuts down the reproductive system? Why do we even let people like this take over our government? It's obviously not against our will. Stripping us down to police state and one peasant class, talk about equality, is easily done with the propaganda device television.

I don't know why it happened to me and nobody else that I can recall from childhood intent to live my adult life without television. Then, it was because the programming was generic and I didn't feel like generic satisfied me. Reading books I found my own particular entertainment to my liking that was not being seen simultaneously by however many million viewers. No Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha whenever a character says something. Even in my beginnings I did not like canned laughter. The whole concept of it freaks me out. A "studio audience" is instructed to laugh when the LAUGH light flashes on. Why? So we won't feel alone, so we'll feel like other people are watching with us. How discomforting. I suppose today the canned laughter is done by the director, or somebody, pushing a button in the control room. It gives me the creeps when I'm at somebody's house, a sitcom is on and canned laughter happens over and over. I look to see what's funny, and nothing is funny. I look at the level of intelligence of characters in sitcoms and I shudder that this is the art form of choice in the world I live in. I left television when I left parents. Over the years, people who can't stand it I don't watch tv have offered me their throw-away tvs when they buy new ones. I decline and it makes them mad.


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