TV The Psychic Meat Grinder

“TV is good because it keeps the inmates docile and dumb. It,s cheap to put a TV set in front of 33 guys and let it baby-sit them,’ said another jailer. Convict journalist Adrian Lomax, who has single-handedly waged war on the idiot box for years, summed it up best: ‘In eighteen years of incarceration, I’ve never seen a prison day room that didn’t have a television. Inmates in Wisconsin, like most states, are also allowed to have their own TVs. In fact, having your own TV is not permitted, its encouraged.’ Prisoners who can’t buy their own TVs can borrow the state-owned sets at no cost. The dominant treatment program in American prisons, the one imposed every day, is TV therapy.” Lockdown America

It is easy to knock television and ridicule those who constantly watch it. For a lot of people TV is all they are fit for after a hard days toil. TV is good because it doesn’t answer back, It creates enjoyment for some and fills a void for others. Like the motorcar and it’s effect on our environment. It is not television itself that’s the problem, but how we use it – or how it uses us. The amount of time television takes up of our normal life, is not a reflection on how good television is, but rather how disengaged normal life has become.