TV Killed Our Democracy

We've got to try to realise the effect that television has had on our ability to retain information and to have our attention be held on a particular topic. It's shortened our memories by quite a lot. And the way that we interact with politics has been, really, it's just been demolished completely. -- David Bazan I have a love-hate relationship with television. On the one hand, programming has come a long way, even in my lifetime. A lot of the stuff that's on these days is, really, just brilliant. On the other hand, well, spend two minutes watching one of the 24-hour cable news networks. The above clip from Family Guy is the sharpest critique of what television has done to politics that I've seen in quite a while, perhaps even on par with some stuff Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert have done. The Solomon Grundy joke is a bit flat and out of place, but the rest of this is just top notch. This is what happens when you reduce leadership to soundbites and I'd-have-a-beer-with-himism. Ironic that I saw it on TV. It also makes me wonder if this presidency, which I imagine to be the most PR-focused in history, could even exist without television.