The End of the Silly Season Is in Sight

Have I ever written about how much I hate commercial television before now?

I do. I find most programming insipid. What passes for news is nothing more than a bad clown act. And every commercial assumes that the knocker on my front door is more intelligent than I am.

I once figured out that I've spent more than half my life not hooked up to what passes for the entertainment industry in this country. It's been more than ten years since we turned our Direct TV satellite dish into a bird bath.

We still have an appliance called a television in our house but it's hooked up to a DVD player and a VCR. No commercials. Everything watched on our time schedule. We pay only for what we choose to watch through Netflix.

I consider the absence of commercial television one of the core freedoms of life, and when I get to rule the world, televisions will be banned from public venues like secondhand smoke.

In four days, those of us who are going to vote but haven't done so early will trudge off to the polls to cast ballots for a set of people who all claim they are "going to turn this country around." I've heard that promise uttered in every election cycle of which I have a conscious memory. I figure we've turned around so often, we've made several complete circles by now which probably explains why nothing feels different about our government in 2010 than it did when I was in my 20s protesting the police action in Vietnam.

The hooting and hollering have reached their collective crescendo and everyone I know who watches commercial television is complaining bitterly about the head-pounding succession of commercials for one politician or another.

I smile because I am blissfully unplugged.

You can be unplugged too. Think of the money you'll save on cable bills and the time you will gain for yourself.

And the sanity, oh the sanity that is yours to be restored.

But do vote. Even if it's only to complain afterward.

Don't you wish our political system was carried out in a more sensible way? I do. But it isn't. One of the ways I voice my silent protest at the stupidity being carried out in our name is to not give away my time or attention to something that is not worthy of them.

You can too.