The Sad Way Television is Now

It is many years since I have watched any regular U.S. TV. Having discovered streaming, I am able to watch European television, superior in every way to the trivial and trashy emanations of the Hollywood cesspool. The Europeans are by no means perfect, but their characters and plots portray real people and real situations that can appeal to mature minds.


I have remarked before on how Europeans present American Southern characters. There is a good Norwegian series “The State of Happiness” (“Lykkeland”) about the discovery and exploitation of the North Sea oil fields in the 1970s. Two Oklahoma oil men characters in Norway have perfect Southern accents, something Hollywood is incompetent to do. Looking them up, you discover that the two actors with perfect accents are Brits. Note that the Europeans are not ashamed to present genuine accents of people usually denigrated.


Europeans have some sensitivity to real speech. The average American Yankee wants above all else to conform to what is considered (falsely) intelligent and respectable. Historic regional accents to them betray social and educational inferiority.


While I am on the subject of TV, I have to remark on the strange role that Africans have assumed in that medium. Even the Europeans are committed to affirmative action. In any police show, whether British, French, or Scandinavian, an admirable black character will appear invariably in the first five minutes, whether it is really appropriate to the situation or not. And, alas, in many cases, in the first ten minutes we will see an admirable sodomite character portrayed as a normal and unremarkable member of society.


Fairly recently I have seen Africans portray Egyptian, Phoenician, and Persian monarchs, Roman soldiers, a Viking queen, one of the Three Musketeers, a president of Finland, brilliant police inspectors and computer geniuses, and commanding an American warship in battle in World War II. This is surely a falsification of our human past.


Let us give all good credit to the accomplishments of African Americans, but in the long run this kind of false history, I think, will do more harm than good.


And in television advertisements, 90% of the time, American families are now portrayed as black or mixed race, with an occasional bow to Asians and Mexicans. A normal white family is seldom seen enjoying the vast cornucopia of American products. It seems to me that this is designed to in the long run degenerate into disgusted saturation.


​Here is another aspect of our sad culture as portrayed in advertising. About three-quarters on the screen are for drugs, in most cases drugs that no one has ever heard of and has no need of and no doctor has ever prescribed.  This is because the crooks in the pharmaceutical industry have so much money that they can afford lavish advertising in a campaign to keep on the good side of the public and the media owners.