I haven't watched TV since 2004.
Well, except occasionally in a hotel room or through Netflix. Back then, though, looked at what my cable bill would be, what I was getting in return, what I could buy in books per month instead. Besides, didn't want any longer to be "subtly" or forcefully influenced in ways its obvious that the news/entertainment world were trying to mold the pathway ahead me to travel down. Here,go ahead, sit down,put your feet up, take a load off, let our channel mesmerize you into a trance-like state where they make my own decisions for me.
Instead started more and more to use the internet to scour for the particular information I wanted to know about, rather than sit in front of that TV set and have them spoon feed me.
Only things I truly missed, looking back, were CSPAN and, sometimes, the History Channel. My students were like, how will you live without TV? And yet I found myself far more informed in this manner than most of my fellow teachers, was up on far more news than they or the kids, out ahead of the news cycle curve oftentimes, so much so my students would ask, how do you know that if you don't even watch TV?
Well, the internet IS a great source, with that grain of salt. Especially if you look wherever your search leads you, no matter the source, just having different, several different perspectives of the events to pull from is better than the short shrift TV news gives anything that requires a modicum of actual thought to puzzle. The internet is a blizzard of information necessitating wading through, searching for, panning for those nuggets. If you enjoy gathering information, is truly is like panning for gold, tons of sand and grit, very little gold dust with the occasional nugget.
Worth it all the same.
Its actually why I come to this site as often as I do. The topics often interest me enough to go out and do the necessary homework, put my previous reading and cumulatively gathered knowledge and experience together ...then try to put that into words that kind of make sense here. Maybe if only to me, at times.
Then I can put it out there and people actively and interactively try to pry open the cracks, show me where I am wrong forcing me to hone my arguments, plug the holes or completely question what I was originally thinking. What a wonderful learning tool.
Fox, while it may be marginally better at times as at least hitting some of the stories that the other networks oftentimes have to be forced to acknowledge, I frequently found it too much entertainment oriented, not enough actual hard news reporting, very rarely getting into the details enough for one to form a valid/solid opinion. Talk radio was much better, often dedicating an hour or more to topics with callers able to challenge, bring to bear other perspectives.
Though not the answer either, there is not one source for that anyhow, it was at least better.
I am glad the too oft relied upon sources we had, as a country, grown far too accustomed to trusting showed us this election cycle more of their true selves. Their glaring faults, the collusion, the more self fulfilling prophecy type polling meant to, in my opinion, influence the outcome more than reflect a snap shot of true sentiments of the moment... so that we may learn from this to be alert to those who would try to fool us for their gain... and maybe something new and innovative will rise up out of the manure dumped on us last election cycle.
If we look upon the occasion of this dump of pure **** onto us and instead, as preferable, perhaps view it as necessary fertilizer from heaven, hey, maybe something, something good, might grow out of it?
When things look grim, doors closing down in all our maybe too familiar hallways, I think of the Chinese proverb, when one door closes, another opens.
