A Few Things I Heard on the Television

Television provides entertainment and education, but not all of the time. Once in a while, such as every single day, TV also provides idiocy. More and more each day it seems. Here are a few examples:

I was watching the news on Thursday morning, it so happened that it was also Thanksgiving. The parade hadn't begun yet, so I had the news on while waiting. The commentators were talking about the politicians they didn't like, or thought were failures. This is how they presented it, "In the Spirit of Thanksgiving, here are the top political turkeys of 2010." So, the Spirit of Thanksgiving is name calling? I could understand if it was gluttony, selfishness or consumerism, but name calling? I just don't see it.

I love toothpaste/toothbrush advertising. Just kidding, but I do like some of them. I think they overstate things just a bit. If you've been reading my blog from the beginning you might be familiar with a post I did regarding mouth cleaning back in March of this year (Sticking it to Tooth Decay, Cool Mint Style). This week brought another instance of entertaining advertising.

Isoactive Whitening Aquafresh is the product, a line from the commercial says "50% of cavities form between teeth." Immediately upon hearing this I thought about where the other 50% of cavities might appear. I came up with not in between teeth. Cavities can form between teeth or not between teeth. There are two options for where cavities can form on teeth. If they don't form in one place, they'll form in the other. A 50% chance that if they are not between teeth, they will be between teeth. Good enough.

Michael Jackson (I've typed about him before as well) had some great songs. He is as good as, better than or worse than many other musical artists. Now there is a Wii video game featuring his dancing and music. The tag line of the game is "His moves unite us, his game will electrify the world." Michael Jackson: The Experience is out in stores now. So enjoy the unity that his dancing has brought about and go get that game that will electrify the entire world. I'm thinking that anything I could say at this point would be redundant. You know, because the actual facts about this game are laughable without any humorous commentary.

Finally, last Saturday night I was fighting the urge to sleep and trying desperately to find something worth watching on the Television. It was a losing effort. Luckily I happened across a Christian talk show of some kind. The host was talking with the creator of a cartoon series that recounts the popular stories of the Bible. Just like any talk show with a person promoting their movie or series, this one showed clips from the show and the guy talked about it. He drove the point home that the stories were staying true to the text of the Bible. He said that they did the best they could to limit dialogue to actual words in the Bible. Adding only where necessary to keep the story flowing for the purpose of the cartoon.

They showed clips and he talked about the importance of staying true to the Bible. I don't know why I had stopped to watch this, and I didn't know why I continued to watch it, but then he said something that I am very happy to have heard. The man said something along the lines of "Our emphasis is on accuracy. We've kept it true to the Bible, and of course there's a robot and two kids in all of the stories." In the beginning there was Adam, Eve, a rotund robot, a young boy with an electric guitar and a girl with pig-tails. Yeah, that's exactly how I remember reading it. Accurate to a fault, Superbook, accurate to a fault.

There you have it. A few things I heard on the television recently that make me lose faith in human kind. We can do better than this. I know we can. Well, maybe not all of us.