Commericals Should be Taxed

Since they are a form of noise pollution, it is only reasonable to tax commercials unless advertisers stop cranking up the volume or begin to focus on quality and variety. And I mean television, here. Radio is as dependent or more on ad revenue than print media.

Maybe I sound like an old, embittered man for complaining about noise pollution, but the truth stands: television programming is pretty bad at times, but commercials are always worse by at least a factor of two. And they are loud, so they pollute with noise the very homes we live in. And people without televisions feel smug about it.

Television advertisements should be taxed because they are at least as bad for your health as cigarettes. Ads convince people to eat at greasy franchise restaurants, buy insidious deep-fried snack foods, participate in 'Cash 4 Gold' schemes, and pay to watch crappy movies in theaters. All of this drives the economy, sure, but also makes each and every person a compulsive and hollow shell. The bottom line has always been worth the common man, of course, but cannot the sham democratic system throw at least one bone to the very small percentage of people who watch TV and dislike being condescended to between their 22 minutes of show?

Smokers, used to the glares of passerby, now have to deal with being unable to smoke in places of business. Now this is somewhat of a twist unlogical, but why should normal people have to deal with business being brought into their place of living? And this analogy holds, because as smokers are addicted to tobacco (or the quest to look cool), so are TV addicts to their shows and dramas and sporting events and news. There are enough opportunities for untaxed product placements in television programming, so it's not like either taxing or abolishing televised commercials will really change everything.

2010 Retrospective, pt. 3: Television vs. Extinction

My enthusiasm for television has never really changed. I lived without a TV up until the point someone asked me, "Are you one of those people who watch TV?" At that point, of course, I knew exactly what my life was missing. That said, I never really watched much. I did the thing where I would stare blankly at the television for a while, using it less as a source of information and entertainment (and never the twain should meet) than as a slack, mutable canvas on which to view my exact context in history.

Now one autumn day in 2009, following my usual after-work routine, I encountered a shock. I stumbled into an episode of a show that I had some dim awareness of. Slick dialogue and editing; snappy and unerringly clean characters; white male lead - yep, another bland and demoralizing situational comedy show. American TV at its best, in the most savage satiric sense. So kept watching, irritated that anyone had the gall to pull this kind of leprous rabbit out of the sleazy magic hat of television. It appeared to be unoffensive, silly, acceptable writing... and wait a minute, that's Chevy Chase, isn't it? And who is that free radical?

Community thus gained a faithful viewer. This show which was on nobody's radar at all, that I hadn't even seen on many network ads, actually entertained me. Sure, I knew about 30-Rock, the other sitcom on NBC, which was always good for a laugh but obviously a glass cannon. I had been getting tired of How I Met Your Mother, because I'd seen enough episodes to know that its main conceit was a red-herring, and that it was really just a very, very impressive remake of Friends. The rest of my faith in network programming had been slain by the enthusiasm over The Big Bang Theory, the appeal of which was lost on me.

With all of those odds stacked against it, plus the internet, television still managed to hook me. Thursdays I knew where to go to shake off my boredom. Community really is unimpressive on paper: Cynical failed lawyer goes to school, accidentally creates a study-group in order to get laid, finds out that the consequences are heartwarming but inescapable. It also has a really flat title, the sort of title that could've easily belonged to another 100 Questions. 

But the first season of Community was worth every episode. By the end of the Halloween special I knew what I had suspected when Troy and Abed first rapped together en Espagnol. The hippest of you are saying, "That was 2009, and standards were different. The 'meta-goldrush' is over, and meta-humor is played out and lame." Well, in 2010 I watched Community regularly. That show owned 2010. I know this because nobody else thinks so, and nobody else says so, but I couldn't find a single DVD of Season 1 when I went to the store recently. So what if it was on sale?

Which begs the question, "Is it shameful to admit you like Community?" Local 'TV Critics' who are published in newspapers did not mention Community in their predictable 'Best of 2010' lists so the show obviously lacks critical praise. In more realistic terms, maybe a third (33%) of people I know watch the show, and the rest do not care for it. I will watch that show until it's cancelled or someone steals my TV. When the season finale aired I actually (and this is shameful stuff) wished there were more episodes - and the show ended on a tone-perfect idiot note. The reruns were sobering reminders of what I might have missed if I thought that television was objectively bad, which in itself is kind of depressing, because I could've been an anti-TV rebel.

Season 2 of Community has been difficult. Three hundred people literally felt betrayed by the recent Christmas episode. Some accuse the program of being too clever by half, which is at least half of its charm to begin with. My opinion is that they have done no wrong at all, and that this season is at least as good as the least of the last one. There are some high points they'll never hit again, but they'll replace them with other distractions. Chevy Chase could quit, Dan Harmon might even drive the show off a cliff out of sheer perversity, or meddling hands will destroy it, but nothing can kill what they quoted, alluded to, or made fun of - especially 80's rapists, Goodfellas, and Cookie Crisp.