Turn It Off !

It is difficult to go anywhere in public without being subjected to blaring television screens. Whether you are in a restaurant, medical waiting room, gym, airport, or hotel lobby, there is always some fool on a flat screen trying to tell you something or sell you something. Public TV sets are normally not even controllable by those forced to endure them, so we are continually exposed to the noise of shows and commercials that someone else selects for us.

We have a rule at our house - the television goes off when dinner starts. Why should that be any different when we dine out? I would rather not have a toenail fungus commercial or the equivalent, a Donald Trump interview, as background ambience during my meal.

It is much worse if the sets are tuned to Fox "News" (aka Faux News or Fox Noise), as are many of these public area screens. Fox, the propaganda arm of the Republican Party, is where GOP Presidential candidates go to work when they are not campaigning. The network is a 24/7 cacophony of distortions, lies, and nonsense. 

Whenever I enter a room in which Fox is playing, my IQ drops 10 points, I start breathing through my mouth, and my forehead develops a distinct Neanderthalic slant. If I am in one of the few communal areas in which the customer has access to a remote control, I quickly turn to something more intelligent, like Cartoon Network.

Fox "News" makes people stupid. I am not kidding. At least seven separate studies since 2002 show that people who watch Fox "News" are significantly less informed about the world than people getting their news from other sources. For example, in a 2009 MSNBC/Wall Street Journal poll on health care, 72% of Fox viewers thought that the Affordable Care Act would give medical care to illegal aliens vs 41% of viewers of other news networks (it doesn't). 69% of Fox viewers thought that the Affordable Care Act will pay for abortions vs 40% of other viewers (it doesn't).

In a World Public Opinion poll from December 2010, Fox viewers placed first in percentage of misinformed viewers for eight of the nine questions asked. In the poll, 63% believed that the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts (it did), 38% believed that most Republican legislators opposed TARP (they did not), and 63% believed that President Obama was not born in the U.S. (he was).

I no more want to be assailed by Fox "News" in public than my conservative friends would enjoy being forced to listen to MSNBC. If I enter a restaurant playing Fox, I immediately turn around and leave. It seems strange that a business such as the local frozen custard joint would knowingly anger a large portion of its clientele by playing such biased programming. Not a good business practice! I like a cheeseburger or chocolate shake as much as the next guy, but several local Fox-playing businesses have lost thousands of my fast food dollars over the years. I am not alone in this.

There are other ways of fighting back at the onslaught of right-wing propaganda. If you are in a Fox-saturated area where you cannot simply walk-out, such as an emergency room or an airport, ask the person in charge  to change the station. If that doesn't work, there is a cute gadget available, called TV-B-Gone. This device, small enough to attach to your key-ring, will allow you to turn-off any nearby television set. Guaranteed fun for the entire family!

How about if public waiting areas and businesses (other than sports bars) just stopped having televisions, period? Think of all of the money that could be saved on electricity and TV monitors that could go towards lowering our price of food, lodging, travel, and medical care. Think of the enormous carbon footprint that would disappear by disconnecting millions of sets across the country. Instead of slack-jawed passive public viewing, we might actually start reading again. We might even be forced to talk to each other. What a change that would be. 

(First Published by Paul Adair in Germantown NOW, Just Sayin' Blog, April 26, 2012)