3.28.2018

Follow-Up

Just curious, for those of you paying attention...

When did the NewsHour become unwatchable?

Was it a gradual process? Or did it happen overnight?

I think I tried tuning in a few times last November but couldn't get into a routine of watching it every day. I tried again over the past ten days or so. There's something really tedious about the amount of time being spent discussing Trump's extramarital affairs and while I expect that sort of thing from the for-profit networks, well, it's not that I even hold PBS to a higher standard as much as I don't enjoy watching people who act as if they have already achieved this higher standard failing to achieve said standard and not noticing. Or maybe my standards are wrong. It's not talk bullshit yes, talk bullshit no, but talk bullshit how. Talk bullshit to who.

(I tend to think that the moral corruption that people are locating in Trump is actually found in said people's own willingness to gossip about him behind the veil of moral superiority. And you may be saying to yourself, well, it's not about the sex, it's about the money, it's about the contracts, the lawyers, the shady dealings, but those things are made necessary by the gossip, by your gossip, not the other way around. It's not that I like Trump. Let's just say instead that I remember the 2000s. I remember how pathetic it was when W. Bush was dropping literal bombs on people and other people were like: haha he mispronounces words and I don't.)

I tried watching PBS on election day in 2016. That was the worst. The overuse of demographics in predicting and describing the results of elections got me more than a bit angry. What's weird about people who are into a certain type of identity politics is that they seem to find it perfectly satisfactory to talk like: women will vote this way and men this way and if you are a Spanish-speaking first-generation immigrant you must do this unless you were born between years X and Y and then you will probably do this other thing but if you are black you have no choice at all regardless (of whether slavery three hundred years ago or Ethiopia in 2005) and why didn't you do what I said to do after all I am one of you and you are supposed to do what I say because we are all the same, aren't we (except that I get to be on TV and disappointed with you and you don't)?

I wish I could write that last paragraph better. Anyways.

When did the NewsHour become unwatchable?

Thanks!