Television

This was originally posted over at The Considerations as a response to a post on A Plain View.

TV is not the devil. There is nothing inherently wrong with it, but something happened to it. As a kid, I watched "Full House" on a regular basis. Thinking back on it, it's kind of creepy that three young girls lived with their dad and two uncles, but the show was wholesome: there was always a lesson to be learned.
From Looney Toons I became acquainted with classical music (particularly Grieg), opera, and fine literature (including Steinbeck and Shakespeare).
Even G.I. Joe taught us that knowing is half the battle.
But now what does TV have to offer? Reality television, which has largely replaced the sitcom, does not conform to either "reality" or normal conventions of "television." It blurs the line between truth and fiction and toes the line of the legal "obscene." The producers want you to think that Paris spilled the ashes of a human being and gathered them up with a vacuum cleaner. In reality, it's just ashes that they told her to spill.
The same goes for current childrens' programming. The infamous Pokemon and the more recent Yu-Gi-Oh have no valuable life lesson at the end, only blatant marketing. In Pokemon you "gotta catch 'em all," and in Yu-Gi-Oh the characters actually play the game for which they sell cards.
What happened to books?
The point is this: in the end, the only television worth watching should make you laugh for 15 minutes to a half hour, and not force you to watch the next episode for fear of missing something important.
Either that, or it should be hosted by Alex Trebek (all other game shows will rot your brain).