Michael Moore Was Right: Progressives Don't Watch Enough TV

The following is the first article in a three-part AlterNet series appearing on Fridays on television and culture by Vanessa Richmond.

Do you know what's wrong with the Left?” asked Michael Moore about a decade ago at The Media and Democracy Congress. “They don’t watch TV.”  If anything, the number of those in the anti-TV army has grown.

Some people who have things like jobs and kids and marriages and friends (and even the luxury of hobbies or regular workouts) think they aren’t watching TV because they don’t have time. It’s gone on the list of things they might do if they were suddenly, say, retired. Along with getting a long-haired dog. Or taking up snowboarding.

But that’s not really why busy, progressive people don’t watch TV. It’s that somehow TV’s image has become associated with the Right and the average. I’ve asked anti-TV friends and they say TV is nothing but 24-hour infotainment, like Fox News, comin' atcha with flashing lights and jingles. And to those people, it doesn’t seem as rewarding -- on a personal or even civic level -- as reading a newspaper or book, or watching a good “film.” Or, even, eating ice cream, drinking wine, or catching up on sleep. They’d rather, in fact, pour lemon juice on their cuts, they tell me, than tune in.

But listen, as I tell those (sneering) friends, TV is back. Some critics are even calling it the golden age of TV. And not just because of HBO, which is even now sometimes called "HBOver" due to the new, good competition like AMC. 

Whether you’re watching an hour of Mad Men on your laptop in bed, getting into a couch-coma on a Sunday with a rented series on DVD, or tuning into Letterman or Colbert at night while checking your email, TV can be a rejuvenating, stimulating, and rewarding experience.  And don’t underestimate the zone out aspect -- it can be the antidote to this over-productive, perfectionistic culture.

Yes, of course, most shows are crap, featuring clichéd writing and god-awful, predictable production style. But though I’d rather tempt you with what’s breath-takingly good, it’s worth pointing out that even crap is worthwhile when it’s watched by millions. Hey, more people voted as part of Super Female Voice in China (the equivalent of American Idol) than voted in the national election, and things aren’t that far off here. When any show gets that much attention, it’s worth it, from a cultural understanding standpoint anyway, to see why.

But either way, whether you’re watching award-winning dramas or cheap reality shows, as Michael Moore suggested over a decade ago, if you’re missing out on TV, you’re missing out period. Culture includes all sorts of things, but TV is the baseline, (yes, sometimes it’s base, but that’s part of the point) which means not watching it makes you as uninformed as someone who doesn’t read the news. And I know you all do that. Watching TV means you get to learn about and have more informed conversations about politics, values, culture ... and relationships, sex, and drugs.

(And a side note, though I know I’ll get death threats over this, let me just speak to those of you who say, often loudly, that you don’t watch TV, when we know that’s a lie. Yes we do. It’s still called TV whether you’re watching it on your laptop, renting it from NetFlix, or downloading it from the moon. I know almost no one with cable anymore, so know that if you’re viewing something that has ever been on TV, it’s called TV. It’s time to come out of the closet, and stop pretending to be a hater to get social points. Second, if you really have shunned all forms of TV thinking it elevates you, just try to think back to second year university and remember that so-called “high” culture can be either great or boring, and it’s the same with “low” culture. Anything else is classist, and I know you’re not that.)