Is Television Making Me Dumber?

There’s a good chance that television is making us dumber. That’s just my opinion, of course. It’s possible, I supposed, that we just are dumb, and television writers are just playing to their audience. I’m just not sure. Whatever the cause, the presentation is stupid to the point of offensive at times.
For example, this morning I was watching a news show when the weather portion began. Now, it’s January in the Midwest. Anyone who has lived in this area even a year knows that January (and February) are the months when we typically see cold weather. Snow, sleet, ice, frigid temperatures. Yep, that’s typical. The news would be the occasional times we get 50 degrees and sunny in those months (which has also happened).
This week, we are getting pretty standard winter weather for us. It’s cold. The wind chill is even colder. We need to stay inside, dress warmly, and prepare for power outages. That’s typical. Get a coat.
Watching this weatherman (sorry, meteorologist), you would have thought we’d never seen this before! He pronounced the cold weather like he was announcing the birth of his first child. And he ended with “this misery is just going to continue.” Misery? Misery? That seemed a bit extreme. It’s just winter weather, for heaven’s sake.
Maybe he goes to Texas or Florida in the summer to tell them, in a shocked and incredulous tone, that it’s going to be hot and humid there.
Then, right after the scary weather report, an advertisement appeared for life insurance. The patter actually said, “If you’re watching this, there’s a good chance your alive. If you’re not, you probably don’t care about this.” I guessed the writers of that commercial thought that was clever. It was not. It was insipid.
Don’t even get me started on the commercials for insurance. Repeating the same word over and over (and over) with some weird animal doesn’t exactly make me want to trust that the insurance people know their heads from a hole in the ground.
The Medicare commercials are even worse. Those of us who have actually called a Medicare help line know the truth. We aren’t fooled by your actors telling us how “easy” it is. Medicare is possibly the most confusing, confounding process I’ve experienced. These helpful places seem to have a knack for hiring people who are barely able to read from a script, have disdain for older folks, and possess no compassionate qualities for their customers. We are simply tasks to be checked off a to-do list. “Easy,” my foot.
It’s always been annoying to me that pundits on television have to “re-cap” what was said at a press conference, debate, election, or speech. I am apparently so dumb that when I listen to a politician talk, I need some television analyst to repeat it to me and explain it. “Gas prices are leveling off,” the governor said. So later, some talking head patiently informed me what that meant.
Apparently, gas prices will neither rise nor lower dramatically in the near future. Thank goodness. I thought perhaps we were getting new signage that was parallel to the ground.