Why I Hate Television
I grew up with parents who restricted my television viewing, and just like David Rakoff in last weeks ‘This American Life‘, I became unhealthily addicted. As the quiet bookish kid of two teachers, college educated parents on working class salaries, I spent my free time indoors, avoiding the neighborhood kids’ impulsive violence and myopic obsession with soccer. Instead of participating, instead of being excluded, I watched television. First on our enormous, deathly old, black and white screen, a groaning bloated beast with knobs which had to manually be tweaked; later on a tiny 14 inch color unit donated from a relative; a device that was for a long time my only window into the world beyond 1980’s Ireland. Into that window I stared, watching anything and everything. My preference was for shows featuring quirky comedic characters and action packed sequences, the A-Team, Thundercats, Captain Scarlet. I hated Irish TV and gorged on grainy, weather dependent, BBC and Channel 4, pirated from across the water.