Kill Your Television -- Slowly

It’s too nice a job to rush.

Kurt Schlichter has an idea or three on how to take the fight to the Progressives’ home turf:

The mainstream media, also known the Democrats’ Steno Pool, looks invincible, but it’s vulnerable too. It needs eyeballs to live, so look elsewhere for your news and information. Every time you watch NBC News, you validate and empower liars who hate you and everything you stand for. So don’t. There’s a growing segment of conservative traditional and alternative media, and even a few mainstream journalists who still try to be objective, like Jake Tapper at CNN. Patronize them. Starve the lib-loving media until it either dies or reforms. The MSM needs you a helluva a lot more than you need it.

The same goes for popular culture. Is your favorite TV cop show disrespecting you? Did last week’s CSI: Rancho Cucamonga episode make the guy responsible for the massacre the Olive Garden be the Tea Partier who went on a shooting spree because the restaurant served breadsticks to black people? You don’t need that crap. Watch something else.

Empower conservative culture by patronizing quality conservative-created entertainment – as thriller writer Brad Thor says, doing so is an act of conscience. It also hits the enemy where it hurts – the wallet.

I’ve been thinking about exactly this, more so since Ace published his piece a week or two ago encouraging people to simply quit watching television.

Due to the nature of my work, it’s just not possible for me to stop reading msnbc.com or HuffPo or any of the rest — they’re my bread & butter. And there are shows I’m simply not ready to give up. Besides, even though I don’t watch a whole lot of TV, I get the feeling that giving it up is hard.

(ASIDE: It isn’t always that difficult. I used to watch Bones with my bride, more out of habit than for enjoyment. But I quit in a huff last year, when a Rush-type radio host was murdered — just after discovering his true liberal self and about to come out in favor of gun control. The killer turned out to be a liberal, but the show made it clear that the real bad guys are those gun-toting NRA types.)

Here’s the thing though. Shows end, don’t they? Finding new shows, quality ones worth watching, that takes effort too, doesn’t it?

Mad Men is about to end, which is sad because this week’s episode was especially good. But unlike AMC, I don’t have a 8PM Sunday slot* which needs filling. Over at AMC, they’re busy trying to come up with the next Mad Men to air — but who says I have to find the next one to watch? AMC is working like mad (heh), however all I have to do is sit back, do nothing, and get an hour of my life back each week.

Game of Thrones? Same story. I’m so angry at HBO most of the time, that I’m happy enough being a year behind and getting the discs “free” from Netflix — that’s less money into HBO’s pocket, and less out of mine. And in two or three years, Game of Thrones will end, too. Who says I have to fill the Netflix queue back up with something else?

Writing this, I realize it’s been years since I watched a sitcom, and I can’t say I miss the format one bit. Police procedurals? Unless you count Castle and Sherlock (which are really adventure stories), then I haven’t seen one of those since I-don’t-know-when. Good dramas are harder to give up, but Justified is about to air its final episode, and not even The Walking Dead can stumble around forever. Banshee is still new, and it’s too much trashy fun to just up and quit — I’ll stay until the end.

But other than that — and a couple other exceptions so unexceptional I can’t think of them off the top of my head — weening myself of TV shouldn’t be that hard. All I (or you) have to do is wait for the inevitable cancellations, and replace that hour of your life with something that isn’t force-fed progressive gruel.

Hit them where it hurts, indeed.

*I don’t actually know what time Mad Men is on. I get stuff from Netflix or iTunes and watch at my convenience.