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<font face="helvetica, verdana, arial" size="+2"><b>TV is Good —<br>
Good and Addictive</b></font>
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<b>by AARON DUBROW</b></a>
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<a href="../../../www_subdomain/media/columns/tuckett/971201realworld.html"><b>Avoiding the Real World</b></a>
Lori Tuckett says no to TV stardom.
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<b>ABC's new "TV is good for you" ad campaign is hard to miss.</b>
The new slogans are written in ironic black-on-ugly-as-sin-yellow backgrounds and sound vaguely like things a drug dealer might say. "Hobbies, Schmobbies," one reads; "You can talk to your wife anytime," jokes another.
<p>
At least I think they're joking. Marketing irony has been pulled so tight in the decade since Joe ("He's lying") Isuzu began the process of deconstructing consumerism, it's hard to tell. Suck's James Bong is not confused. He thinks the ABC ads are just brazen honesty, and howls "Amen" to ABC's message. I, however, am more unclear, running in several different directions, torn by loyalty, by love, part closet couch potato, part media-phobe. I'm one of those rare people who watches far less TV than I want to. I would watch more, but none of my friends ever want to watch with me; they look down on it. Many of them grew up in homes without TVs; they don't understand the appeal of a flickering screen in a dark room, Buddy Lembeck's stewardess-scoring schemes or the subversive androgyny of Mr. Furley's scarf. TV, I've found, is a learned love; it has its own language, its own tropes, and if I hadn't spent more time with TV than with anything or anybody else in my life (three hours a day for twelve years), I probably wouldn't love it either. Then again, I might have been better off. I hate to play Benedict Arnold to an institution that has brought me so many hours of laughter and tears, but I find myself wishing my father had carried out his threats and trashed the TV when I was ten.
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It's hard to think of something more corrupt than advertising to get people to watch more TV. It's kind of like advertising crack. We just don't need it. What we need is more book reading, more exercising, and less TV watching. And yet, when I hear the soft call of those ABC ads, I want to flick on the tube and catch up with all the friends I left behind when I went out and made real friends. "Sam Malone, Jack Tripper, Rerun, Tootie," I want to say, "how've you guys been doing?"
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<b>Aaron Dubrow</b> is a former editorial intern at Tripod.
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