Modern MASH
2011-02-02 22:55:30.985579+01 by
Dan Lyke
3 comments
There's an old Jordan Shelbourne story called Virgin (On The Ridiculous) that has this exchange:
Cliff was sitting there on his bed, propped against his wall, surrounded
by three empty mickey bottles of rye. He was staring at a MASH rerun on
a little color television. I turned it off. "Hey!" said Cliff.
"You've seen it," I told him. "It's the one where Hawkeye complains about
the inhumanity of war."
And it got me to thinking about the modern equivalent to MASH. Is it The Simpsons? Friends? Or are we beyond that?
- YouTube
- "You've seen it," I told him, "it's the one with the cute kittens."
- Wikileaks
- ... "it's the one where the State Department needs to grow a spine, and the resulting revolution puts an unfriendly government in power because of the U.S. government's lack of principles."
- a 4chan channel
- ... "it's the one where the people trading unspeakably disgusting porn turn out to be decent human beings who pull together for the betterment of humanity."
- Facebook
- ... "you hung out with them in high school, and they've got kids now. And getting back together with her would be a bad idea."
- Huffington Post
- ... "it's the one where they're outraged about Fox news."
Or maybe it's not net based at all. What's your take?
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comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment Re: made: 2011-02-03 01:35:05.59705+01 by:
Dan Lyke
I think I was channeling today's Calamities of Nature.
#Comment Re: made: 2011-02-03 07:22:45.908844+01 by:
ebwolf
The Simpsons was it in the 90s but should have been put to bed a decade
ago. I think the real problem is that our attention has been spread across so
many channels. When MASH was new and relevant, everyone watched the same
3-5 channels. The same shows were shown on those channels. There were no outside
distractions from those channels. The kids may have been playing Atari but the
adults were watching Hawkeye slowly go crazy.
And I won't even delve into how "reality TV" somehow has become reflective the
way MASH once was. There are probably too many painful realizations hiding
in there.
#Comment Re: made: 2011-02-03 21:06:01.508262+01 by:
petronius
Boing Boing: "It's the one where half the entries are about hand-carved hard drives, and the other half are about how without Net neutrality we will be forced to use AOL."
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