It's a Friday night, so what am I doing (besides updating this site)? Sitting at home
and reading, of course. I'm reading and reading and reading... and suddenly, I come upon
this passage from my book that just strikes me as absolutely brilliant. Granted, I wasn't
around for the events described, so maybe I don't get the full impact of the passage, but I
still think it's Fantastic. Yes, with a capital F, dammit. I just had to share it. So,
here it is:
What we witnessed with the death of Kennedy was the triumph of television; what we saw
with his assassination, and with his funeral, was the beginning of television's dominance of
our culture -- for television is at its most solemnly self-serving and at its mesmerizing
best when it is depicting the untimely deaths of the chosen and the golden. It is as
witness to the butchery of heroes in their prime -- and of all holy-seeming innocents --
that television achieves its deplorable greatness. The blood on Mrs. Kennedy's clothes and
her wrecked face under her veil; the fatherless children; LBJ taking the oath of office; and
brother Bobby -- looking so very much next in line.
"IF BOBBY WAS NEXT IN LINE FOR MARILYN MONROE, WHAT ELSE IS HE NEXT IN LINE FOR?" said
Owen Meany.
Not even five years later, when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, [my cousin] Hester would
say, "Television gives good disaster." I suppose this was nothing but a more vernacular
version of my grandmother's observation of the effect of TV on old people: that watching it
would hasten their deaths. If television doesn't hasten death, it surely manages to make
death very inviting; for television so shamelessly sentimentalizes and romanticizes death
that it makes the living feel they have missed something -- just by staying alive.
At 80 Front Street, that November of '63, my grandmother and Owen Meany and I watched the
president be killed for hours; for days we watched him be killed and re-killed, again
and again.
"I GET THE POINT," said Owen Meany. "IF SOME MANIAC MURDERS YOU, YOU'RE AN INSTANT HERO
-- EVEN IF ALL YOU WERE DOING WAS RIDING IN A MOTORCADE!"
"I wish some maniac would murder me," my grandmother said.
"MISSUS WHEELWRIGHT! WHAT DO YOU MEAN?" Owen said.
"I mean, why can't some maniac murder someone old -- like me?" Grandmother said
... "I'm going to be an incontinent idiot," my grandmother said; she looked directly at Owen
Meany. "Wouldn't you rather be murdered by a maniac?"
"IF IT WOULD DO ANY GOOD -- YES, I WOULD," said Owen Meany.
"I think we've been watching too much television," I said.
(From A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving)
So there you have it folks. Kill your television before it kills you.