Jan
14
Written by:
1/14/2011 6:58 AM
BUCHOLIA, U.S.A.: The setting–a small country farmhouse in the
Midwest. Era–TV sets had dials. Evening. Supper is over. Dishes are done. By
hand.
Harley: “Put on ‘Lawrence Welk,’ would you Mama?”
Emabel: Walks over to the TV set and turns on “Lawrence Welk.”
He indulges in his dream of being Myron Floren.
Commercial break.
Harley: “Turn that down a little.”
Emabel: Gets up and turns down the volume.
Cut to years later, when TV sets had remote controls.
He: “Put on ‘Three’s Company,’ would you Mama?”
She: Hands him the remote, which is lying on the end table next to his
La-Z-Boy. He dreams of being Jack Tripper.
Commercial break.
He: Presses the mute button.
This is how loud TV commercials were legislated at RR 1 Box 168, Cozad,
Nebraska. Granted, this legislation would not have worked well in later
households with, for example, the Mssrs. McAdams and myself. And yet somehow we
managed to endure television audio free of federal controls.
One has to wonder how the collective TV-watching We survived 50 years of aural
anarchy. Were we merely unaware of the abuse to which we were being subjected?
It became hard to sort out offenses after the advent of contrived-reality TV,
which somehow remains legal.
Unlike loud TV commercials. We now have a law against loud TV commercials. It
will ultimately consume thousands government staff hours comprising a few
million payroll dollars donated by taxpayers. Schools, in the meantime, are
going down the tubes, to such an extent, it seems, that people can no longer
read the word, “mute.”
I understand that folks are annoyed by loud TV commercials, but to me, this
legislation epitomizes the concept of Big Government run amuck. It’s either
that, or We the People have become so profoundly lazy that the federal
government must now control the volume on our TV sets.
Perhaps the newly enacted Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act will
usher in a new category of legislation based on annoyance factors. All you
people out there with your cell phone ring volume on high, consider yourself
warned. If it plays the cha-cha, you could be looking at jail time. And you
there, driving the Terminator school bus and taking up three parking spaces.
Pony up. Carry an animal in your purse? Ditto. Blather on in blog postings
pontificatively? Yep. Take ridiculous license with language. Bingo.
Robertson Davies said “There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at
some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal
stupidity.”
He was kind of a crank, though. Mark Twain was, too, but more colloquially:
“I think it is not wise for an emperor, or a king, or a president, to come down
into the boxing ring, so to speak, and lower the dignity of his office by
meddling in the small affairs of private citizens.”
And heeeeere’s Groucho: “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding
it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies.”
And finally, the master, William Penn Adair Rogers: “Ancient Rome declined
because it had a Senate; now what’s going to happen to us with both a Senate
and a House?”
RIP, Will.
-- Deborah D. McAdams
1 comment(s) so far...
McAdams On: Legislating Loudness Levels
There is an old adage that any company that gets a union, earned it through action. By the same token, government (in this case, will-of-the-people) steps in when industry gets abusive or sloppy. Common sense, as you have advocated, would also advocate that commercial enterprises would have the sense not to have commercials that make the public change stations, mute, and otherwise resent the intrusion. This is counter to the point of advertising.
The more recent level of bad technical control should be covered by the broadcasters/cable operators/etc. As they did not, people complained first to that source and then to their representatives.
Guess which one acted. It would, however, be nice if more folks complained to their representatives about more significant injustices. Did you?
By on
1/20/2011 1:36 AM
|