We weren't proud watching a lot of TV

"Bonanza" was big

Kids my age were made to feel guilty if we spent a lot of time watching TV. Up through college I'd hear a term that sounds very dated now: "Boob tube." I remember a college prof who talked about "boob tube and beer" being the lifestyle of so many American men. In daytime they worked at some miserable job. As the day wound down, it was "boob tube and beer." 

These were times when social drinking was quite accepted. Eventually the crackdown on DWI changed our habits. The change was much to the better. As with, stomping down the once widespread habit of smoking and doing so in public. 

The television of my childhood should be a museum exhibit. I'm sure my parents thought TV was a miracle when it first appeared. And the children of my youth, the "boomer" kids? Well, TV was a staple even though we were coached on how we were not to be proud of consuming it. You might say it became a guilty pleasure. 

The people in "academics" of course thought TV was extremely lowbrow and something to be scoffed at or laughed at. No, at the end of the school day we were supposed to open our school books and continue the awful tedium of most of that stuff. It seemed the "pain equals gain" ethos was thrust on us. 

So I look back now. And I wonder what the heck was so bad about seeking some entertainment after a day in school. 

I find it amazing that I went to school before there were backpacks. In fact I remember none at all. Amazing, when you consider the obvious utility of backpacks. I would have used the term "knapsack." So we tucked books under our arms. 

How many hours were we in school on a basic day? Between seven and eight? Isn't that enough to devote to the burden of school? "Books" were the foundation for our learning in the days before electronic communications even existed. We dreaded new "assignments." We'd look at the number of pages or chapters we'd be required to cover - always far more than would be necessary to simply learn something. 

Today? Well, we make no apology for wanting to do anything with maximum efficiency. It's the most clear common sense you can imagine. Analog days for some reason hovered out in a painful and tedious realm. Processes seemed set up to confuse and frustrate us. 

A defining feature of the digital world is that the processes are set up to help us, to help us past hurdles, to master things. And God bless the young people who can take this for granted. 

 

TV for masses

My thoughts are in this vein as I think back to the "TV" of my boomer youth. Yes a lot of it was trite and watered-down. Shows were created to please the mass audience. Certainly that brought limitations and hindrances. But it had a good side too: storytelling at a pretty basic level with a minimum of sub-plots. Today the sub-plots really come at you. 

Today the entertainment is of a "niche" variety as you can find something narrowly tailored to your tastes. Which is nothing but good, right? It has its advantages. But the days of the mass shared culture were charming. Kids in school could discuss certain shows that were on the night before. There were only three TV networks. You could find kids who watched the same shows as you. Adults could talk the same way around the proverbial "water cooler." 

I remember that in high school, many of my peers excitedly discussed the show "Night Gallery" with host Rod Serling the next day. The show was like a continuation of the old "Twilight Zone." The new show was in color. My generation grew up when the change from black and white to color happened. "My Three Sons" went through the change along with the WWII drama "Combat!" 

TV of the '60s was influenced by Victorian attitudes. The comedians joked about the "censors." Nothing "scandalous" permitted. Society was a little Pollyannish, yes. And boys were fed an endless diet of "westerns." As you research that today, you'll become shocked at just how pervasive the western format was. 

To a degree I can understand it: definitely potential for action and drama in an untamed world. But with such excess. Even as kids, we could sense that the whole template was trying to teach us something. Heavy-handed moral instruction behind all the gunslinging and horse-riding. I'll interpret it all as Judeo-Christian preaching. Treat others the way you would want to be treated. 

Which is all quite laudable on the face of it. But. . . Right before our eyes, in full color on the evening news, we could see what our nation was doing in Southeast Asia. Today, the folly of all that is so obvious, it is not couched in cautious language. 

I give two examples. Brian Williams when he was anchor of the NBC Evening News - a show straining to be objective obviously - coming right out and saying the Vietnam War was "a colossal mistake." Apparently no controversy in the aftermath of the statement. And Wolf Blitzer on CNN in a similarly objective-in-theory news program, saying the Vietnam war was "a war that the United States lost." Again no dust-up in the aftermath of such a comment. 

The war hovers in my mind because I'd come home after school for years and watch the NBC Evening News broadcast: updates related to Vietnam, and over time considerable emphasis also to the war protests and "counterculture" that developed as a harsh statement to our elders about how we were not going to be like them. We were not going to sit back and accept what we were fed from the government about war. 

Our elders had been shaped by the WWII experience. Let's say war was necessary in the '40s but it was a 100 percent necessary evil to have to prosecute. My generation of boys watched the movie "The Longest Day" to be entertained. Why would we want to be entertained by such a thing? The WWII movies of the '60s were deliberately sanitized so we could basically "watch the good guys win" - the same entertainment appeal as the westerns, completely. 

The irony is that TV westerns did not even present the American "cowboy" accurately. Bless the cowboys as they did essential labor in the old West. They shoved manure around and smelled of manure. It was a job in ways that did not inspire fascination. Well, that's what most of us do today! We fantasize about a more dramatic life. And that's what the entertainment industry gives us: drama. It has to entertain to be profitable. 

Was it the rugged individualist "cowboys" who developed the American Southwest? Well no, more than anything it was the Hoover Dam, courtesy the Federal government! Women had a bigger role in the westward development than popular entertainment would have you believe. 

Boys had the Judeo-Christian ethic coming at them from the endless panoply of TV media back in the day. And as we had good vs. evil instilled in us so that we may make the right choices, our U.S. government made the miserable choice of building up military involvement in Southeast Asia. To this day my instinct is to reject "convention" based on all that, to reject any preaching of what might be right versus wrong. Because, we were screwed in our childhood years. 

I try telling myself to "get over it." I realize I ought to. But it takes effort. And in so many ways in the America of 2025, we seem to be regressing. It wouldn't even be a joke to suggest that Jim Crow could make a return. The only problem with that would be enforcement: you can no longer draw a line between "whites" and "coloreds" or "whites and Negroes." Jim Crow had to end because the legal profession realized it had to end. 

Same with segregation in Major League baseball. I have to laugh because eventually the black people opted for sports other than baseball. 

 

Westerns went into retreat

TV westerns eventually got the ax along with all rural-based programming. It was a conscious decision by those who ran TV. I believe Norman Lear was the main instigator as TV went "urban." 

With time, TV was no longer the mass entertainment media that it had been. It still exists. I don't have a TV contract and I don't miss it. But think back to when my generation was young and TV was this glorious escape, albeit a guilty pleasure. 

I think it's terrible we were made to feel guilty about watching TV or the "boob tube." Young people today would be mystified by the term "boob tube." The days when "the bad guys" wore "black hats."

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com