The Next Big Lawsuit:

I’m addicted.  An anchor shackles my mind and now, through no fault of my own I’m vapid.  In fact, if I could shake this malaise and call the Eagle I too could seek restitution.  In the case of any accident or injury, through no fault of my own, they want me to call them.  I see their commercial while I watch Jerry Springer, and they won’t collect until I’ve been paid.

I want $206 billion!

46 states settled with tobacco companies November 17th, 1998 for $206 billion because smokers intentionally ingested poison on a daily basis.  Now I want it!  Infections caused by smoking, which result in cancer, led to the settlement.  I’m infected!  I thought they wanted to entertain me.  No one informed me television’s nothing but a vast wasteland.  FCC chairman Newton Minow knew it in 1961, but nobody told me.  I watched television for entertainment and in the process I lost my mind.  I’m not infected with cancer.  I’m infected with a chronic case of banality and I want $206 billion. 

I’ve sacrificed chunks of my memory to the god of sit-com.  I remember the jingles to songs that never mattered.  ‘Plop, plop, fizz, fizz…’  That song hasn’t aired in over twenty years, and yet still it plays in my mind.  In 1994, the chairman of Procter and Gamble- Edwin L. Artzt- worried that building brand loyalty would prove difficult, so he developed new advertising strategies.  He’s targeted me like tobacco companies displaying a cool camel to kids.  ‘Oh what a relief it is.’  That dirty little ditty robbed a chunk of my memory that could’ve stored the cure for HIV. 

It’s not even a real song!

‘You take the good.  You take the bad.  You take them both and there you have….’  What the hell happened to me?  I was a boy and I watched the Facts of Life.  That’s not even a boy show, yet 15 years later that lead-in still traipses through my mind proving utterly useless.  I’m like an idiot savant.  I can scat the theme song from Night Court, wake up the next morning, and forget my mother’s birthday.  According to Professor Todd Gitlin, I’ve been indoctrinated by America’s school. 

Television!  

If I personally possessed pieces of my mind storing tacky T.V. trivia I may have cured smokers of cancer and saved the tobacco industry $206 billion; at least then I could earn the money I’m asking for.  Instead, I can successfully name the Sweathogs from Welcome Back Kotter- except for the blond guy who replaced John Travolta and later became Jefferson Darcy- while extrapolating in great detail the short comings of M.A.S.H after Trapper John’s departure. 

This disfiguring disease dangles over my mind like a sun blackened cumquat ready to wither away.  A class action lawsuit against television could be justified through cultivation theory.  These theorists say massive exposure to television results in distorted perceptions.  I’m distorted.  If the Eagle won’t take my case, I’ll go to the Wolf.  They take most accident injury cases with no money down.  I’m injured and by God I’m claiming it’s an accident.  What do I know?  My distorted perception of cause and effect atrophied long ago from televised inactivity.

I didn’t choose to watch The Dukes of Hazzard after Bo and Luke left.  I searched for socialization and ended up with worthless cousins revving the General Lee’s engine.  My taste and judgment have been malformed as I watched Daisy Duke bending over to flirt with Enos.  That dipstick!  When will I be compensated for involuntarily learning Rosco P. Coltrane mannerisms?  I never intended to name my dog Flash or my son Cooter.  Look at the hell my boy will go through with a name like Cooter.  It’s not even a real name; it’s more of a clicking sound.

Lung cancer seems less debilitating than this perpetual mediocrity.  My mind’s made moot by man-made mental machinations to Hung Kung Phooey and Thunder Cats ‘snarf, snarf.’  Neilson Media Research estimates I’ll watch 7 to 10 years of television by the time I reach 70 years old.  By the power of Greyskull I demand justice?  No warnings appeared on the side of the package claiming “Conjunction Junction” would be the only intelligent thing I’d carry away from my television set.  To make matters worse I only remember the chorus to that song.  “Conjunction Junction what’s your function?”  What comes next?  I feel like I’m missing out on a great truth.

I’m spiritually violated with no forewarning.  I learned Fred Sanford impersonations rather than a foreign language.  My synapses don’t respond properly because of television.  I don’t think reality is real.  A 3-year National Television Violence Study determined that two-thirds of television programming contains violence.  When I look at the world I don’t think there’s enough violence.  Research suggests, as a young child I couldn’t discriminate between what I saw and reality.  I need tighter shots of people dying during the next war to quench my inculcated blood lust. 

I have a dream that one day I’ll find a smart-alecky black kid to follow me around.  When people ask me tough questions he’ll say,

“Wha’chu talkin’ ‘bout Mr. D?” 

I need constant stimulation and if you talk for more than five minutes I’m liable to set the curtains on fire out of sheer boredom.  Commercials tax my attention span.  My son Cooter has memorized a half-hour episode of Barney at the age of three.  I’ve discovered that repeated belligerent Seinfeld remarks expressed in a group of thirty people, or more, ends either in a fist fight; or a prolific conversation that engrosses all for hours.  I still smile when I remember Fonzie saving Shortcake from the Red Devils.  I’ll never forget the streets of San Francisco buzzing when Ellen admitted she likes women.  I say, I’ve been horn-swoggled!  Why should I remember that?  I didn’t even like her show and yet I remember that moment as being bigger than it had any right to be.  A 1992 study found on average that sitcoms contain 14 lies per half hour show.  I modeled my personality on sitcoms and now I’m a self-protecting liar with a distorted moral belief system.

Television made me sick and I want $206 billion dollars! 

Why should I care that Kelly Clarkson won the first American Idol, yet somehow I’m stuck remembering her name.  I stop watching when they narrow the pool down to people they can’t make fun of anymore.  I’m a trauma victim suffering from delusional, detached dreams mixed with portions of my life.  I once claimed I had a friend that said’ “Dynomite.”  

I’m victimized and I need some money.

I need $206 billion to be exact. 

If smokers can sue for getting cancer, then television watchers should sue for being trivialized.  Watch trailer trash on Jerry Springer powerlessly no longer.  Call the offices of Goldberg and Osborn.  They’ll fight for our rights and get us a settlement.