Zero Sum Mentality

By Roy D. Follendore III

June 30, 2002

Our President was going into the hospital for a procedure yesterday. The next thing that we saw on the six o'clock news airwaves is some poor slob on a hospital table with a sixteen foot probe up his butt so that five Doctors and the rest of the nation can watch it travel up this mans slimy colon. I am sorry but that is just sick. You have to ask yourself what is going on with the people who put this disgusting "tripe" on television?

I frankly don't care to hear women talk about yeast infections, or blood seeping into their panties. Crotch itch and herpes are not exactly on my list of things that are entertaining. I know know for certain that politicians and race car drivers use pills to get erections. I honestly don't think I needed to know that. I also now know more about the discomforts of tampons than I ever needed to know.

The kind of crap on television today is mind boggling. In my opinion it is far worse than the sugary sweet mind sapping garbage I grew up with. Back then television tried to sell you dreams. Sometimes they just flat irritated you to get your attention. Today we often don't even know what commercials are about after we have seen them a hundred times. Ask your Doctor for the "purple pill"? What is that all about? I wonder how many people actually go to their Doctor and ask for a purple pill? You have got to be nuts to do that. Maybe that is what the purple pill is for? Perhaps it is to cure people who are nutty enough to ask to be medicated without knowing what the hell the medication is for.

Let us also not forget the fact that the side effects seem to always far outweigh the symptoms that the pills are supposed to be saving us from. I suppose I can't think of any aliment much worse than having blurred vision, dizziness, nausea, diarrhea, head aches. Anyone who has been truly seasick understands that death itself sometimes does not look so bad when you feel like that.

I am all for the right to obtain knowledge and I don't particularly care what that knowledge, information and data may be because I don't like censorship. I am not for shoving obscene and disgusting knowledge in the faces of the general public. There are levels of access that can exist without censorship. The fact that a television was chosen not turned on by a viewer is not censorship. Imagine a situation where we might be forced to watch television. The fact that the public airwaves are being filled with things that are inappropriate in context with what we are doing and we have no control over it is degrading our rights. A right without individual control is no longer a right.

The most fundamental right of mankind is the right to regulate our intake, regardless of whether it may be food, water, warmth, or information. As a civilization we need to come to terms with this issue, without invoking an all or nothing, zero sum mentality. For my part, I would put some public displays of knowledge where I felt they belong until I needed them. And without a doubt I would definitely leave the careful observations of the citizen's ass to the professionals who have the need to know.

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