Shooting television sets is something almost everyone wants to do.  And computers.  Years ago, I read of a sort of amusement park where you could do just that, and not only with a mere rifle or shotgun but a machine gun or a bazooka.  However, even blunt and not-so-blunt instruments would do.  Imagine responding to the Blue Screen of Death, or the television news, with a sledgehammer or an axe. 

Elvis showed us the way, with cathode-ray tubes as with music.

Anarcissie, October 22 at 12:23 am

You reminded me of an incident I read about while stuck in Bozeman. Montana awaiting a parts shipment for my broke down Harley.

It seems the police, responding to a report of shots fired, encountered these two rather intoxicated cowboys ( newspapers’ description not mine) who had not liked what they heard on their TV and shot the thing to pieces. They had then apparently brought a second TV into the living room, set it atop the now brutally murdered one and then shot that to pieces too…..

There is a legend that Elvis shot a television set because he didn’t like the program.  I don’t know whether he really did, but he certainly should have.

cmarcusparr, October 20 at 7:33 pm, Attributes the quote “kill your television” to Elvis. I couldn’t find such attribution but the phrase does resonate. Here’s a few I did find:

TV is chewing gum for the eyes.
 
  Frank Lloyd Wright (1869 - 1959)

Imitation is the sincerest form of television.
 
  Fred Allen (1894 - 1956)

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
 
  Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977)

Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.
 
  Kurt Vonnegut (1922 - 2007), “Cold Turkey”, In These Times, May 10, 2004

It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
 
  Rod Serling (1924 - 1975)

cmarcusparr- can’t say we weren’t warned—- Debord, Ellul, McLuhan. didn’t
george carlin say something about gadgetry wooing us-the shiny things that
could pre-occupy so that the darkest things could have their way. x wants to be
on t.v. so that x may have wealth so that x may be able to have the shiny things
that they see on t.v.—-and, with fame, hopefully get them for free… and for
what?  if push comes to shove, you can’t eat an i-phone or a lamborghini,
furthermore, for those who follow cnbc and the ilk, you can’t eat gold or
derivatives…everybody is being fed bullshit, which, unfortunately, many do eat.

We’ve become a nation of spectators and bystanders in a culture of greed, consumerism and debt.

The narcissists among us who scheme to get on TV will do anything to get before a camera. The Balloon Boy story is a case in point. And for every wing-nut scheming to land a reality-show contract, there is a television producer willing to offer one.

We live in the Land of Exploitation. All of us are subjects, enslaved if you like, to the ubiquitous media. It’s there in our homes, on our laptops, in our iPods and iPhones; there at airports, hotels, in public gathering places, even in the public rest room. The telegenic totalitarians of George Orwell’s novel 1984 don’t hold a candle to our media-controlling puppet masters.

What’s the solution? To quote Elvis: “Kill your television.”

Something is screwy.  We get all exorcised about a crazy Dad who puts together a homemade “saucer” and, letting it be assumed that his kid is on board, lauches it and dominates national TV for a couple hours.  Yet a war drags on for eight years, led by crazy militarists who put together all kinds of real killer weapons and let it be assumed that our kids must go half way around the world and shoot people, and it dominates national TV every day for eight years and we don’t put a stop to it.

ardee—- Mr. Robinson appears on MSNBC quite frequently.

By @CT, October 20 at 11:12 am #

“Here in the real reality, that stuff doesn’t go over so well.”

... opines the unctuous Robinson, who’ll do anything to be on teevee.

................................

I have never seen Mr. Robinson on TV. Have you? If so where and when?

I beg that the film “Network” be revisited by those who have not viewed it in a
while—-and for those who have never seen it, please watch. Much insight is to be
found in this work—-I also submit the work of one Mr. Joey Skaggs—-

http://www.neatorama.com/2009/10/12/joey-skaggs-the-ultimate-hoax-
meister/

as, John Lydon once said, “The media is the enemy.”

Are those currently piling aspersions upon the audacious Heenes simply overlooking the fact that
their enterprise required the collusion of a cynical, venal, and opportunistic media?

As I recall, when the infamous Son of Sam case was in the news, the police received hundreds of
phony confessions. America has always had a sideshow dimension. Folks like the Heens aren’t new.
What’s different now is that the circus has gone primetime. Does anybody really think the Heenes
pulled one over on poor old gullible CNN?

This story only got interesting once the hoax was revealed (should have been obvious to all that the
balloon contained nothing but hot air, but where’s the fun in that?). But it wasn’t the Heenes taking
the media for ride. It was the media taking their viewers for a ride. Richard Heene understood this.
We should all be thanking him and his ambitious family for showing us just how low our news
organizations will go in search of “human interest”.

The Heenes will, as they must, be portrayed as villains by the media, but they should be regarded as
folk heros by the public.

“It’s even harder to believe—on first impression, at least—that anyone would think this was a good way to audition for a reality show. But when you think about it, the Heenes’ instincts were right on target. They are perfect for a reality show, assuming they don’t go to jail.”

~~~

Right on target is right! The Heenes’ are the inevitable product of a society of consumers eager to consume fantasy as reality. Little wonder the adults in the Heene family cant grasp the difference.

No fault on the kids, that fantasy is their reality!

Jail time would be a waste of time. But there is a huge bill to be paid, so it seems to me it would make more sense to put the Heenes’ to work, real work, to pay those bills. Meanwhile they need serious counseling lest they screw their kids up any more.

Actually who’s to say the kids are screwed up? Most kids I know who are their age revel in the happy world of fantasy. Time alone will let them see and grow into the ugly world of real reality.

By the way, I quite enjoyed watching that saucer float across the sky. And I was enormously relieved when they found the little boy wasn’t in there. Had he been he probably would have been frozen to death.

And suspicious about the apparent lack of terror coming from mom and dad. But then again, given their passion for the unreal, maybe there simply isn’t such a thing as feeling terror in their make-up.

“Here in the real reality, that stuff doesn’t go over so well.”

... opines the unctuous Robinson, who’ll do anything to be on teevee.

This is a sickness passed down by the boomers. Being on Tv and all the things like passing down this generational debt:

http://americaspeaksink.com/2009/10/baby-boomers-the-virus/