SOME OF US LOOK AT the big picture and some of us, unfortunately, do not. I have myself only recently begun to look at the big picture. And by big picture I mean a picture 42″ diagonally across. In plainer words, I just purchased a new large-screen plasma television set, and the size and perfection of it both appall and thrill me. I am appalled at my weakness for such a bit of unnecessary luxury and thrilled by the delight I’m finding in it.
I had a standard size (27″) television set for, roughly, twelve years, and it hummed along without once needing to be repaired. It wasn’t the television set but I who was beginning to break down. The last year or so I discovered that, in my adagio (I hope) foxtrot to the grave, I did not see things on it as clearly as I used to do. Three-point shots, close calls at second base, small boxes showing the inning or quarter or time left on the shot clock were no longer quite visible to me without a proper squint or, sometimes, having to rise out of my chair and walk right up to the television set to find out how or where, precisely, things stood.
I probably would have suffered along in this way until my old television set broke down, but then a month or so ago the mail brought a check for rather larger royalties than I expected for one of my recent books. I use the word “royalties,” but until recent years I used to designate these checks, such were their negligible amounts, as “peasantries.” I determined a portion of this check ought to be spent in an entirely self-indulgent way. A plasma television set seemed to fill the bill nicely.
I bought a Sony high-definition set, which, with its various bells and whistles, came in at around five grand. If one is going to hell, then I say let’s go first-class, so I added HBO and Turner Classic Movies to my cable package and a DVR, which is a TiVo-like feature that allows me to record ballgames and movies and shows without requiring tape.
You might think it obvious beyond all reckoning when I report my pleasure in this new television set. But when I also report that I am an intellectual, University of Chicago bred, you will understand why it is not obvious at all. Intellectuals are trained to loathe television, seeing in it the seeds of violence in children, the vast dumbing down of American culture, and the ruination of political and public life generally. When it is not purely evil, television, the catechism here holds, is a thorough waste of time.
I have never seen a television set in the living room of an apartment or house in Hyde Park, the neighborhood of the University of Chicago. My old television set sat in our living room but in a large dark cabinet, with the stereo system on shelves below; its doors were often closed when it wasn’t in use. My new television set, too large to hide, dominates the room. Stepping into my living room, I gaze at this piece of gleaming machinery, which goes with none of the surrounding furniture, and feel as if someone has by mistake parked a Ferrari there.
My general pattern is to be haughtily contemptuous of creature comforts and then, once I acquire them, grow accustomed to them with an unseemly haste. Had I been born much earlier, I’m sure to have made an utterly persuasive case against indoor plumbing. What do I need it for, I would no doubt have asked, as I have since asked about multiple other conveniences, all afterwards acquired and enjoyed with uncomplicated pleasure. I am a moral puritan, saved only by his hypocrisy.
“Things are in the saddle and ride mankind,” said Emerson. Easy for old Waldo to say. He never saw, in high definition, Aaron Rowand, the centerfielder of the Chicago White Sox, loping back to catch a long fly ball at the warning track in center, or was ever able to reheat his morning tea to perfection in a microwave, or tapped a Macintosh X Tiger program to bring up the new Dashboard feature that yields a five-day weather forecast, all of the previous night’s baseball scores, the listings at local movie theaters, an account on the progress of one’s stocks, and many more such items. If things ride man, very well: I say toss a saddle over me.
I watch some news on television, and doubtless too much sports, and always hope a good older movie will turn up. I usually sit there with a magazine in hand or a book of lesser intellectual density than any of those written by Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Seinfeld was the last show I looked forward to. But now, if my new television turns me into even more of a couch potato than I already am, so be it. If I am to live out the rest of my days as a couch potato, this set will at least allow me to do so au gratin.
— Joseph Epstein
