TV Friends

In a recent This American Life episode, David Rackoff told a story of a man found to have been dead a year in his lounge chair with the television still on. He said that recent studies have shown that television is capable of having the same emotional and physiological effects as friendship. But, he said, at a minimum a friend should be able to reach over and say, "How are you doing, buddy. You're not looking so good, in fact you are looking a little ..., dead!"

Its true that a lot is missing from the emotional connection that people seem to have with people on television, but it is hard to underestimate its power. Political campaigns these days are built around trivia aspects of appearance or behavior while monstrous defects go unremarked. What goes largely unnoticed is that television news, mainly under the influence of the 24 hour cable news channels, has become more informal and conversational. The way people relate to any medium is by correlation to real world social forms. The transition from Walter Cronkite to Chris Matthews is the transition from a professor in a lecture hall to a guy in a bar. A guy in a bar demonstrates his understanding of the world by inferring broad generalizations from small details that others might not notice: a missing flag in a lapel or quirky turn of phrase. In a bar, a guy who has command of facts and statistics is a know-it-all and must have hidden motivations. A guy who can spin a narrative from whether someone wears a flag in his lapel is a regular guy.

- J