{"id":983,"date":"2004-08-13T22:22:10","date_gmt":"2004-08-14T02:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/2004\/08\/13\/the-idiot-box\/"},"modified":"2007-07-30T14:22:21","modified_gmt":"2007-07-30T18:22:21","slug":"the-idiot-box","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/2004\/08\/13\/the-idiot-box\/","title":{"rendered":"The Idiot Box."},"content":{"rendered":"
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So I’m watching NBC’s coverage of the Olympics opening ceremonies, and I’m already embarassed by the words coming out of Katie Couric’s mouth. The idea that someone either so stupid or so willing to underestimate the intelligence of the viewing public is considered one of the "most beloved" television personalities just bugs me to no end.<\/p>\n

My favorite statement so far (and I’m paraphrasing) comes from when their introducing the Swiss team – that it’s a surprise to learn that Switzerland, a land-locked country, has a beach volleyball team<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Dude, I’ve<\/em><\/strong> been to the beach in Geneva. More than once. Just because they’re in the middle of Europe doesn’t mean that they don’t sit on one of the largest bodies of water in western Europe<\/a>. They don’t call it the "Alpine Lake Region" because it just sounds pretty. Heck, I’ve even been sunbathing on the French side of the big lake, in Evian (you know, the town the water<\/em> comes from?)<\/p>\n

And Bob Costas isn’t much better – Did you know that the Central African Republic was located in…central Africa?!<\/p>\n

Morons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I’m watching NBC’s coverage of the Olympics opening ceremonies, and I’m already embarassed by the words coming out of Katie Couric’s mouth. The idea that someone either so stupid or so willing to underestimate the intelligence of the viewing public is considered one of the "most beloved" television personalities just bugs me to no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[15,18],"class_list":["post-983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-current-events","tag-television"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6ZBi-fR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.very-simple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}