BrianShelledy.com

It seems like the last couple years when the Astro’s have gone to the playoffs, we tend to pick up a few extra fans. The excitement of the World Series creates this mountain of opinionated fair weather fans that probably piss off a bunch of the die hard whole season fans. I know, because I’m one of those Post Season Punks, the evil PSP’s of baseball fandom. But still, playoff baseball is just more exciting: you have much to lose and the games are good. Tides can turn in the blink of an eye. Records are broken. Amazing plays are played. Everyone is on the edge of their seat, and adrenaline flows like water. For these brief few weeks, Americans in these playoff cities turn off their prime time reality TV crap, and take part in what has long been called the Great American Pastime.

More and more these days, television has become as much a part of our lives as working, eating and sleeping. We have favorite TV Shows that we will schedule things around so we can watch, or we’ll spend money on things to record them so we can watch them later. TV has changed too, becoming more involved and more intriguing with every new show. They bring up real life and current issues that we face and discuss how the writers think it should be played out. So many shows today are “Real Life” shows – crime scene dramas, law firm dramas, even political dramas. The new wave of Political dramas is both good and bad. It’s good, because it brings up issues in prime time TV for people to discuss, but it’s bad because it resolves those issues, and sometimes in a very one sided fashion. More and more, people take their opinions strait from TV Shows and don’t develop their own opinions.

Television and the Internet have some very important differences. When you go to look for something on the internet, you’re naturally going to search for something that agrees with what you believe. Television is different. We look to television to be entertaining. As a source of entertainment we aren’t looking to be swayed politically, and we don’t have our guard up against what we would normally look at as misguided information.

Before you go and think that I believe TV is evil, let me say that TV is definitely entertaining. However, it’s important for Americans to not base their opinions off of an episode of a TV show, or off of one news network, one website, one newspaper. If diversifying your stock portfolio sounds smart, diversifying your sources of information should ring as vital. Also, make sure your information comes from a reputable source. A Playoff Season Punk might tell you that Brad Lidge is a horrible pitcher, but the dedicated Astro’s fan will tell you otherwise.

Or think of it this way: If America spent as much time researching who they were going to vote for as they did shopping for a new dress or some new entertainment equipment, how great would our country be? The enemy of democracy is the apathetic voter.

Enough ranting. Thanks for reading!