Charades

A few weeks ago our friends Ara and Aarti and Phil and I went head to head in a game of charades. Just like in church youth group, we listed movie, book, song, and TV show titles and then ripped our list into little pieces and folded them up for the other team to draw and then act out. We played one round and while we were not "keeping score" we were keeping score and Ara and Aarti were winning. I hate to lose and I usually kick ass in charades, so this was unbearable. They were giddy and wanted more blood.

We went into separate rooms to create the list for our second round of charades, we each became more ruthless. Since Philip doesn't watch TV, read billboards, or play much attention to pop culture beyond glancing at my People magazines now and again, Ara and Aarti stuck to TV shows on UPN or FOX or some such thing that Phil'd have no context for. Since Ara doesn't obsessively listen to NPR, we chose books that we knew about (and want to read, but haven't read, but have a general idea about because we ALWAYS listen to NPR) and he wouldn't. Aarti and I listen to NPR and watch TV, so we were the bridge between these two polar opposites (and close friends).

They still won.

A week later Ara and Aarti were over for dinner and Aarti told me that Ara was on an NPR strike. He said NPR is for snobs. Snobs, that's right, like Emily, who like to bring up what they hear with a "Did you hear that story on NPR...?" so that they sound smart when they take a far left position. Ara had had enough of this pretentiousness. No more NPR for the Pani's (and a winning round of Charades for Philip and I in the near future).

This cultural divide came up a couple days later. A friend of mine, who has no TV, was describing her job at a local non-profit. There are a bunch of white-liberal-Harvard-people who work there and they are struggling with the need to have a more diverse staff. An African-American staff member was trying to describe how her trying-to-be-intellectual colleagues sometimes seemed to be a little out of touch at times. She said to my friend, "These people don't even watch T.V.!"

It reminded me that when the hurricane hit and we wanted to watch some CNN we could not think of anyone--ANYONE--who we know who had full cable. Most everyone we know has basic cable and basic cable has no CNN. There are a few people who have a TV just to watch the occasional rental and still a few more who have no TV at all. We've been through all of these stages of TV.

It's all a big charade, this anti-TV sham. There are bad things about TV: commercials, dull actors, recycled stories, perpetuation of stereotypes, etc. But when NPR loving folks isolate themselves from TV they also isolate themselves from what everyone else is experiencing. They lose fluency with a common American language—television.

Ara’s NPR picket line? Well, I think that’s a waste of his energy and a snobbery of its own. He’s just a little rebellious. Once he moves out of this NPR Mecca he’ll shift. He can then listen to NPR, because no one else is.

I love TV and I love NPR. I love stories and both of these Medias tell me stories and so I will be hooked on both forever.