Okay, so I’m completely shallow sometimes.  Last night might be on that list.  I get home from work three hours later than usual every Wednesday, which means a dog walk, some food, and a short bit of TV before heading to bed.  As the fates (and TV schedulers everywhere) have decreed, the best thing that starts at 9:30 on Wednesday nights on my five or so channels is Cougar Town.  Yes, that’s totally debatable.

As you probably know, the State of the Union address was on TV last night.  Oh joy, oh bliss.  I know that I should want to hear what the President has to say.  I should be endlessly interested in the state of my country and what our leader has planned for the future.  But honestly, I don’t want to watch him talk about it.

Politics is often about saying one thing and doing something else.  Listening to rhetoric about what’s going to happen usually makes me angry and leaves me about as ill-informed as before I listened, so why bother?  I wanted to watch Cougar Town, dang it.  And the second those words came out of my mouth last night, I realized how horrible it is to prefer watching a sit-com over finding out what our fearless leader is planning for the next twelve months.  Oops.

In my defense, I do like reading about what’s going on in the country and the world.  That’s different though.  Print media may be just as biased as political speeches, but I feel like my mind is more involved when I read than when I watch TV.  On TV, the people on the other side of the screen just keep talking regardless of what I’m thinking or saying.  When I’m reading, I can take a few seconds to mull over what is being presented, then decide on my own time whether I agree.  The pace of television seems to preclude that somehow, and it’s pretty powerful.  It kind of shuts you out from the communication process.  I don’t mind being shut out when right and wrong is super obvious.  If I’m watching Cougar Town, there aren’t a whole passel of morally grey issues being tossed around.  It’s pretty obvious if I agree or not.  The same can’t be said of political speeches.  Hmm.  Maybe I’ll never watch a speech again.  Maybe it’s a good thing that I don’t like watching them.  I win!

Hope you’re winning arguments with yourself today, too.