It's always a treat to read Caitlin Flanagan piece and this month's piece in the Atlantic demonstrates why.
A Woman's Place, on Katie Couric's long day's journey into evening or why the Today show is more important than any nightly news program.
I watched them faithfully—although watch, I realize, is the wrong verb where this phenomenally successful program is concerned; anyone who fails to grasp this fact will never understand why the Today show will survive the death of nightly news, the death of the newspaper, and even the collapse of television as a major player in the media world. The Today show, like life itself, unfolds while you’re doing other things.
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The Today show creates a bond with its overwhelmingly female viewers because so many of them watch it, as I did, during one of the most psychologically complex and lonely—and most emotionally fulfilling—times of their lives: their tenure as mothers to small children.
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It is the loneliness of at-home motherhood—the loneliness for other adults, for the adult way of life, for the work clothes and schedules and employment itself—that makes the hosts of the Today show crucial. When you turn on the program, there they are: your friends. You half-listen to them, the way you half-listen to your children playing on the floor in the next room, and together the two worlds make up the whole of your enterprise: theory and practice. The host discusses shoes that are supposed to help toddlers walk more steadily, and you turn to your own baby and wonder if you ought to buy him a pair. ....
When it is on, the television screen is no longer a barrier separating real life from TV land; the television screen is a window into another room of the house, the one where the grown-ups are.
Not being an Atlantic subscriber, I couldn't read the entire article - but from your excerpt here and the beginning of the article that is for public viewing, I'd have to say that I must be vastly different from most of the women out there in America.
I went to college - apparently a more civilized college than she attended (although my stint was 4 years earlier than hers). I couldn't afford a tv to have in my dorm room, so I never watched much television during that time.
When I do occasionally catch one of the shows (always in a waiting room somewhere), they seem so inane I often wish I could turn the television off so I could read in peace.
I suppose this means I'm a solitary sort. I never thought of the television as a substitute for real people. Maybe, if my life had been different, I could relate to the shows. As it is, I will have it thrust upon me periodically and wonder in a detached manner, what anyone sees in all the blather. I don't actively hate the shows, I simply don't see the appeal.
Posted by: Teresa at January 14, 2008 12:40 PMLike you Theresa, I never watch these shows preferring silence in the morning. But I know so many people who do and this article made me understand why. These people become pseudo friends comforting a lot of lonely people with a window into another room full of people who were there yesterday and will be there tomorrow
Posted by: Jill at January 14, 2008 2:16 PMI agree with Teresa re the inanity of network daytime shows that are thrust upon one in waiting rooms. At home, though, I like to keep the TV on as background noise -- kids in the next room? -- with clicker on hand most of the day. Fox & Friends is a thinking woman's Today Show. Fun and funny and often informative without the liberal slant.
Posted by: Sissy Willis at January 15, 2008 6:35 PM