Bob's Angry Rants

Not everything you see on television should be taken for the absolute truth. I know that this must seem like an obvious statement, but my cubicle neighbor (we'll call her Martha for the sake of anonymity) doesn't seem to get it.

Every morning Martha comes into the office and tells me (without my asking) what she watched on TV the previous night. She watches a lot of TV. That's O.K. with me. Before I started law school, I was a TV junkie, too. What's not O.K. is that she can't seem to tell when something is real and when it is not.

Describing an episode of CSI to me, she starts to complain about how celebrities/rich people try to circumvent the justice system, using the episode as an example. Now, I'm not saying that celebrities don't get away with murder, but citing an episode of a television drama doesn't really bolster your argument.

This is not an isolated incident, either. When I told her that I thought that television played a large role in shaping the way she thought, she denied it, claiming that "I know that it's all propaganda." She then went on tell me that last night's "The Practice" had really opened her eyes on how big companies can defraud investors.

It was all I could do to not jump over the divider, start slapping her and scream "IT'S NOT REAL, YOU STUPID IDIOT! YOU CAN'T BASE YOUR WORLD VIEW ON FICTIONAL EVENTS!!!"

Instead I just nodded, smiled and said "Yes, that is terrible."