Matt Selman, who has been writing for The Simpsons in every season since season 9 (or in hard-core fan terms, “all the seasons except the really great ones”) tells how his Simpsons connections gave him the perfect set-up for revenge on one of those snobby “I don’t even own a TV set” types. It’s as close as any show-business person is going to get, in real life, to Woody Allen’s trick of producing Marshall McCluhan to tell off a pretentious film snob.
Matt Selman, who has been writing for The Simpsons in every season since season 9 (or in hard-core fan terms, “all the seasons except the really great ones”) tells how his Simpsons connections gave him the perfect set-up for revenge on one of those snobby “I don’t even own a TV set” types. It’s as close as any show-business person is going to get, in real life, to Woody Allen’s trick of producing Marshall McCluhan to tell off a pretentious film snob.
I will say, though, that though this particular guy was using “I don’t own a TV set” in the traditional sense of the term (to mean “I am superior to you because I refuse to soil my mind on cathode rays”) we’re approaching a point where someone could say the exact same thing and actually not be a snob. It’s perfectly possible for someone with no TV set to watch more shows than someone who owns a set, and it’s going to get more and more possible as time goes on. What I’m saying is that the value of “I don’t own a TV set” to anti-TV snobs will soon be greatly diminished, because you’ll have even huge television fans who don’t bother to own sets. What will the snobs say then? “I don’t download TV shows on my computer” doesn’t have the same ring at all.