The ability to have passive "fun"

"All through human history if you wanted amusement (not laughter, but something to occupy you), you had to go out and do it yourself. Even knitting and reading, you have to perform. Games, conversation, a walk in the fresh air and even what used to be called "a turn about the room" (simply the act of walking around in it), all were shattered with the invention of television.

Prager, ever heard of "radio"? I would have thought people would listen to radio instead of reading, while sitting around it, doing something else like building a model railroad or darning socks. But the more I see pictures of families enjoying radio back then, the more I realize that many children lay on their tummies and stared at the thing and did NOTHING ELSE. It seems so strange to me. I couldn't even watch TV without knitting, so I learned to knit without looking at my hands. I'd watch and knit.

What's "Book TV"? Sounds like a loss of quality. The History Channel has some good on it but I can't say I approve of their "academician" take on things; they approach so much of history with an iconoclastic "You've heard such and so but that's a terrible myth, the truth is ..." attitude that I really don't believe much of what they say any more. If they do one more show on the magnificently astonishing accuracy of Nostradamus, I will scream.

Meanwhile, what I think is going on is primarily laziness. But the reason so much of it is so appealing (we could entertain ourselves nearly as lazily with many other entertainments) is that it is so absorbing, and people use it more as a distraction, to forget how miserable they are as human beings. In other words, it's mostly a mood-altering drug.