Digital TV Conversion Rant

Well, for some, it IS an inconvenience:

I think I fall in the category of people the blogger refers to as "doesn't have enough intelligence to live independently and make decisions about television reception or any other life matters":

...Obama transition team co-chair John Podesta said the government funds to support the change are "woefully inadequate" and said that the digital switch date, Feb. 17, should be "reconsidered and extended."

"With coupons unavailable, support and education insufficient, and the most vulnerable Americans exposed, I urge you to consider a change to the legislatively-mandated cutoff date," Mr. Podesta wrote.

This fills me with a rage I can hardly describe.

Here are my reactions, point by point.

1. Coupons unavailable: The federal government should never have given out converter-box coupons to all applicants in the first case. There's no excuse for using federal funds to subsidize the TV viewing of wealthy and middle class Americans, particularly given that the boxes cost well under $100. You might be able to make some case for helping out very poor people, but even that is a weak case. TV is not food. It's not medicine. It's not a necessity of any kind.

As for those coupons being unavailable now, I have little pity for folks who missed out. They've been available for nearly a year. Anyone who put in two minutes of effort at any point during that time would have the coupons now. If you didn't bother, then tough luck. Decisions have consequences. You will just have to buy a box yourself, but don't worry. I'm sure you'll be able to mail your receipt in for reimbursement.

2. Education and Support have been Insufficient: That's just a lie. The government has multiple Web sites dedicated to explaining the transition. Every news publication in the country has run stories about it. Every broadcast TV station has flooded the airwaves with announcements, explanations, tests and every other conceivable aid.

Anyone who hasn't heard of transition and come to understand it either doesn't watch television, doesn't take the slightest responsibility for learning about the world or doesn't have enough intelligence to live independently and make decisions about television reception or any other life matters. The first group of people won't care about the transition much. The last group clearly needs help in more areas of life than TV. The middle group deserves whatever inconvenience it encounters as a result of its apathy.

3. The most vulnerable Americans exposed: To what? Lack of TV isn't starvation. It's not a disease. It's a temporary inconvenience -- one that can be fixed in 30 minutes by driving to the Walmart, buying a converter, plugging it in and attaching one wire to your TV. Yes, I realize that there are some Americans who are actually so "vulnerable" that they can't handle this, but such people should clearly be under the care of others and, if they aren't, lack of TV is the least of their problems.

Moving from the specific to the general, I think it is safe to say the digital TV transition is the most overblown nonsense in the history of American government. Every time I hear a politician or bureaucrat or TV exec talk about it, I feel like I'm reading a quote made up by The Onion. The digital TV transition is FAR less confusing and FAR less consequential than the twice yearly switch from standard time to daylight savings time.

99.9 percent of the nation will be fine. The rest of the country will wake up, notice their TVs don't work and go buy a converter box on the way home from work. If Americans were really as helpless as people in Washington believe, we would not be able to feed ourselves or drive cars or hold down jobs or otherwise survive. Hell, we would not be able to operate TVs at all, so it really wouldn't matter if we got a signal.

John Podesta may not realize this, but the nation has actual problems right now. Using this sort of hyperbolic language to describe the possible impact of something so trivial as the digital TV transition makes me question his very sanity and the seriousness of any administration that would distract itself from important matters at hand to issue even a single press release about this nonsense.