Music to Your Ears

 

MTV, Get Off the Air!--Despite the Dead Kennedys shouting for them to go away for the last 21 years, as of Aug. 1, MTV will have been on the air for 25 years. So, in the spirit of the unsatiated desire of the Dead Kennedys, I’m compelled to start off by blurting out the clichéd affirmation that “MTV sucks.” Just go to mtv.com right now and see for yourself. It’s basically corporate radio in television form with an added bonus of obsessive celebrity worship. The station rarely plays music, but simultaneously has incredible influence on the music industry. But most of us know this already.

Although shows like “My Super Sweet 16,” “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County” and “Newlyweds” recently took the station’s content to a whole new level of cheap and vapid barf-inducing smut, which probably only encourages entitled, self-involved young Americans to be more entitled and self-involved, the station’s descent really began in the mid-‘90s when its format changed from music-programming to non-music programming, thanks to shows like “The Real World,” “Singled Out” and “Beavis and Butt-Head.”

Indeed, MTV sucks, but, in a way, the vulgarity and hedonism the station purveys with abandon might be seen as something positive in our culture. MTV is an indignity to the rigid, Protestant America that, if it had its druthers, would have us all copulating only for procreation, worshiping Jesus and banning all manner of fun. Is that not uplifting? Is that not a reason to support MTV’s crap mongering?

Either way, MTV, not to mention MTV Brasil, MTV Ukraine or MTV China, is going to be around for a while, so why not relax and enjoy the moral erosion while we can. Cheers to that, MTV!