TV should be treated like porn

American TV fare is obscene. And by "obscene" I mean fat, ugly and stupid rather than pornographic. Obscenity comes in many flavors. However, a correlation between both senses of the term could be argued.

Let's first note that TV could be, but isn't, a bonus in our lives. If there was something entertaining, fascinating or truly educational on TV, there might be a reason to turn it on. But there isn't anything good on TV.

Maybe it's time to re-tune the whole plan. I say we start by pulling things off TV. We could take our cue from the internet. For example, I propose that there be a special "domain" for reality shows. Like the .xxx designation for porn sites on the net, perhaps we could use ".sht" or maybe ".pus" to denote it.

This way, by noodling with our controls we could easily exclude the .sht and.pus stations. Reality TV would disappear from our systems forever. Hooray! Or maybe you're a dimwit and you want to see only the .sht and .pus shows. You could have that too.

And let's relegate religious shows to their own domain. How about ".god" so it's easy for the fools to remember and equally easy for us to exclude. And again, if pinheads want to watch the damn .god channels, fine. But I don't see why they should clutter up my listings.

There's more. We could also create a domain for creative, intelligent TV. I know, I know: there is no such thing. Still, let's consider doing this. We could call the domain ".gud" or ".smt" or something. I think if we did this we would notice that there are no shows in this category. Then perhaps someone would try to fill the gap by making, you know, smart stuff to watch. Who knows? By creating the domain we might actually grease the skids for smart TV. It could even show up within our lifetime!

Perhaps that's setting our sights too high. But by creating domains we could at least block the dumbest shows from our sets. Those things belong out back by the trash. And like I said, if idiots want to go out back and hang around the cans, that's fine with me. Just tell them to shut the door behind them when they leave.

TV is screaming for a revamp -- but then, so is American culture. Oh, I forgot. TV is our culture.