The Stupidest TV Show on TV right now

I've watched a lot more TV the past 9 months more than I have any right to claim I have any brain left to critically examine anything in this world anymore, but the Travel Channel's Most Unique McDonald's in the World is the crappiest of nighttime crap. Pure corporate propaganda. Seems to be made by the people who brought us the hot dog show, same narrator, same lack of curiosity about the strangeness on the topic.

I feel crappy about making this post, but it should be said that even after nine months of saturating my brain with TV's blast of raw stupidity, McD's show just seems to be the worst of the worst. But the medium is the message. Or, in the words of Umberto Eco, the medium is NOT the message. Which is worse? In times of crisis I defer to a higher power:

May I propose a Herzog dictum? Those who read own the world, and those who watch television lose it. from Herzog on Herzog.

While on the subject, I found this interview with Errol Morris and Herzog here at the believer.

My bet on the sleeper-hit of the summer? DC Comics answer to the hep Ironman makeover: Harmony Korine's remake of DC comics' Wonder Woman, here's a sneak peek:

Morris' Documentary on Abu Ghraib a whitewash

According to this gentleman:

Morris takes pride in calling “SOP” a horror movie and – with the mood music and the needless slow-motion reenactments – he makes sure of that.

However, “SOP” does little more than humanize some of the “bad apples” (a good thing, I suppose), while gratuitously absolving the civilian interrogators actually responsible for fouling those apples.

I really love Morris' movies and his First Person TV series. But I think his latest films are getting a bit too ambitious for his style. I have not seen Fog of War--I'm too worried about its inadequacy in addressing the horrors of the Vietnam War. (Interesting that Morris calls Standard Operating Procedure a "horror" movie.) Anyhow, I'll eventually watch them; but documentaries have never been substitute for investigative journalism. On the other hand, despite the topic, such as Idi Amin, or Jean-Bédel Bokassa, a good documentary tells truths that can't be told in any other format. The last one of course is by the master, but I'm wary of both Herzog and his protege Morris because they never let the truth get in the way of telling the story. That's a vulgar way of putting it--Herzog speaks of the ecstatic (or aesthetic?) truth being different from "The Accountant's Truth." But he also was responsible for Herzog's shoe eating.