I have always puzzled over why all the old advertisments for television sets showed people closing cabinet doors on them to hide the screen. It seemed unthinkable to allow that ever-open eye to sit there nakedly in your living room. But this reluctance to reveal that you even HAD a TV has another explanation. Just as you could see into the TV, as if all the actors and news people and kids' programs were taking place right inside the set, people back then believed that THE TV COULD SEE THEM. No, I'm not kidding! There was a widespread panic about this insidious development that would have made George Orwell order another pint of Guinness. You even saw newspaper editorials about this horrifying violation of privacy. But when the thing wasn't turned on, it had to be shuttered in, pushed down, HIDDEN. Some years later, TV consoles became more elaborate, and eventually the TV set was seen as just another highly-functional but not terribly decorative piece of furniture.
P.S To my unending annoyance, I have not yet found out what's wrong with the disabled features on my blog. The comments section has been weirdly blanked out by Google, which is weird because I've never seen another reference to Google on this blog. My son the techie just claimed Google has given up on Blogger and no longer supports them, but why then am I still able to post? I have even done some copy-and-paste to republish old posts. Some things work, some don't. And I am not even sure how it started. DAMN, this is just like Real Life!
P. P. S.: Since I can no longer upload videos directly from YouTube, they now look pretty shitty, but I would recommend you click on "Watch on YouTube" at the bottom. No black bars there.
