I'm reminded of the depredations of certain demagogues like Donald Trump or our former mayor who, when cornered over some linguistic outrage would claim first the freedom of speech, or that the statement was made a joke and not intended to be taken seriously.
The Greek philosopher, Bion of Borythenes, is credited with: "The boys throw stones
at the frogs in jest, but the frogs do not die in jest - they die in earnest."
It is just this sentimentalising of abrasive reality that is objectionable.
I must confess that I'm a recovering television junkie. I used to find the moving images on a screen almost irresistible - especially the news programmes. No longer.
Watching TV used to be a form of vegging out for me, a way to decompress after a day of mindful intensity that was my professional life.
I watched the sitcoms, the police procedurals and the sports. I was aware it was mostly pap and had become resigned to the description of television by the former chairman of the US Federal Communication Commission, Newton Minnow - "Television is a vast wasteland".
That was said in 1961 when it first was becoming clear in the United States that the early promise of TV as a vehicle for education was going to be unfulfilled.
Despite those misgivings, there was still value in the TV news which, for a long time, maintained standards of journalism, bringing to American living rooms the grim realities of war (Vietnam) and the elaborate underhandedness of which politicians are capable (the Watergate hearings).
Then, over the past two decades, the news programmes on major channels have gradually eroded in quality, all assuming a similar form of rapid fire focus on disaster or threat of danger, with no depth, or nuance or analysis.
Each programme inevitably ends its 18 minutes of "hard news" with a "human interest story" - the rescued pet, or the rescued child.
The cable news 24-hour channels are worse, with shouting matches in place of opinion.
According to The Loudest Voice in the Room by Gabriel Sherman, this decline in quality is attributable to the work of one man, Roger Ailes.
Sherman's book provides a thorough, researched examination of the rise of Roger Ailes to shape Fox News as an instrument of extremely conservative politics. Ailes' use of bombastic personalities and visual gimmickry combined with endless repetition of outrageous charges - the president was not American-born, for example - proved enormously effective and was gradually taken up by the other cable shows in competition.
It's led to the dumbing down of American news as exemplified by an electoral cycle in which issues of personality dominate and policies are rarely mentioned.
New Zealand is following the American example. Channel 3 sacked John Campbell whose reportage was informative and provocative. In exchange, the corporate wise men offer a tabloid news magazine designed to provide the advertisers with intellectual pap that would ruffle no official feathers.
As almost all other shows are aimed at the same level of complacency and torpor - a visual opiate - at my house we watch only Seven Days and the movies on the Maori channel.
* Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing.
