I sit three paces from the television.
I’m early home, too early for the news.
I’m easing into evening armchair cushion,
luxuriously slipping off my shoes.
A re-run of The Flintstones nears its end
and Barney Rubble’s still the loyal friend.

Unlikely laughter dubbed with motif tunes
mutely heightens the comic overkill:
mishaps are never mortal in cartoons,
bodies bounced by boulders bounce back still,
The reason why I watch, I cannot see.
Perhaps because my childhood speaks to me.

Fred, as usual, gets his just desserts
and Barney laughs the longest and the last
and Betty borrows one of Wilma’s skirts
and then the credits roll (a tad too fast).
With that familiar theme tune coming on,
the “modern, stone-age family” is gone.

By contrast comes the nightly bulletin,
a little less amusing for the viewer,
for death and crisis never make me grin
(and neither do I find the stories truer).
The Six O’Clock Report does not amuse
and no canned laughter’s dubbed upon the news.

The reason why I watch it I don’t know.
Tomorrow morning’s rag will tell much more.
The scenes of fighting make me feel so low
and bloody propaganda’s just a bore,
but still towards the box my ear I’ll lend:
all the good news comes towards the end.

There used to be a time when all was spoken,
before the satellites had been perfected,
before the Oxbridge protocol was broken,
when stories without film were not rejected,
but progress brought the camera that lies
and newspersons who never move their eyes.

Now we can sense the tragic-comic din
from epicentral newsrooms of the planet
when some catastrophe keeps us tuned in
and all the TV stations race to can it,
then finally some hero’s on the scene
and all the gory details on the screen.

And most ridiculous, by far, of all
is when ‘sightseers’ gather (to their shame!)
This fact is meant to sicken and apall
though we ourselves are goggling at the same!
“It’s not our fault,” we cry. “It’s what they show!”
as if we’d never heard of radio.

Meanwhile some woman sobs into the mic.,
the interviewer’s silence draws the eye
and you and me and millions more alike,
in morbid fascination, watch her cry.
Such drama is a common TV trick,
the healthier if it has made you sick.

For half the nation turn as stiff as rocks,
the other half looks on in sympathy,
but if that woman wasn’t in that box
and sitting presently, at large, with me,
my gormless gawp would prove no satisfaction
and no TV would shine for my distraction.

“O, you are men of stones!” cried childless Lear,
to those who, likewise, stood and viewed his woe.
Yes, life and love and death are far too dear.
We cannot shun what entertains us so.
Then let us be as stones in screen or print,
composed of rock with hearts as hard as flint.

The armchair and the telly merely flatter.
A stone-age family’s all we may boast.
the world beyond our cave, what does it matter?
Like all our species, we’re what matters most.
Then let us see that wretched woman cry
and we will be The Flintstones till we die.