After the curtain falls, I imagine myself confronting anyone who has ever caused me a minute of pain, or spilling out my guts to a stranger on a subway platform. I rewrite embarrassing incidents from my youth, making myself a hero or a tragic figure. I am inspired to declare my love to a person who has shown no interest in me, and I take pleasure in writing his lines too. Glib more than anything. The television industry loves dead bodies, but it can't stand dead air.
Silence is a bigger taboo than incest.
Print story E-mail story Panelists on the most intelligent news programs know enough not to pause for breath, and you frequently see some poor pundit embarrassed by his own words but unable to stop long enough to put them in a logical sequence. If you doubt the pervasiveness of noise on television, watch what happens when a few seconds of silence slip through. People immediately reach for the remote control and fiddle with the volume, as if reassuring themselves that the TV still works, even when the silence is obviously intentional. After I watch television, I feel like David Letterman. I imagine that I can say things off the top of my head for as long as the cameras are rolling.