I don't think it is happening to all of us, JP--some of us are resistant to involuntary hypnotism. Others seem to hunger for it (if that is not too self-contradictory). We learned from the earliest days of Newton Minnow's "wasteland" that television lends itself readily to crapola.

As people grow less and less capable of analytical reaosning, the kind of hypnotic idiocy once reserved to soap operas and sports is gradually becoming the wide, fetid sub-basement of more and more of our culture. The kind of humor you object to (in my opinion) is indicative of a kind of apathetic resignation and a migration toward themindlessness portrayed in "Idiocracy".

A