# A & E: Arid & Empty- a lame rant about a lame channel **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [September 27, 2005, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-e-arid-empty-a-lame-rant-about-a-lame-channel/323737 "2005-09-27T21:04:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2005, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-e-arid-empty-a-lame-rant-about-a-lame-channel/323737/21 "2005-09-29T07:18:54Z")
**UncleBeer** ’s just jealous: He obviously has a knack for missing out on networks before they jump the shark, and has no idea what TV is capable of being before someone working for a given station decides that all Neilsen families are submoronic Nazi-watchers. If he wants social discourse free from the embarassment of being disagreed with, maybe he could turn off the computer and go outside to meet people. What an idea. ---
**Author:** ![UncleBeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/977dab/32.png) [@UncleBeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleBeer)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2005, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-e-arid-empty-a-lame-rant-about-a-lame-channel/323737/22 "2005-09-29T14:05:49Z")
> [@](#): > > If he wants social discourse free from the embarassment of being disagreed with, maybe he could turn off the computer and go outside to meet people. What an idea. Except that I don’t like “people.” Why would I want to meet them? And where’s this “embarrassment” shite come from? I’m not particurlarly concerned with popularity. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2005, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-e-arid-empty-a-lame-rant-about-a-lame-channel/323737/23 "2005-09-29T15:20:20Z")
> [@UncleBeer](#): > > Except that I don’t like “people.” Why would I want to meet them? And where’s this “embarrassment” shite come from? I’m not particurlarly concerned with popularity. Dude, you’re being an ass. Take a bubble bath. Eat a sandwich. Have a cigarette. Do something to make yourself feel good. ---
**Author:** ![Creative\_Munster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/919ad9/32.png) [@Creative\_Munster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Creative_Munster)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2005, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-e-arid-empty-a-lame-rant-about-a-lame-channel/323737/24 "2005-09-29T15:29:44Z")
> [@UncleBeer](#): > > Except that I don’t like “people.” Why would I want to meet them? And where’s this “embarrassment” shite come from? I’m not particurlarly concerned with popularity. Shite? I never knew you were a Brit. Learn something new every day. ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2005, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-e-arid-empty-a-lame-rant-about-a-lame-channel/323737/25 "2005-09-29T15:32:56Z")
The first time I turned on A&E (almost 20 years ago), they were running “Taming of the Shrew” with Burton and Taylor. And my thoughts were, “Hey, Elizabeth Taylor was _hot_!” and, “Hey, they really mean that ‘Arts’ stuff.” But within a few years, their programming began to dive down towards lowest common denominator schlock. So to me, any rant against A&E seems like old news – they haven’t been any good for well over a decade. ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2005, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-e-arid-empty-a-lame-rant-about-a-lame-channel/323737/26 "2005-09-29T15:48:50Z")
> [@Creative\_Munster](#): > > Shite? I never knew you were a Brit. Learn something new every day. “Shite” and “Arse” (along with “Uber” in the younger/dumber set) are what NetNerds use to show how kewl they are. -Joe, shit dawg, y0! ---
**Author:** ![Tinkertoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f19dbf/32.png) [@Tinkertoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tinkertoy)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2005, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-e-arid-empty-a-lame-rant-about-a-lame-channel/323737/27 "2005-09-29T18:18:25Z")
> [@Finagle](#): > > The first time I turned on A&E (almost 20 years ago), they were running “Taming of the Shrew” with Burton and Taylor. And my thoughts were, “Hey, Elizabeth Taylor was _hot_!” and, “Hey, they really mean that ‘Arts’ stuff.”. Ah yes, the good old days on A & E where I first experienced stage plays that were not put on by high school students. In our small town in Idaho the only actors were the drama club. I watched the plays of shakespeare, ibsen, sophocles, Tennesee Williams, and many others. Operas and ballet also things that you won’t find where I live. How I miss the days when art still was a part of their schedule. As for whoever is making up their programming now, they deserve to be locked in a room with the entire cast of “Growing up Gotti” for eternity. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2005, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-e-arid-empty-a-lame-rant-about-a-lame-channel/323737/28 "2005-09-29T21:36:21Z")
> [@Tinkertoy](#): > > As for whoever is making up their programming now, they deserve to be locked in a room with the entire cast of “Growing up Gotti” for eternity. Ooh… I’ll agree that they’re vile, but I’m not sure anybody deserves that fate except maybe child molesters and maybe that BTK guy. (Throw in Anna Nicole Smith and Flavor Flav and you’re getting really close to what I think Hell would be like.) ---
**Author:** ![DiosaBellissima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a8b319/32.png) [@DiosaBellissima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DiosaBellissima)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2005, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-e-arid-empty-a-lame-rant-about-a-lame-channel/323737/29 "2005-09-29T21:58:12Z")
**Sampiro**. . . why did you do that to me? Now I’m going to have nightmares! :eek: And those Gotti freaks are my cousins. It’s scary, really. And they really are like that. ---
**Author:** ![Wolfian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/7ea924/32.png) [@Wolfian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wolfian)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2005, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-e-arid-empty-a-lame-rant-about-a-lame-channel/323737/30 "2005-09-29T23:35:19Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > _City Confidential_ was cheesy and always had the same 15 minute “this is a hack written bunch of folksy pictures and idiotic banter to depict what life in a small town is like before we get to the chainsaw murders” but sometimes the case was interesting and at least it gave Paul Winfield some money. > [@UncleBeer](#): > > Except that I don’t like “people.” Why would I want to meet them? And where’s this “embarrassment” shite come from? I’m not particurlarly concerned with popularity. [Paul Winfield]It was clear to those on the Dope that **UncleBeer** was as ornery as **JDT** getting circumsized by a 1920’s style Death Ray and about as dense as **december** with **concrete** earplugs.[/PW] **Dio-Bel** , I wouldn’t admit that too loud. I think I may need to tread lightly around you. Don’t want to wake up with a horse’s head in my bed. ---
**Author:** ![DiosaBellissima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a8b319/32.png) [@DiosaBellissima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DiosaBellissima)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2005, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-e-arid-empty-a-lame-rant-about-a-lame-channel/323737/31 "2005-09-29T23:42:54Z")
Eh, that’s too much work. I’d just, like, throw something at you-- nothing entirely too heavy, either. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2005, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-e-arid-empty-a-lame-rant-about-a-lame-channel/323737/32 "2005-09-30T00:04:49Z")
Do they still have _Breakfast with the Arts_ on Sunday mornings? Sometimes they had some great ballet and orchestra performances. _sigh_ ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2005, 8:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-e-arid-empty-a-lame-rant-about-a-lame-channel/323737/33 "2005-10-02T08:41:48Z")
An addendum rant about _History Channel_- I rarely watch them of late, but two of the last shows I’ve watched have had flat out errors on them. Tonight a documentary on ancient Rome stated “Claudius married his niece Messalina, a nymphomaniac thirty five years his junior”. Uh… Claudius and Messalina were cousins of some sort, but the niece he married was Agrippina, who was Messalina’s successor. That’s a fairly large blooper that would have been corrected by a trip to Wikipedia. There were a couple of other things I’m pretty sure were errors as well but they were more obscure so I haven’t checked them. Recently a documentary on Masada stated “Only three of Herod the Great’s sons survived him, the rest he had executed”. Wrong! Again, Wikipedia alone would have corrected this. Herod killed two of his sons (Aristobulus and Alexander) who were framed by their older half-brother Antipater. (Herod had already killed the mother of these two [Mariamne] as well as her brother, both of her parents [at different times] and both of her grandfathers, in addition to several of his own relatives). On his deathbed he learned what Antipater had done and had him killed as well, thus killing three of his sons, but he was survived by at least seven sons. He divided his kingdom among only three (the others he left enough money and towns here and there to make them rich but not powerful) but lets not make him even bloodier than he already was. Another documentary on Hitler’s court referred to Göring’s Jewish stepfather. Again- WRONG! Göring was named for (Ritter) Hermann von Epenstein, who was his _god_father and may even have been his biological father (some biographers believe von Ep. and Göring’s mother had a long term affair that certainly resulted in the birth of her youngest son and possibly of Hermann). Von Epenstein was half-Jewish (though almost completely secular) and had a close relationship to Hermann when he was a child (he left most of his estate to him many years later), but he was never married to Göring’s mother (who was married to Heinrich Göring [an officer and colonial bureaucrat much many years her senior]). While trivial in and of themselves, it’s irritating that they could have been avoided by a tiny fact check, and it makes any “fact” I learn from these shows very suspect. Do your job, History Channel! ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2005, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-e-arid-empty-a-lame-rant-about-a-lame-channel/323737/34 "2005-10-02T11:28:22Z")
> [@Finagle](#): > > But within a few years, their programming began to dive down towards lowest common denominator schlock. Wow, 33 posts and none of the market-fundamentalists have shown up yet with the obligatory “Well, this is obviously what the viewing public wants! Why are you being such an elitist dictatorial snob?” scold-post. Years ago when people would gripe about how crappy the shows were on network TV, there would always be somebody chirping that the market was taking care of it—you might have repetitive lowest-common-denominator schlock on the networks, but you had all these dozens of cable channels catering to niche markets to suit all entertainment tastes. Now that schlockification-creep has hit the cable channels too, where are all those other entertainment tastes supposed to turn? (Yeah yeah, I know: DVDs. The actual airwaves have simply been abandoned as a source of entertainment diversity, eh? So much for the all-powerful market.) Yay for watching BBC 2 on my Dutch TV. Haven’t found any televised Shakespeare, though. ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2005, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-e-arid-empty-a-lame-rant-about-a-lame-channel/323737/35 "2005-10-02T18:15:55Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > An addendum rant about _History Channel_- I rarely watch them of late What, you have something against the flying saucer channel? Where else in these troubled times can you turn to get all the latest on Roswell and UFOs at the White House but the History Channel? ---
**Author:** ![BJMoose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5fc32e/32.png) [@BJMoose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BJMoose)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2005, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-e-arid-empty-a-lame-rant-about-a-lame-channel/323737/36 "2005-10-03T01:42:19Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Do they still have _Breakfast with the Arts_ on Sunday mornings? Sometimes they had some great ballet and orchestra performances. _sigh_ Yes! At 8:00 a.m. Eastern Time. I saw a bit of that several weeks back and it looked interesting. Alas, it may be the only Arts left on _A&E_. As for **UncleBeer** ’s snark, I’ll just point out that I’ve bought about 2000 books over the years and visit the local public library every few weeks, but still don’t mind learning a thing or two from the Boob Tube (tho’ its getting damned difficult these days to find anything there). ---
**Author:** ![Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otto)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2005, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-e-arid-empty-a-lame-rant-about-a-lame-channel/323737/37 "2005-10-03T02:23:53Z")
> [@BJMoose](#): > > As for **UncleBeer** ’s snark, I’ll just point out that I’ve bought about 2000 books over the years But they’re all about TV shows. > [@](#): > > and visit the local public library every few weeks To rent videos. We’re onto you! ---
**Author:** ![Linus\_Van\_Pelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ebca7d/32.png) [@Linus\_Van\_Pelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Linus_Van_Pelt)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2005, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-e-arid-empty-a-lame-rant-about-a-lame-channel/323737/38 "2005-10-03T03:47:04Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > \ > While trivial in and of themselves, it’s irritating that they could have been avoided by a tiny fact check, and it makes any “fact” I learn from these shows very suspect. Do your job, History Channel! Pity. I often enjoy History Channel shows (such as “Modern Marvels”) and it’s a shame to think that they might not care about getting their facts correct. Come to think of it, I seem to remember watching a few weeks ago and saying, “Hey, isn’t that an urban legend?” when they gave one of their commecial break factoids (I don’t remember the factoid, just that I questioned it). [Geico Commercial Caveman] "Yeah, maybe next time do a little research. [/Geico Commercial Caveman] In defense of Discovery, they still have “Mythbusters”. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2005, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-e-arid-empty-a-lame-rant-about-a-lame-channel/323737/39 "2005-10-03T15:42:22Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > An addendum rant about _History Channel_- I rarely watch them of late, but two of the last shows I’ve watched have had flat out errors on them. > > Tonight a documentary on ancient Rome stated “Claudius married his niece Messalina, a nymphomaniac thirty five years his junior”. Uh… Claudius and Messalina were cousins of some sort, but the niece he married was Agrippina, who was Messalina’s successor. That’s a fairly large blooper that would have been corrected by a trip to Wikipedia. There were a couple of other things I’m pretty sure were errors as well but they were more obscure so I haven’t checked them. Besides, I thought nyphomania is now considered to be bullshit? > [@](#): > > Another documentary on Hitler’s court referred to Göring’s Jewish stepfather. Again- WRONG! Göring was named for (Ritter) Hermann von Epenstein, who was his _god_father and may even have been his biological father (some biographers believe von Ep. and Göring’s mother had a long term affair that certainly resulted in the birth of her youngest son and possibly of Hermann). Von Epenstein was half-Jewish (though almost completely secular) and had a close relationship to Hermann when he was a child (he left most of his estate to him many years later), but he was never married to Göring’s mother (who was married to Heinrich Göring [an officer and colonial bureaucrat much many years her senior]). Wasn’t it his wife who had a Jewish stepfather? Now I’m seeing ads for a “Skull and Bones” conspiracy theorist type program involving secret societies. _scream_ ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2005, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-e-arid-empty-a-lame-rant-about-a-lame-channel/323737/40 "2005-10-03T18:27:39Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Wasn’t it his wife who had a Jewish stepfather? Goebbels’ wife had a Jewish stepfather who raised her from early childhood and died in the camps. (She also used to date FDR’s nephew, and her sister married Sam Shepard [“the Fugitive” doctor/wrestler, not the playwright].) Göring’s first wife was a Swedish aristocrat who left her rich husband and their son to be with him (a truly inspiring love story were it not for the fact her husband started the first concentration camp) and his second was an actress who had many gay and or Jewish friends that she saved from deportation. (The same documentary got this wrong also- they mentioned that Göring married an actress who got him off drugs- his drug habit came and went several times during both marriages, starting after his injury in the Beer Hall Putsch and not going away completely until Nuremberg, when he had no access.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-e-arid-empty-a-lame-rant-about-a-lame-channel/323737.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-e-arid-empty-a-lame-rant-about-a-lame-channel/323737.md?page=3)