"Thinking Outside The Idiot Box" by Dana Stevens

Watching TV doesn't make you smarter, and who is to decide which shows are considered worthy of watching or not. This is proven when stating that people are smarter from being able to follow more complex narratives, it doesn't follow that they are more educated than before. It is perhaps making them think more about future episodes and in turn also disengaging the viewer from the social inequalities and violence that the show may possess. People should watch TV shows based on what they like, for entertainment purposes, and not for the notion that they are doing it to "enhance" themselves. Because of the variety of interests and influence among individuals, there is no one able to declare that certain shows are really bad for everyone to view.
Perceived response to Reality Television: Oxymoron by George F. Will:
Watching television should be about what you like to watch, and not what is going to make you smarter or dumber. In “Reality Television: Oxymoron” People have the choice to pick what they watch based on what they want to watch. The only time people don’t get the choice what they want to watch if it is for class to teach something. People don’t have to watch something based on the educational factor in the show. Some shows like Fear Factor exist for entertainment only, or sports are there for people to watch. Even though you know you might see a fight during the game. Watching these shows will not necessarily make you smarter or dumber.
Perceived response to Family Guy and Freud by Antonio Peacocke: Peacocke intends to credit the show Family Guy with an agenda to make good humor out of our inherently human ability to find humor with letting our "animalistic and aggressive impulses surface from the unconscious" (266). The notion that we could be looking to analyze how we see the writer's humor may be accurate. However, this also coincides with the problem that believing tv producers want to make us behave a certain way is really not a likely concern of broadcasting executives. The argument Peacocke gives may convince viewers to look at the show in a new light, instead of seeing just the crude attempt for humor many people will see.
Works Cited:

Stevens, Dana. “Thinking Outside the Idiot Box” Comp. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, and Russel Durst. They Say I Say with Readings. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. 182. Print.

Peacocke, Antonia. "Family Guy and Freud: Jokes and their relation to the unconscious." They Say I Say. Comp. Gerald Greff, Cathy Berkenstein, Russel Durst. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2009. Print

Will, George F. “Reality Television:Oxymoron” They Say I Say with Readings. Comp. Gerald Graff, Cathy Berkenstein, Russel Durst. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006. Print.