My parents held out against getting cable on basic principle—TV’s crap, who needs 60 channels much less 600, TV’s crap, etc—for the entirety of my youth, depriving me of MTV, Nickelodeon, and all the other requisites of a normal, happy, TV-saturated childhood. I had to survive on PBS programming and Full House reruns.
Well, our house finally stumbled into the 20th century last weekend when we had to get a month of basic cable in order to have cable internet installed. And I’d just like to state for the record that not only has my father been watching The Daily Show with me every night, I walked in the other day to find him finishing an episode of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Success!