For Better or Werts : TV Worth Watching

OH, NO: Why you shouldn't tune into World Series games until at least 8:30 p.m. ET

Is there nothing that cannot be somehow politicized in this wacky presidential election year? Could we please stop treating momentous current events like some handy celebreality/amusement/promotional platform?

"Throughout our history, this country has faced times of peril," intones this World Series montage from Fox, attempting to appropriate football's God-and-country vibe. "But standing by our side, as it does tonight, has been baseball."

Then the Fox montage salutes soldiers taking baseball breaks from the "bleeding battlefields" of the Civil War.

Oh. No.

Direct from the Fox press release:

MCCAIN & OBAMA HELP OPEN WORLD SERIES ON FOX -- With Election Day just around the corner, presidential candidates (and baseball fans) Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama took time out of their hectic campaign schedules to take an active role in FOX Sports' World Series coverage. Each candidate recorded inspirational quotes from American icons including Martin Luther King, Jr. and former presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy about the game of baseball as a beacon of hope through some of America's most difficult times. These quotes will be woven into the opening segment of each World Series broadcast. Academy Award-winning actor Michael Douglas narrates the open for World Series Game 1 between the Philadelphia Phillies and Tampa Bay Rays on Wednesday, Oct. 22 at 8:00 PM ET/5:00 PM PT on FOX.

Kinda makes you wish for TBS-style transmission woes . . .

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Diane Werts has been glued to the tube since she can remember, growing up in a household where the TV came on first thing in the morning and stayed on till bedtime and beyond. She worked for the USA Film Festival, then for The Dallas Morning News writing about everything from Shakespeare to macrame art to rock music (and has the hearing loss to prove it). She moved to New York's Newsday to edit their glossy TV magazine, then returned to writing about television, specializing in its stranger permutations. She's a past president of the Television Critics Association.

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