Cultural barbiturate

Why should so much of television be a cultural barbiturate, a tranquilizer for the ills and anxieties of our age?

Critics mockingly refer to television as a "cultural barbiturate" and joke about "mainlining the tube."

For almost a quarter of a century, the medium has been used, in the words of Jack Gould of the New York Times, as a "cultural barbiturate" that "kills time efficiently and economically".