Follow My Logic: from Dante to 'Big Brother'

I've been reading Dante's Divine Comedy, and that has me thinking about the Seven Deadly Sins. In John Ciardi's introduction to his own translation, he writes that, of the Seven, "Acedia is the central one, and it may well be the sin the twentieth century lost track of." Ciardi says that while Acedia is generally translated to English as Sloth, there is simply too much lost in translation: it's not just laziness or physical slovenliness--it's more of a spiritual failure, "the failure to be sufficiently active in the pursuit of recognized Good."

Now--follow me here--whenever I hear the word "sloth," I always think of "television." Perhaps that's a result of reading Devin O'Leary's "This Week in Sloth" entry in The Alibi, which features some of the noteworthy selections in the week's television schedule, or perhaps it's actually the result of the same attitude that fueled O'Leary in the first place: an interest in making fun of a wide range of the TV viewing spectrum, and the overwhelming existential torpor and depression that comes with it.

So, to the point: While I was reading about the Cantos of Hell (and thinking about where I'll fit in), I immediately thought of the time* that I watched an episode of CBS' Big Brother and kinda liked it. (...You know the show. The one with the dumb gregarious sluts pretty people, participating in ridiculous stunts, parading themselves around on national television in order to win two minutes of fame $500,000.) And though I, like, knew that something interesting was probably on public television (i.e., the Good) that very second, I still chose to ignore the truth. And therefore I am going to Hell.

Does anybody else ever feel like there is something out there that goes waaaaay beyond a "guilty pleasure," something that is so fundamentally evil, that by watching/listening to/reading/choosing it you are going straight to Hell?

*Oh, and that time I watched Big Brother? Yep, this past weekend. The same weekend I also spent my time watching Saved by the Bell.