MTV: Rewinding 20 years of music revolution. Today is the twentieth anniversary of the advent of “the only television phenomenon that had a generation named after it.” CNN It’ll be no surprise to FmH readers that there’s no love lost between me and MTV. In addition to the usual criticism that its three-minute quantization of entertainment doses has driven a generation to attention deficit, critics worry that the indelible grafting of visual imagery onto music has done something profound to our aural senses. It’s true, music as a performance art has always had an element of spectacle, but the violent, debased, usually misogynistic imagery of a TV commercial director has a deeply different effect than watching the performers performing, to which aficionados of live music have for ages been devoted. Finally, in some irrational way, I blame MTV every time I see anyone who isn’t a catcher wearing a backwards baseball cap (only acceptable if it’s an FmH cap…) In related news, MTV was forced to create a new finale for its anniversary gala when keynote singer Mariah Carey cancelled after a psychiatric admission. (BBC) (The oft-cited “emotional exhaustion”, by the way, does not correspond with any psychiatric malady and should be considered an uninformative euphemism at best. Denials from her spokesperson that she attempted to cut her wrists smack of the lady who doth protest too much… )