Education Quote by William Devane

Devane’s little manifesto lands like a quiet rebuke to the entertainment machine that made him famous. By declaring he “tries” to watch “only real things,” he’s not just sharing a viewing habit; he’s staking out an identity: the grown-up in a culture of distractions, the actor who’s seen enough manufactured drama to crave the unvarnished kind. “Basically amounts to C-Span” is a slyly comic downgrade of what “real” has come to mean. Not nature documentaries, not fly-on-the-wall vérité, but the fluorescent, procedural banality of government on camera. The joke is that this is the most earnest content imaginable and, for many people, the most unwatchable.

The subtext: authenticity has become a luxury good. When he says he likes “real people in real situations,” he’s pointing to something audiences claim to want but rarely choose. C-Span isn’t edited to flatter your attention span or your politics; it’s long stretches of boredom punctuated by flashes of consequence. That’s where Devane finds instruction, because it mirrors an older idea of citizenship: you learn by paying attention, not by being entertained.

Context matters here. Devane comes from an era of broadcast TV, political scandal-as-appointment viewing, and actors who often played authority figures. His appeal to “learn from that” frames politics as a kind of master class in motive and performance: ambition, evasion, sincerity, all in real time. It’s also a subtle admission that the best acting reference isn’t Hollywood at all - it’s power, trying not to look like power.