Daily Inspiration Quote by Bruce Jay Friedman

Friedman turns interior decorating into social satire: the TV shouldn’t sit “out in the middle of a room” because once it’s centered, it becomes a character - a “somber fellow” - and the whole household starts arranging itself around his mood. That’s the joke and the warning. The set isn’t just furniture; it’s an uninvited authority, quietly appointing itself judge, jury, and nightly narrator.

The line works because it flips the usual direction of scrutiny. We think we’re watching television; Friedman suggests it’s watching us, issuing “electronic judgments” with the deadpan certainty of mid-century mass culture. The anthropomorphism is doing heavy lifting: “somber fellow” evokes a stiff, moralistic man in a suit, the kind of presence that makes you sit up straighter. When the TV becomes that presence, leisure stops being leisure. It becomes a small domestic trial where your attention, taste, and even your silence get evaluated.

Contextually, Friedman is writing out of the postwar American moment when the television migrated from novelty to household altar. His advice to push it “back against something” is less about feng shui than about containment: keep the machine from owning the room’s geometry and, by extension, your family’s rituals. It’s an early read on a problem we now live inside - screens that don’t just entertain but posture, instruct, and normalize. The punchline lands because it’s plausible: the brightest object in the room always wants to be the boss.