By which he means most novels, I suppose, which, in turn, means it's nothing to do with television. Add to that all of the wonderful programs on television, such as the films on TCM, the serial dramas on AMC, HBO, and PBS, and the better comedies on the major networks, and this becomes puzzling.

Oh. Wait. No, it doesn't. It becomes a relic from an earlier time, the 1950s and the 1960s, primarily, which has been repeated mindlessly down through the decades as it feeds into a certain classist mindset in the kinds of people who read David Foster Wallace. It reassures them that, even if they haven't given to NPR in five years, they're still better than Those People who still watch television.