"Watching TV" shows that although the television uses asthetics to manipulate, and manipulate us through our guilt, and our greed, there are a lot of real messages underlying the propaganda. The song also has the very cynical view that although television makes us feel pity, we don't do anything to change the world. The song is about the Tiananmen Square killings, and how the death of one appealing woman on television made that event meaningful for watchers.
"She had shiny hair
She had perfect breasts
She had high hopes
She had almond eyes
She had yellow thighs"
exemplifies that her significance for the viewer is her beauty. The line "So get out your pistols/ Get out your stones/.../Cut them to the bone" expresses that now that the crime has been witnessed, we have to fight. The rest of the song makes her an individual. She's important because she died on television and therefore can reach many more people. This is very cynical because none of the ugly dead are mentioned. This comes through powerfully.
"The album title came from a short book by Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, which is about the history of the media, particularly as it relates to political communication—i.e., how things have changed since such works as Lincoln's speeches were made available for the general public to read."
"And I had at one point this rather depressing image of some alien creature seeing the death of this planet and coming down in their spaceships and sniffing around and finding all our skeletons sitting around our TV sets and trying to work out why it was that our end came before its time, and they come to the conclusion that we amused ourselves to death."
