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Connecticut residents have spent years watching the cost of electricity, housing, groceries, insurance and taxes climb into the stratosphere.

Attorney General William Tong has finally had enough.

His HBO Max subscription costs $10.99 a month.

Tong called a press conference Monday to announce that Connecticut is joining 11 other states in a lawsuit seeking to block the merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery. He warned of higher prices, fewer movies, television blackouts, layoffs and threats to journalism.

At last, Connecticut government has discovered affordability.

Not the electric bill that arrives like a ransom note. Not the property taxes people pay for the privilege of remaining in the house they already bought. Not rent, groceries, car insurance or child care.

HBO Max.

Tong carefully informed reporters that the ad-supported plan costs him $10.99 a month, or $131.88 a year. Apparently, the attorney general’s office has finally located a household expense worthy of itemization.

He began his remarks by recalling that one of the “great honors” of his professional life was being interviewed by 60 Minutes nearly eight years ago.

Of course he did.

A press conference supposedly about antitrust law began with William Tong remembering the day television discovered William Tong.

Tong praised 60 Minutes and lamented changes at CBS, describing them as an assault on journalism and democracy.

It was a remarkably convenient institution to declare indispensable, considering it had once placed him in front of a national audience.

Tong then moved into the legal heart of his case: his viewing habits. He talked about The Pitt, which he described as “basically ER Part Two.”

It is not.

The Pitt is a separate medical drama that happens to star Noah Wyle, who also appeared in ER. Apparently, two hospital shows featuring the same actor are interchangeable when the attorney general is turning his television preferences into a federal case.

Tong also praised The Wire, mentioned The Leftovers and warned that the merged company’s debt could lead to cuts in programming.

Maybe it will.

Entertainment companies cancel shows, change strategies, lay off employees and make terrible decisions every day. That is not automatically an antitrust violation. Sometimes television executives simply produce garbage, lose money and panic. This used to be called business.

Tong claims the merger would give the combined company too much control over movies, cable programming and negotiations with distributors.

But even he seemed bored by his own argument. Instead, he announced that a ticket to see Supergirl in Stamford cost $16.49, recited his HBO Max bill and warned that a television blackout could interrupt UConn basketball.

“Can you imagine a blackout during the tournament and our inability to watch UConn women and men play for the national championships?” he asked.

Yes.

People can imagine it.

They can also imagine surviving it.

Connecticut residents have already survived punishing electric bills, property taxes, housing shortages and decades of state fiscal incompetence. They might stagger through one evening without TNT.

Still, perhaps Gov. Ned Lamont should activate the National Guard. Emergency viewing centers could be opened in school gymnasiums. The legislature could create a UConn Broadcast Continuity Commission with a $4 million appropriation, a diversity consultant and several unionized communications directors.

Tong also warned that the merger could cost jobs for writers, producers, camera operators and journalists, particularly people living in lower Fairfield County and commuting to New York.

When factory workers lose their jobs, politicians explain that the economy is changing.

When media professionals in expensive suburbs might be laid off, democracy itself has been mugged in an alley.

The speech was supposedly about ordinary consumers, but it often sounded like a defense of the New York media class that lives near Tong, works near Tong and occasionally puts Tong on television.

He also accused the federal government of abandoning antitrust enforcement by allowing the merger to proceed.

Naturally, disagreement with William Tong is never merely disagreement.

Federal lawyers cannot have reached a different legal or economic conclusion. They must have abandoned the field, surrendered to corporate power and endangered the republic.

This is how ambitious attorneys general operate now. Every corporate transaction is a chance for a lawsuit, a press conference and, with luck, another interview on the television programs they are heroically trying to save.

Tong’s presentation sounded less like a legal argument than a customer complaint from a man whose favorite shows might be inconvenienced.

And after all that, nobody asked a question.

Tong had announced a supposedly devastating threat to consumers, workers, theaters, journalists, cable viewers, democracy and UConn basketball.

Not one reporter appeared curious enough to follow up.

Perhaps they were stunned.

Perhaps they were checking their own HBO Max bills.

Or perhaps even Connecticut’s political press corps recognized that an attorney general melting down over his streaming package was not quite the Nuremberg trial he had imagined.

William Tong finally found an unaffordable expense in Connecticut that demanded immediate government action.

Thank God Connecticut has an attorney general willing to stand between working families and the crushing burden of ad-supported HBO Max.

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