Still Resisting TV

I would like to thank Michael Westlund for his response (“There’s More to TV Than Wasteland,” Counterpunch, Jan. 1) to my article regarding children and television. He eloquently and precisely proves my point regarding individuals clinging to their need for television. However, I would like to assure Mr. Westlund that my children, recipients of numerous academic scholarship awards, need not be pitied. On the contrary, they are marveled upon by their teachers as I have been frequently asked, “What is your secret?”

There is no secret. They have simply learned how to think. A natural enemy of television.

Typically, the defenders of television resort to “informative” shows, which likely constitute less than 2% of total programming, as if this is what the majority are watching. Even so, let’s look at just a few of Westlund’s worthy and informative programs.

* The Sunday morning political dialogue shows. I dare Westlund to label any of these programs informative, unless of course we need informing on the art of carefully crafted, politically loaded and ambiguous sound bites. The Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1854 consumed seven hours of non-commercialized substantive oratory: How far we have politically evolved through the miracle of television!

* “20/20.” It must have been Barbara’s gripping interview with Kato. What is saddening is that any drop of “informational truth” on TV generally gets lost in the great sea of irrelevance.

* “Jeopardy!” I quote author Neil Postman: “Where people once sought information to manage the real contexts of their lives, now they had to invent contexts in which otherwise useless (decontextualized) information might be put to some apparent use. . . .”

Staggered throughout these “informative” shows--PBS excluded if you don’t count the intermittent begging for funds--are the annoying and nauseating commercials. The fact that our “televisioned” children can, nearly without exception, quote our nation’s corporate jingles far more frequently and efficiently than any worthy and meaningful literature, is tragic on many levels.

Yes, television can be entertaining, though inspirational? Educational? Informational? It is, by it’s very medium, conveniently in the business of commingling all of the above to the point in which truth and fiction is hardly discernible, particularly for children.

JIM URBANOVICH

Santa Clarita