Bonovox

I just had to quote this. I wish I was as resolute about getting rid of the idiot box. I figure I'll just flip out someday and throw the blasted thing out the window....give the kids a good story to tell their grandkids....

From S.M. HUtchens over at Touchstone. Read the rest of the article.

“I was born at the dawn of the television age and grew up watching it. When my wife and I were married—we were about your age then, not old codgers like we are now—we decided not to have a television in the house, not because we thought it was sinful, but because we thought it was a needless distraction that wasted time better spent on other things. And we didn’t want our children to grow up with any television dependency. We would let them decide about that for themselves when they were out of the house.”

“If you are thinking that very, very few people do not watch television, you are right—that also has been our experience. But almost every household we have known that does not have a television is presided over by at least one Ph. D.—and invariably the doctorate is in a field that requires hard, skilled mental work in mastering languages other than one’s own, like the languages of math, physics, or ancient Mesopotamia. Not all doctor’s degrees are like this, you know.”

“I have found that many people who have to maintain their minds at top form have an intuitive dislike of having them manipulated by the organs of the mass media, which they find not only stupid, but having a drug-like quality that does something they don’t like to the efficiency and quality of their own thinking. It’s hard to explain, but it’s an opinion I have found that people like us share.”

“You see I am using a computer—a necessity for my job, and I’m known to be very good at it. I’m not a Luddite, and must make concessions to the age in which we live. But they will be limited, for I wish to retain as much control over my own mind as possible. That means television, even the good stuff on it, is, as a rule, out.”