Friday.....America.....Trojan Horse?

One of the first blogs that I wrote was titled A La Carte Cable and I've done a few more since then. To me, this is one of the more important concepts that we need to seriously consider today. Here is a quick synopsis: Cable companies offer us packages of television programming. We can receive as few as a dozen stations, or we can receive dozens, even hundreds more. We can pick a package that has some of the channels that we want but we receive far more than those we pick. There is a bill sitting in committee called the Family and Consumer Choice Act of 2007 that would force cable companies to offer the consumer a choice of the specific channels they want. John McCain was also involved in a similar attempt in the Senate. There are problems. The cable companies believe that they will lose considerable revenue if consumers can choose their channels. Many Christian broadcasters are against a la carte because their own broadcasts are now included in the packages. Some think choice will save consumers money, others think it will cost them more. The bill in congress goes beyond only the issue of choice. Why do I think that we need a la carte? One reason is that 60 or more channels offers us too big of a temptation to waste our time. Another reason is that the medium of television is a teaching opportunity and most involved in television today espouse liberal (the new radical definition of it) causes. A third reason is that learning through images demands a fundamentally different process of the mind than through the written word. Yet another reason is that the consumer effectually supports all of the channels they receive, whether Christian, PBS or MTV. Summing it all up, our national intellect has become indisposed. We, as a society, have become a narrative of Gullibles Travels. We are sound bite citizens. Lee Loevinger was an anti-trust lawyer, associate justice on the Minnesota Supreme Court and served in the Kennedy administration's Justice Department. He was another one of those who supplied many statements that have been quoted often, one of which was Television is the literature of the illiterate, the culture of the lowborn, the wealth of the poor, the privilege of the underprivileged, the exclusive club of the excluded masses. It's a harsh statement, but accurate. He described me in my youth. When our son was in his first year, I said something to him as he sat in front of the television. He was oblivious to me. I passed my hand in front of his face with no response. We promptly took the television out of our house and it remained out for nine years. One afternoon, we were having a nice father/son lunch at a sandwich shop and there was a poster of the television character Alf on the wall. He looked at me and said Dad...what's that? I had an idea but said, I don't know. Maybe it's a dog? He analysed the poster and my response and said That's no dog! Our son is doing very well in law school. The difference between his intellect and mine, and I'm sure you will attest to this, is in no small part due to the amount of television each of us watched in our youth. I think that the people I know most in this life are, my wife, our son, my mother, Raymond and Debra Barrone, my in-laws etc., if you get my drift. I don't plan on giving up on a la carte cable television but realistically it's a long way off. I may not be a good person to give advice on television viewing, but if we can identify a major problem, maybe we can improve the situation for our children's sake.