Jeff Jacoby highlights the parental paradox of bicycle helmets and constant monitoring, on the one hand, and allowing television to baby sit, on the other. The average American household watches more than eight hours of television a day, which is about double the nearest competitor (It's a competition to the bottom.). "TV isn't called the idiot box for nothing," Jacoby writes in the Boston Globe. "Even at its best it replaces engaged and active thought with passive and sedentary spectating, while at its worst it destroys children's innocence, inuring them to violence, mockery, and crude sexualization. Television is by definition a visual medium; it appeals not to the brain but to the eye."

In contrast to picking up a book, which activates the mind, turning on the television switches off the imagination. Making it your child's minder is a form of child abuse, more mild than hiring Roman Polanski as a sitter; more severe than a spanking. After several years without one, I resent its presence (except on Sunday afternoons, or when The First 48 is on, or, come to think of it, when they play the UFC, Tool Acadamy, or Survivorman) in my living room.

As I noted in my Pixelated Technicolor Zombie post, "Television is like a Dawn of the Dead zombie: wherever you go, there's no escape. Try to collect your ideas in an airport, and CNN Headline News blaring in the foreground will shout down your thoughts. Go to fill up an empty gas tank, and the tube atop the pump will fill your head with images of various consumables found inside the service station. At the check-out line, in that restaurant, on the train--television, television, televison. If you don't watch it, people will start to watch you (as if you belonged in a zoo)."

What the F&*K you made me get up from the television to read this garabage.
I am going to go hug my TV now and then jump in my brown celica for last call at Boston Bunny's.
Dont ever make me read something again, its rotting my mind, you just ruined the premier episode of Amazing Race 15 for me.

Hey, why do schools need libraries and books when they have all of that same information on a bright shiny tube? We're getting closer to the Idiocracy (speaking of tv).

The ubiquitous nature of entertainment and the interconnectedness of modern Americans via the various media remind me of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. We're so engaged in stultifying nonsense with our gadgets that too many of us, especially our young people, no longer know how to think critically, if at all. They can text a picture of their crotch to a friend, but may not know who the first president of the U.S. was.

Dan Flynn wrote,

. The average American household watches more than eight hours of television, which is about double the nearest competitor (It's a competition to the bottom.)

I'm assuming that's 8hrs/day.

Sensationalize much?

Good article by Jacoby and good post by Dan.

However, to quibble on one point: "Making [the TV] your child's minder is a form of child abuse... more severe than a spanking." Though the first clause of the sentence is correct, that last bit is just so much modernist bunk. Rather, a failure to spank is a form of child abuse. And that negligence makes for a nice parallel to the negligence that is the babysitter-by-boobtube practice.

Tool Academy was hilarious last night. That show is ridiculous.

Hi,
Where are you from? Is it a secret? :)

I'm glad I wasn't raised by Eric Langborgh. Creeps hit kids. All power is illegitimate unless it is justified, and certainly adults hitting children, in almost all circumstances (an example of an exception would be stopping a violent assault perpetrated by a developed teen, or forcibly removing a child from a lit stove or from a busy road), cannot be justified.

Creeps do hit kids. Spanking is not hitting. There is a world of difference.

Biblical discipline is given in the context of love, and never in anger. It is controlled and accompanied by a good word, with repentance and immediate restoration the goal. Mark that: restoration, not punishment.

And btw, one reason to spank is so that run ins with violence, hot stoves, and busy roads don't happen. In other words, I spank my three children (with increasing rarity as they age, due to fruit from discipline lovingly and consistently applies from a very early age) because I love and care enough about them to protect them. I refer again to the biblical injunctions I linked to above. And without any haughtiness, but as a statement of verifiable fact, I am gratefully able to say that the happy, peaceful dispositions of my children are testaments to this practice. They know they are loved enough to be disciplined, and they feel their parents’ love in every other aspect of their being discipled. And that knowledge and assurance shows in their demeanors, to the glory of God.

Thank you Eric. Right on the money.

When it was required, I too was a spanker (not a hitter - which is distinctly different) and my kids learned how to be safe and how to tow the line in all phases of life in small part because of it.

They are members of a loving caring family and no worse for wear and they know it.

And as they got older, I welcomed the days when the spanking was not a requirement of the discipline process.

What many folks who don’t have children or who don’t do a good enough job of disciplining their children don’t understand is that you can’t always logically reason with a child and sometimes using corporal punishment or physical intervention is the only thing that they understand. Until they do.

Just like my father used to say, "This belt isn't just for holdin' my pants up."