To the editor:
In typical journalistic jingoism, Deseret News television critic Scott D. Pierce, in his column of May 21 about the remarks of Vice President Dan Quayle, suggests, among other things, that Quayle has "lost touch with reality and cannot . . . distinguish between reality and situation comedy" or "between fact and fiction."Pierce's tortured logic seems to be that since Murphy Brown is only a fictional person, no one should take seriously her illicit, out-of-wedlock intercourse, but rather should heap praise upon her for not electing to abort her illegitimate fetus.
After all, says Pierce, no lessons about human values can be derived from the experiences of fictional persons or events. Pierce and the writer of the TV series would have us ignore that the real choice was made when Murphy Brown hopped in bed without benefit of clergy.
The New Testament is full of the parables of Jesus Christ - fictional stories about people and events designed to teach lessons in human values. Accepting Pierce's logic, we should disregard the lessons Jesus taught because he used fictional persons and events to teach human values.
Unfortunately, as Pierce should know, the television set has become a member of the family. Children are born into a home in which the television set is on for an average of seven hours every day.
Researchers say that while the development of human values is a continuous process and results from numerous experiences, real and vicarious, television "is the largest single source of information" and "powerful images, assimilated even before a child learns to read, establish norms of desirable behavior to which there is no equally compelling cultural challenge."
It is not the vice president, as Pierce asserts, who cannot "tell the different between television and real life." It is countless young minds who do not see the fine line between fact and fiction.
Howard A. Matthews
Bountiful