Those cracking sounds you hear in the distance are the brittle chunks of hypocrisy breaking free from the facade of what television chooses to call its "educational programming" for children.
Among the first chunks to fall is "The Jetsons." Two other chunks - "The Flintstones" and "Superboy" - are about to come crashing down. Soon to crumble from the feeble edifice are "G.I. Joe" and "Yogi Bear."For those poor souls who spend their time in pursuit of happiness by means more noble and enriching than watching television, the above programs are designed primarily to appeal to millions of young viewers who, with or without parental consent, suspend their cognitive faculties for hours on end by watching them.
Under such conditions, education in the strictest and only meaningful sense is impossible anyway, so I'm confused about all the fuss, but "grave issues" compel official responses, so we're having a response from Washington. Congress has set hearings this week to inquire about allowing cartoons and other such stuff to masquerade as pedagogical substance.
At any rate, the debilitating consequences of TV's mesmerizing effect on young human minds finally became a matter of some concern to citizens interested in conveying some semblance of Western civilization to subsequent generations before their brains were numbed by the sensory bombardment of the cathode ray tube. Congress responded by enacting the Children's Television Act of 1990.
Under the law, the Federal Communications Commission was given the authority to promulgate rules requiring broadcasters, as a condition of renewing their FCC licenses, to show their commitment to the educational needs of America's children by presenting programming both "educational and informational."
Under a presidential administration that was shocked - shocked! - and appalled at the very notion of government regulation, the FCC under George Bush essentially ignored the will of Congress. Broadcasters - with a straight face - actually defended the animated features and other forms of children's entertainment as "educational."
As one who grew up watching "Leave It To Beaver," I never considered the rather unexciting but harmless lives of the Cleavers to be educational in any way, yet reruns of that golden oldie are being passed off as somehow valuable to the development of young minds, and thus a sufficient commitment to educational programming to retain a station's license.
Let's be honest: Educational programming is to education as Iranian moderate is to moderation.
With only rare exceptions, television remains inherently a medium of entertainment, and from the looks of a good deal of the programming, the quality is vacuous and inane. As writer Mason Williams once put it - "doilies for your mind."
There's nothing wrong with entertainment, so long as it's taken in moderation.
The plethora of junk on television - particularly the insulting presentation of programs brazenly rationalized by broadcasters as "educational" - begs the question of what is tolerated as entertainment, there being no accounting for taste in a society that celebrates game shows, talk shows and soap operas as real life.
To reject television as a medium of effective education is not to say that people cannot learn from it. They can learn sports scores and the latest body count from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
But a person also learns from smashing a thumb with a hammer while hanging a picture. Even June Cleaver could teach that lesson, if only she had ever done anything so real-life.