Taming the Monster in Your House

What if I told you there was a monster in your house and it was ravaging your family, would you believe me? What if I told you there were several of those beasts, one in nearly every room in the house? Yes, it's the television, and, according to media critic Michael Medved, it is ruining the American family.

"Television encourages attributes that are deadly to the survival of families and marriages," he says. Most modern historians agree that the family began to fall apart in the mid sixties and that was when the first generation raised on television hit adolescence.

Think about how wholesome television was back then, but television causes its harm by giving viewers what Medved calls "the syndrome of entitlement". In other words, we see people leading glamorous, exciting lives on television and feel that our lives are boring, uneventful, and unfulfilling by comparison. This, he says, causes selfishness. TV causes us to believe that we, too, are entitled to "ceaseless arrays of ecstatic pleasures."

People leave their spouses and families in pursuit of the exciting, exotic lives they see on television. On TV, people solve all kinds of difficulties in only thirty minutes, win huge money for picking the right case, and become rock stars overnight. And the programming is punctuated with constant commercial reminders that we, too, can live this fun, exciting life if we will only buy certain products.

And if the programming was wholesome in the sixties, what about today? Here is a quote for your consideration: "But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set... and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland. You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience-participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And, endlessly, commercials - many screaming, cajoling and offending."

This is from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton Minow's famous speech to National Association of Broadcasters on May 9, 1961. Two months before I was born!

The broadcasters did not appreciate his speech and, in fact, the producers of Gilligan's Island named the doomed boat on the show, the S.S. Minnow, after him as an insult.

What bothers me most about the television is that it is always on. We get up in the morning, turn it one and watch it until we go to sleep at night, taking breaks only for work or school. We plan our activities around it, using its schedule as our guide. Yes, families may be sitting in the same room, but we can't talk to each other and the kids better not stand in front of the TV. We only speak during commercials and have to yell over them.

With a journalism degree and several years of reporting, it's not surprising that I am a news junkie, but I think like most things, moderation is the key.

Yes, there are plenty of good things to watch and information can be helpful, but I fear the TV has taken over the family and is calling all of the shots. It is filling our heads with garbage and making us fat and lazy. My solution? Turn it off some. Go outside and enjoy the fall. Talk to each other. Read a book. Choose wisely what to watch and then turn it off. It may just surprise you - you may find you have your own life to live.

You can contact Craig Harris at www.apparentlyso.net.