The Bell Curve -- Joseph N. Bell

This is national Turn-Off-Your-TV-Set Week, and I’m going to write

about it for three reasons. First, being a bleeding heart liberal, I’m

usually for the underdog; and for this week, at least, TV is taking a

beating. Second, I feel a dedicated newspaper should offer a wide range

of views, and since Steve Smith has already offered the case for turning

off, I feel the need to provide a little balance. And, third -- and most

important -- while prowling through a pile of debris on my desk the other

day, I ran across a video of “Kukla, Fran and Ollie” that my oldest

daughter gave me several Christmases ago. That was the clincher.

“Kukla, Fran and Ollie” set a multiple-level nightly example of grace

and humanity for almost a decade while entertaining my three young

children and their parents. Kukla was a gentle clown, Ollie a boastful

dragon, and Fran was their pal, who stood beside their puppet stage and

talked with them as fellow humans five nights a week. When puppeteer Burr

Tilstrom died, it was like a death in our family. To have deprived my

children -- and my wife and me -- of the delight and affirmation of life

this TV show brought into our home would have been downright

unpardonable.

Now I have no quarrel with the multiple studies about the deplorable

things television can do to our children. I doubt neither the statistics

nor the authority for them. My problem is that the positive side of TV is

being ignored in order to make a case for national TV Turnoff. What

Turnoff Week does is remove discipline and judgment from the equation. We

had rules. My kids couldn’t watch TV until their homework was done, and

we limited both what they watched and how long they spent watching it.

But the rules were flexible. They watched a nation sharing their grief

when John Kennedy was assassinated. They watched a man walking on the

moon. Rules were regularly bent for the World Series or a Broadway show

they knew and loved or the Academy Awards or for programs that spoke to

all of us -- like “Kukla, Fran and Ollie.”

The intent and -- I firmly believe -- the result of this approach was

to send them into adulthood with a sense of taste and critical judgment.

They seldom watched trash on TV -- either at home or at someone else’s

home -- not because it was forbidden but because it bored them. They all

read avidly when they were growing up and still do. All of this was easy

because their parents had been raised with the same mind set. And the

same results.

Which brings me to the second big problem I have with Turnoff Week:

the sublimation of adult fare to the needs of children. Unless

specifically designed for children, mass media -- TV, radio, newspapers,

magazines -- is aimed at adults. Once again, the amount of rubbish, some

of it venal, is immense. But so is the good stuff. And the same rules of

discipline and judgment prevail.

But this doesn’t mean that adult programs should be excised or diluted

because they are inappropriate for children. If this sounds like a double

standard, it is. I want adult art and entertainment judged on its own

merits and not attacked solely because parents don’t have the good sense

or determination to deny it to their children. Adults, whether they have

earned it or not, don’t operate within the same set of restrictions as

children -- nor should they.

Author and critic John Leonard was making a similar point in the Los

Angeles Times last week when he praised commercial TV as “weirdly

democratic, multicultural, utopian, quixotic and rather more welcoming of

difference and diversity than the audience watching it.”

All of this becomes, finally, a matter of policy within individual

families. Setting a proper model does not mean that adults must subscribe

to the same rules as children. I watch far too much sports on TV, for

example, without apology. That’s my problem, and it hasn’t rubbed off on

any of my children. I rationalize it by turning off the sound and doing

busywork while I keep track of the game. As a result, neither the work

nor the game get proper attention. I’m working on this -- but not by

deep-sixing the TV set during Turnoff Week.

On Saturday, however, we cheerfully turned off the television to visit

the crowded and aging Mariners Branch Library. We were there to buy a

book or two and otherwise support the effort to create a new

state-of-the-art library on that site. If the locals can raise $1

million, the remaining $2 million to build the new library to serve a

broad community that includes seven public schools would come from a

grant under the state Public Library Renovation Bond Act of 2000. The

money must be raised by early June, so if you want to help, you can call

(949) 644-3150. The novelty, alone, of public funds going to a library is

both exciting and encouraging. That might be the best statement of all to

counter too much TV time.

***

Finally, my apologies to the people whose effort to support annexation

of Santa Ana Heights bounced because I omitted a hyphen in the city’s Web

site. It should have been o7 https://[email protected]

. So give it another shot if you are so disposed.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.