Is this rebuttal believable?

If I attend a four-hour lecture on the history of firearms, from the appearance of the first flintlocks through the development of modern automatic weapons, does it matter where I sit?

That was the essence of my recent rebuttal to my wife Mary. She had accused me of watching too much television. Of course, she's right, but I wasn't about to plead guilty so easily.

I began, instead, to contemplate why I watch so much TV (besides my classic argument about getting paid to do so). That led me to think about contemporary TV. It seems to me -- or so my rejoinder began -- that watching television now is a lot different from watching it 20 or 30 years ago.

Wider spectrum

Back then, when you spent a night viewing the one-eyed monster, you had limited choices, and even those choices were very much alike. You watched a sitcom on ABC, CBS or NBC, or you turned to a British drama on PBS. Period.

Nowadays, we have a much wider spectrum of material to select from as we slump in our easy chairs after a day of work. The sitcoms are still in the same spots and can also be found on several new networks, like Fox and WB. And PBS is still carrying British mini-series based on Victorian novels. But there are also new kids on the channel block.

What I watch

When I watch TV on a given night, my tastes run to documentaries and news discussions. For example, the series on firearms appeared on The History Channel and presented an in-depth look at how guns evolved and how they work. The fact that I watched it from my couch rather than from a seat in an auditorium shouldn't matter.

I am also a frequent visitor to C-SPAN and C-SPAN2, where I can find authors being interviewed about their latest books, newspeople commenting on freedom of the press or the responsibility of journalists, tours of government offices led by docents, and discussions of pressing issues by politicians.

Then there are The Learning Channel, which often has specials on religion, and A&E, which carries excellent documentaries, including the nightly "Biography" series. And on any given evening, news programming runs continuously from the nightly news through "Nightline."

Not buying it

In other words, I said to Mary with what I thought was precise and irrefutable logic, I may be watching too much TV, but at least it's educational TV.

"Yeah, right," she said, declining to accept my thesis. "Why don't you read a book instead?"

So I did, for four hours one night and three the next, polishing off a biography of Abraham Lincoln I had been dawdling through, and then beginning a study of President Polk and the Mexican War of 1847.

But I still ask this question: If I had watched a four-hour documentary about Old Abe or listened to a three-hour discussion among military scholars about warfare in the mid-19th century, how would those be worse activities than reading the books?

A great deal of my on-going education comes to me via television as well as through books, newspapers and magazines. Would I ever be accused of reading too much?

Mary listened but didn't buy it. Do you?

(01-08-98)

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