To the TV: Bon Voyage!

Haven't there been times when you wanted to take a sledgehammer to your TV? Well, go right ahead - just don't hurt anybody. This advice presumes of course that you actually own the TV; bashing someone else's TV could cause tremendous trouble.

TV is the institution that gave the American public the highly improbable notion that John F. Kennedy was killed by one assassin. That was the initial assessment of the TV news people, and it was the subsequent conclusion of the Warren Commission. Most of the public labored under this accepted view until 1979, when the U.S. Congress finally recognized the possibility that Kennedy was killed by more than one gunman. Forensics tests and libraries of books have demonstrated to most readers that Kennedy could not possibly have been killed by a lone gunman. The angles of the bullet holes in his body make that remote possibility extremely unlikely.

Yet it was TV that propagated that myth. It was the TV news that reported it incorrectly. TV - that wonderful medium that defines a nation (sic), that pulls community together (sic) - was the institution that reported inaccuracies for at least a decade.

Orwell was among the first to warn of the totalitarian uses of TV's and cameras. His book 1984 was prophetic.

A guy at the drugstore came running up to me the other day. He mentioned that the newspaper I was buying was full of ads, and then he said that he had just seen this giant flat-screen TV for only $300. "Considering all the crap that's on TV, it doesn't surprise me," was my response. Too bad I didn't have the presence of mind to say something like, "Aren't there times when you'd like to take a flying dropkick right through the middle of that black hole of crap?"

Perhaps the Asians can reduce the price of TV's down to $10 or so and Americans can establish a new national pastime: Man v. TV. There is nothing more gratifying than to imagine a television set - that glorified box of garbage - with a battleaxe smashed into it.

If you want to liberate your mind, go to a library sometime. Even better, cruise the web and find an Ask-The-Expert site. You may find tremendous freedom from exchanging ideas with well-informed intellects. In the meantime, don't hurt yourself or anyone else and toss the TV out the third floor balcony!