tv-free america thinks you watch too much television. And TV-Free America wants you to stop it right now, and not start again until after April 30, when the group's third annual National TV-Turnoff Week ends. More than 3 million Americans unplugged for last year's TV-Turnoff Week, the organization claims, and to make the symbolic protest even more meaningful this year, TV-Free America is starting TV-Turnoff Week on a Must See TV Thursday, April 24, and running it through the first week of May sweeps. That means no "Seinfeld" (and it's a new one too), no "ER," no "X-Files," no NBA or NHL playoffs, no "Stephen King's 'The Shining'" miniseries (except for the last part, which airs on May 1), no "I Am Your Child" special on brain development, hosted by Tom Hanks and featuring remarks by President and Mrs. Clinton, and no Ellen coming out.

You have been naughty, Couch Potato America, and the TV-Free folks are going to teach you a lesson you'll never forget.

TV-Free America was founded in 1994 by one Henry Labalme, an environmentalist who saw TV as a destructive force of "ceaseless noise, hype, intensity and sell," fueling the earth-destroying, resource-wasting global consumer culture. And he does have a point there. TV-Free America's impressive board of advisors includes psychologist Robert Coles, mass media critic Todd Gitlin, novelist Barbara Kingsolver and children's entertainer Raffi (as well as the late teachers union leader Albert Shanker), and it has the endorsement of such groups as the American Medical Association, the American Federation of Teachers, Literacy Volunteers of America and the Congress of National Black Churches.

Now, I'm not going to argue with Robert Coles, Raffi and every pediatrician and teacher in America. I agree that kids watch too much damn television. I watch too much damn television, and a lot of what I watch I wouldn't watch if I wasn't getting paid for it. I'm not willing to defend every piece of crap on all 187 channels or to hotly decry as fascism any attempt to set limits on kids' TV viewing within the privacy of one's own home.

What bugs me, though, is the way groups like TV-Free America give those of us who are quietly trying to keep our kids' TV consumption to a reasonable level a bad name. Sometimes, when people find out that my 5-year-old watches, at most, one hour of TV a day (according to TV Free America, the average for kids is four hours) and that he's never seen "Goosebumps" or "X Men" and that we don't consider "Independence Day" a suitable video rental choice for a kindergartner, I get these shocked sort of pitying looks and I know what they're thinking -- I'm one of those anti-TV dorks.

But I'm not. I don't want to turn off my TV just because some busybodies try to guilt me into it, and I'm certainly not going to lay this sort of guilt on anyone else. Could TV-Free America's we-know-what's-best-for-you approach possibly be any more scolding and Aunt Bee-ish? I don't think so. What's next, "Don't Sit Too Close to the TV or You'll Ruin Your Eyesight Week"? "Don't Stick Out Your Tongue and Cross Your Eyes or Your Face Will Freeze Like That Week"?

The most exasperating thing about TV-Turnoff Week, though, is that it's completely ineffectual in addressing the reasons why so many families -- and why kids in particular -- watch too much TV. Instead, TV-Free America is built on two elitist assumptions: that TV-watching parents are by definition irresponsible, lazy and stupid slobs who don't give a hoot about the quality of their kids' lives, and that if television went away, we would all, like, get back to nature.

"Build a birdhouse. Play outside. Plant a garden. Go fishing," suggests TV-Free America, and they're all fine activities -- if you happen to have a helpful granddad around who can teach you to build birdhouses, or you're well-off enough to live in a safe neighborhood where your kids can play outside without getting buzzed by speeding cars or gang bullets, or golly gee lucky enough to live in Mayberry within a whistlin' walk to the fishin' hole.

Turning off the TV for a week -- or even a year -- won't insure that every kid in America can go outside to play in a safe, unpolluted neighborhood with wise, loving adults providing guidance at every turn. Turning off the TV will do nothing to remedy the country's chronic and shameful shortage of affordable child care, which too often results in overwhelmed parents using the TV as a baby-sitter. It won't shorten workdays or increase wages, two things that might allow parents to come home from work with enough energy and disposable income to do something else with the kids besides plopping on the couch in front of the tube. It won't fund one single after-school program so older latch-key kids can have something more interesting to do than watch TV -- or get into worse trouble. And turning off the TV will not teach one illiterate adult to read.

What TV-Turnoff Week will do is pump the country full of hot air about those allegedly idyllic days before TV became a member of the family. The whole campaign reminds me of the episode of "The Simpsons" where Marge became alarmed at the amount of bad TV her kids were watching and organized a TV boycott. In one gloriously satirical and poignant segment, Springfield morphed backward into a Norman Rockwell small town, where bright-eyed kids rolled hoops and flew kites and whitewashed fences and splashed barefoot after pollywogs in the stream. If only.

Technologically, culturally, economically and politically, the ship has sailed -- America will never be TV-free and wistful wishing won't make it so. Our efforts would be better spent on the practical things that could support families and, maybe -- just maybe -- as a byproduct, make them less dependent on TV. So I will not be TV-free this week. In fact, I might watch more TV than usual. Few things tee me off like empty, symbolic, tie-a-yellow-ribbon-'round-the-old-oak-tree publicity gestures that trivialize difficult issues. And besides, I get very cranky if I miss my shows.
April 24, 1997

Is TV-Turnoff Week a turnoff or a good idea? Talk it over in Table Talk.