Dear Editor,

With some consternation we read Mr. Russell Hansen's polemical and vituperative letter regarding television and the turpitude thereof.

Under an air of probity, he claimed television had "single-handedly managed to eviscerate and trivialize all facets of our culture" and that "television -- the medium and its message -- deserve censure, not praise."

These are equivocal statements, tenuous at best, grossly erroneous at worst. Allow us to elucidate our dissidence and disabuse these fallacies so shamelessly disseminated.

First, we find the idea of the inherent inimicability and eviscerative abilities of television to be abstruse.

The medium of television, so deserving of censure, includes the tube, cables, antennae, satellites and receivers -- we could also include VCRs, DVDs videotapes and disks.

These are all inherently inimical? No. The ideas disseminated through the medium foment human baseness, but the medium is not responsible. We could make the same argument against paper publications, computers and the spoken word. Are these mediums also inimical?

Now the alleged evisceration of our culture. Once eviscerated, an organism undoubtedly expires.

So our culture is dead? What culture is that? Isn't television a mere representation of our culture? A mirror?

Television executives do not produce inchoate programs. Careful research is involved, it is what our culture wants to see. Television does not create or destroy our culture; it reflects it.

We compliment the ebullience of Mr. Hansen, and while this response is a bit aberrant, we do not intend it to be supercilious or banal. We do feel it a commensurate response.

Although teetering on the edge of being bombastic, we hope it is mentally salubrious.

Cuz, like, dude, the tube's like totally awesome 'n stuff!

Jason Aase

Orem, Utah

Keryn Tobler

Las Vegas

Jared Lyman

Los Alamos, N.M.

Emily Bartlett

South Jordan, Utah



Copyright Brigham Young University 7 Feb 2001