hel_ana | (no subject)

For the third time in my life, I've been inspired to write a letter to the editor, regarding this story, about a family on Snell Island in St. Petersburg who don't watch television. Apparently sun shines out their collective butts because of it.

Of course, a couple much-freakier-than-not-watching-tv items come up in the course of the story:

they're almost painfully Leave-it-to-Beaver, if Mrs. Cleaver had ever thought of making something as exotic as crab cakes to go along with her cheese and crackers. It's not even the hand and foot thing that bothers me so much as the "bad degenerate modern age! out of our house, which will be pure, like it 'used to be'" vibe. Some of the language, plus the lifestyle, makes me suspect that they're probably "family values" types

She doesn't watch TV, so she doesn't get news. She reads magazine covers in the grocery store line so she will "know the important stuff going on." You know, I've seen the grocery store checkout magazine racks around here, and Marie Claire, the Star, and the Enquirer barely qualify as "interesting stuff", let alone "important stuff".

Anyway, here's the letter:

Subject: Cutting the TV cord

I, like the Mackaness family, also watch no television. Nor do I actually own one. On the other hand, while I read more than most people, I don't have much time to bake bread or cook from scratch every night, because I have a job outside the home.

The underlying premise of the article -- that anyone could have this lifestyle if they'd just give up the tube -- is a bit disingenuous. The reason that Mr. Mackaness has his island of serenity, complete with hand-delivered crab cakes, and that Mrs. Mackaness hand-makes her baby's food, is that her job is looking after the home and hearth. It's not that they don't have a television.

I'm sure you could find a number of families in the Tampa Bay area with both a television (or two) and a work-at-home mom that have nightly prepared-from-scratch meals.

It's my guess, however, that you'd be hard pressed to find many that have a work-outside-the-home mom, but no television, that have the same luxury.