By BILLY MURPHY
Contributing Writer

As a writer and as a parent you would think that I would advocate reading above television, but let me tell you, reading is overrated, television is not.

What is it with these new-age bores who over and over keep saying, “Turn off the `boob' tube... read those Harry Potter books”? You would have thought fantasy literature was invented by J.K. Rowling. And if Rowling is the patron saint of literacy and literature, you would think she wouldn't have resorted to the butchering of her name into two consonatal initials. At least Sally Jesse doesn't go by S.J. (Special note: I, in no way support the “Footloose”-like boycotting of the Harry Potter books in Cobb county).

I know the library police will now be looking to throw the book at me for my atrocities against the written word. Come on, though, comparing reading and television is like comparing apples and oranges. People who continually go on about the significance of reading over television are just on some head trip to make themselves look smart. And while I am on the mentioning of fruit: All you egg-headed word-meisters, quit showing off and saying nothing rhymes with orange. Door hinge rhymes with orange.

Superficially, it just looks more intellectual to put down the colors of television in favor of the black and white of reading. I'm an open book, I'm not afraid to say I love television. Television is good. Sure, reading is ballet, but TV is the lambada, it's the tango, it's the Texas two-step for the common man. Books and television; there is no comparison.

Used to be, the television was called the “boob tube,” because anyone who watched it was supposedly stupid. The meaning has changed. Today with the bombardment of Jesse Ventura-sized breast implants, the “boob tube” has a much more literal meaning. This is a shame. Television has so much more value. The only weakness of television programming is that they try every trick in the book to get your attention. It should not be that way.

Even so, the literary world should take a page out of TV's book and spice things up just a little. I mean, with all the advances in our world, publishers today are still using dirty white pages with black Times Roman text? Oh I forget, about 20 years ago they changed the print to “New” Times Roman.

Obviously, I am just more against placing reading on a pedestal while putting TV underneath it. As I learned from an ABC Afterschool Special once, “You don't have to put me down and make me feel small so you can make yourself feel big.” Obviously, books have a very important place in the development of the mind, not to mention in the leveling of a coffee table. So to give books equal due with TV, here is a smidgen of what both forms have taught us:

Reading: Atticus Finch could shoot a rifle. TV: Barney Fife had just one bullet. Reading: Captain Ahab's hate rendered him powerless. TV: Mr. Roper was homophobic. Reading: “To Be or Not to Be.” TV: “Whachu talkin' bout, Willis.” Reading: Hell is ice, not fire. TV: Jill drove the Mustang, Sabrina drove the Pinto. Reading: “Sam, I am.” TV: “Moving on up... to the Eastside. To a deluxe apartment....”

I guess the perfect answer would be some media that effectively combined these two formats. But for now we only have something that combines the slowness, the squinting, and the word-bulk of reading with the voltage-dependency, endless advertisements and mass-imitating of television. It's called the Internet.

[Contact Billy Murphy at billy@gretsch.com and http://billymurphy.homepage.com.

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