TELE-DANGER
The Denver Post this week reprinted an article from the Los Angeles Times with a headline that said "too much time in front of TV can kill you."
It seems that Australian researchers have discovered that each hour spent watching TV is linked with an 18 percent greater risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. Plus a 9 percent increased risk of dying from cancer.
Well! That grabbed the attention of a guy who regularly watches hours of baseball, football, movies, Brit dramas and other assorted bits of TV fare.
Now why do you suppose the Post, in a prominently display, reprinted another paper’s warning about the perils of TV? Well, the Post, like the entire print business, is hoping desperately to lure people back to reading and advertising in print instead of on TV and the net. It’s a very hard sell.
“Be safe,” says the Post. “Get your news from Colorado’s media leader…..Life’s risky enough. Read the Post.”
Well, they don’t need to persuade me. I read the Post every morning, and I wish I still had a Rocky Mountain News to read every morning, too.
While I don’t watch the clock as I read, I’d guess I spend about an hour a day with the Post. That's on weekdays, counting word games and chess problems. And on Sundays, it’s at least three or four hours, depending on the challenge of the two big crossword puzzles.
If you haven't already guessed where I'm heading, go back to the beginning, to the line about spending “too much time in front of TV.”
Think about that. It isn’t the TV itself that kills us. It doesn't spew out poisonous waves. It merely pins us down in a cozy chair and keeps us there, stationary, for hours and hours. It keeps us “sedentary,” meaning lots of sitting and little moving. Or, as my dictionary says, “fixed to one spot, as a barnacle.”
So, consider the idea of mobility. Isn't it just as sedentary to sit for an hour reading the Denver Post as it is to sit for an hour watching “The Closer” on TV. The Post doesn’t say.
Of course most people don’t spend nearly as many hours with newspapers as they do with TV, but what about books and magazines and computer screens?
If watching TV for four hours is bad, is reading a mystery novel good? How about the Bible?
Is the delightful Tattered Cover – my favorite store – striving to make barnacles of all us, starting with kids barely old enough to read? Ask the Post.