So, poor Daphne experienced a distressing (sic) “high level of irritation” when reading an article about an admirable family that lives without television (“The moral superiority of those who don’t have television”, 24 April). Such was her indignation over somebody having the audacity of not conforming to the norm, that she hurled abuse and opprobrium on the parents of the Zammit household.  

So, Mr and Mrs Zammit, repent!  A dire fate awaits you if you do not conform to Daphne’s True Way. Go out and buy a television set with the biggest screen possible at once so that you achieve redemption by submitting to a strict diet of the equivalent of mindless television fare as Sesame Street, The Monkees, Road Runner, the Banana Splits and Tom & Jerry. Then you will attain Nirvana as Daphne did in days of yore.

But not so fast readers, there is something fishy here. Let us get down to some nitty-gritty: Daphne bases her fanciful claims about the serious consequences of television deprivation on her personal experience and discusses her misguided opinions as scientifically valid conclusions. In the course of her pseudo-sociological effusions, Daphne goes to the extraordinary length of quoting Alfred Sant as a notorious  (sic) example of the serious consequences of life without television. Lack of television viewing, she tells us ominously, “was one of the things that marked him out for failure as a politician”. Daphne has the barefaced cheek to support her slanderous comment about Alfred Sant’s “failure as a politician” with the priceless dictum that “not watching television flags up your sense of disengagement from the world around you, your lack of interest in the contemporary”. Not satisfied with having descended so deep into gratuitous psychological spaghetti, she follows this up with a wonderful piece of sociological bling: “if you can’t see why a television is essential, then you’re a political non-starter”.  

To refute all the fatuous, self-serving so-called arguments in this piece would be too tedious. Suffice it to say that the banality of Daphne’s arguments rather suggest that she may have watched too much television and read too little. Incidentally, mankind has only had television for about 60 years, and it is probable that, proportionately, more people achieved greatness in past centuries and millennia than in the past 50 odd years. Maybe Daphne can explain to us how this was possible with no telly? Let us face it, how on earth did Voltaire or Johann Sebastian Bach manage without television?

Next time Daphne picks up her quill pen she might write try something less indescribably futile about television. Something more relevant would be, say, television-related violence or, maybe, the correlation between childhood obesity and time spent watching television. Doing a little bit of homework beforehand to acquaint her with facts might help.

As to her silly generalisations, can Daphne please inform readers on what sociological evidence she bases her statement that the “presumed correlation between television and reading is a fallacy”? To naively base such a statement on personal experience is pure boastful anecdote. Surely just one person, even if it is our good Daphne, cannot serve as the litmus test of society? That Daphne’s own experience taught her “that enjoyment of television and reading are not mutually exclusive” proves nothing at all. This kind of self-indulgent reasoning is the preserve of people who pontificate boringly, and who (dare one say it?) watch too much television.   

Not content with her fatuous hollow generalisations, Daphne added a dash of authenticity by resorting to her specialty of insults and insinuations: These parents, Daphne tells us, “think they are bookish”, they are intellectual snobs (with “misplaced intellectual snobbery”, whatever that means) and, as implied by the portentous title, they feign moral superiority. She rated Mr And Mrs Zammit, as “very smug” about their decision to live without television. She accuses them of claiming to be better parents for it. These accusations are outright fibs. The Zammits are not quoted as saying, or even implying, that they were “superior parents” in the article, neither did anything they said sound in the least smug. In fact the Zammits came across as exceptionally well-balanced people in the article. 

The cherry on the cake comes at the end. Everything Michael and Maria Zammit said during the interview was “tosh”, Daphne tells us, because “we’re speaking of adults here, adults with free will and a remote control”. Exactly, Daphne. This family simply chose to do without television. Daphne, you may be aware of the expression “it takes all sorts” (or are you too busy watching television?). In plain language: it is none of Daphne’s business to disparage people on false trumped-up grounds just because they are different or because she doesn’t agree with their attitude. Of course, it may simply be that Daphne ran out of ideas what to write this week and seized this story as convenient grist for a quick job on her creaking mill. Either way, such patronizing meaningless claptrap is an insult to readers.

G.G. Debono

SLIEMA