Seriously, Congress? DTV?
Congress has pushed back the Digital
TV transition (see "Kill Your Antenna," by Jeff Inglis, January 16) from
this week until June, ostensibly to allow the estimated 5.8 million
still-unprepared households additional time to get the converter boxes they
will need to receive digital television signals broadcast over the airwaves.
We have to note the
terrible irony that while Congress has moved rapidly to protect the TV-watching
of the very last few stragglers (of the 15 percent of Americans whom
this transition affects), they fail to take any action when even more Americans
- 16 percent of us - have no
health insurance. (Not to mention the 1.1 million people who filed for
bankruptcy in 2008, the 3 million households whose homes were foreclosed upon
in 2008, or the 3.6 million people who lost their jobs in 2008 - Congress is moving to help them, but only
slowly.)
The real complaint here is not at Congress, which is what the
military call "a target-rich environment," but at the media for behaving as if
people's potential inability to receive television signals is some sort of
humanitarian crisis. I will grant the TV stations themselves a small amount of
clemency in recognition of their self-interest (and government mandates for
"public-service" announcements), but overall the attention spent on this silly
situation - which at best affects 15 percent of Americans - is beyond
ridiculous when even more Americans face a much graver threat to their lives
and well-being.