Chuck Pelto threw the baby out with the bathwater in adopting a snobby attitude towards TV that is all too familiar to me.

I read non-fiction books all the time and explore the blogosphere for hours a day, BUT my “weekend university” is C-Span’s BOOK TV which turns me on to authors and books my library gets for me each week. If a book is terrific, I buy it. I discovered Victor Davis Hanson on 9/15/01, and his talk that day in a Fresno bookstore surpassed whole semesters in college. In CARNAGE AND CULTURE, VDH wrote about 9 great battles including the Battle of Midway and the battle of Rorke’s Drift. I watch the films MIDWAY and ZULU to help me visualize better, and the HISTORY channels do a pretty good job of recreations of these battles and two favorites of mine, which show in war as in real estate the importance in war of location, location, location. The 300 Spartans at Thermopylae and the Romans who had been beaten back by Boadicea the warrior queen until they found the perfect spot in which to make a stand, as opposed to Spartacus with his back to the sea and idiot John Kennedy’s CHANGING the site of battle to the Bay of Pigs with the same problem. That’s what makes a militarily inexperienced Commander in Chief so dangerous.

For two years when I couldn’t read the printed page, C-Span saved my sanity and taught me what I needed to know to later run the Reform Party effort in my town, as well as civics, history, political science, economics and much, much more.

I never watch local or network news since I have to avoid stress and agree with Dr. Andrew Weil that watching late night news is bad for your health.

Classic movies on TCM, and British mysteries on PBS.

THE UNIT presents the Delta Force fighting terrorists, so did JAG and currently NCIS. I still watch LAW AND ORDER but have given up on two shows originally labelled as “Sherlock Holmes for the 21st century”. The original CSI and HOUSE which seems to have decided that House’s sadism towards subordinates sold better than the brilliant diagnostic skill modelled on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s genius professor, Dr. Joseph Bell, about whom PBS did a TV series with a young Doyle as assistant. Dr Bell taught medical diagnostics to the generations which made “Harley Street” a synonym for brilliant medical practice.

My point is that after discovering that only I had watched Olivier’s superb KING LEAR on CBS, I inquired of a bookstore owner and snobs at a Mensa party what they had been doing that night? Watching football and other unintellectual nonsense. I despise the ignorance of TV snobs. You’re better than that, Chuck.

Last night I watched a one hour biography of Sarah Palin, hosted by Greta Van Sustern on the Fox News Channel. It will be on again today at 5pm PDT and 8pm EDT.