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Each generation lays claim to innovations that change the course of society's norms. In my day, it was the television. Families couldn't wait to gather around the boxy-looking rectangle cabinet in the living room and miraculously watch people come to life on the small screen. It was such a fantastic leap from the family radio hour that it didn't occur to any of us that television might become a bad thing. Truthfully, our Moms were happy to park us kids in front of the box for hours at a time. It kept us out of trouble and out of her hair.

But with each generation's new inventions comes a myriad of opinions, ideologies and good intentions. I have, however, lived long enough to see many of those ideologies born of subjective opinions and good intentions, disintegrate in the face of a healthy dose of common sense. And folks, common sense would tell you television is not the big, bad enemy. Common sense dictates that isolating a child from the society in which we live is not the best approach to guiding him into becoming a responsible, well-rounded adult. Like it or not, we're living in the twenty-first century, and that entails all that goes with it, including the sometimes educational and entertaining, sometimes immoral and vulnerable, social institution of television.

When we're handed that little bundle in the delivery room and we stare in awe at the wonder of our own creation, most of us are filled with overwhelming love and a sense of responsibility for this tiny human being who's been placed in our care.

We agonize over the right way to feed him, when to feed him, guide him when he's learning to walk, talk. We place constraints on cabinet doors and over electrical outlets, purchase protective clothing and special seats. In short, we set about on a long journey of protective training. We can't remove everything from society that might harm him, but we can teach him how to navigate through the perils.

Is television to be considered a peril? It can be. Television is a reflection of the society in which we live; imperfect, violent, rude, yet nurturing, benevolent, spiritual, agnostic and just about any adjective you can name, both positive and negative.

In our culture of pop idealism, our current FCC regulations have relaxed its censorship and loosely defined its standard of morality by instituting a ratings scale, something we old-timers didn't have to contend with. In my day, a ratings scale meant whether or not you liked the program.

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