During the Clinton impeachment year, one got used to viewing television with a trigger finger on the remote, lest the children overhear with too much precision what all the fuss was about. My children are older now, but I still find myself in great sympathy with those home-schooling religious types who simply abjure television and radio altogether; walling off their homes and their lives from the putrescence that swirls outside. As it is, we man the cultural battlements with an ever-increasing sense of futility. When the reporter following every hiccough of the Scott Peterson trial appears on screen, we may...
