Bring Back the Idiot Box!

Campaign 2008 is and will continue to be full of inaccuracies on all sides. This is not to say "all" information is bad. Here's a humorous tidbit that shows a disingenuous Obama ad. I focus on Obama for reasons obvious at the top right of this blog. This comes from a writer I like named James Taranto (available at the "Best of the Web" link in the list at right). Check this short insight:

Obama decries the decline of the TV tube industry. What's next, buggy whips?

"A new television ad released Wednesday by Sen. Barack Obama's campaign highlights the closure of Corning Inc.'s plant in State College, Pa., and accuses Washington with Sen. John McCain's help of selling out the workers," the Associated Press reports.

So what did Corning make at the plant? The ad, which you can see here, does not say, but the AP story does: "glass tubes for television sets and computer monitors."

It's hard to remember now, but in the olden days TV sets and computer monitors used a technology called cathode ray tubes. A CRT consisted of an electron gun that projects an image onto a fluorescent screen. In most cases the gun had to be some distance from the screen, with the entire assembly enclosed in glass, which meant that TVs were bulky and boxy (hence the term "idiot box").

In modern times, the CRT has given way to superior technologies such as plasma and liquid crystal, which take up less space and provide superior picture quality. This is an enormous blessing to all Americans who watch TV or use computers.

It's hard to imagine a more backward-looking position than mourning the decline of the picture-tube industry. What'll Obama do next, promise to restore American supremacy in the manufacture of buggy whips, iron lungs and floppy disks? HF1