Letter: No box in the corner and proud of it
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Sir: We were infuriated by Reggie Nadelson's 'A box in the corner makes the world a better place' (25 February), which depicted a family like ours as sanctimonious misfits, just because there is no television at home.
Many people come to visit us, all of whom would laugh at the suggestion that we are remotely interested in grouse-shooting or that our surroundings are gentrified. Why do friends of our children prefer to be at our house than anywhere else, as has been the case ever since primary school? On his sixteenth birthday several of my son's school mates are going to come over for an evening's music-making. Yes, we too 'play musical instruments and talk a lot', but we do not see what is so bad about this.
We even go out from time to time and keep in touch with a cycle discernable in skies or trees, rather than in the 'new shows' on a screen that 'resonates with the cycle of the year'. Think what Ms Nadelson is missing] But we are not morally opposed to television, as she assumes. We simply do not have enough time for it at home. Any television we watch elsewhere we appreciate, probably more than do people for whom it is a familiar background phenomenon.
I would never belittle what television reporters did for Ethiopia, but it is frightening to read that the famine 'took place on television': it did not. For the people concerned it took place in the Ethiopian dust. Other horrors, which do not get television coverage, get forgotten, because people find it hard to imagine them. When our children were younger, I read to them nightly in order to stimulate their imaginations.
By using the telephone, computer, radio and the Independent newspaper, none of which is exactly 'Victorian', and through our friends of many nationalities and of all ages, surely we cannot be 'entirely withdrawn from the mainstream'. My daughter (17) has just won a prize in a national competition, a visit to the European Parliament in Strasbourg. This particular 'peculiar case' very much resents being labelled as a 'know-nothing' who will be unable to vote intelligently.
The tribal metaphor Ms Nadelson uses is the wrong way round. It is the conventional people who behave tribally, by turning on anyone who contradicts their received ideas. As for her literary allusion, Samson in Gaza was not eyeless by choice, but because of what was inflicted upon him by the uncomprehending oppressor.
Yours sincerely,
ALISON HOBBS
Old Cwmbran, Gwent
26 February
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments