Seth Godin – writer, blogger, and marketer extraordinaire – seems to have the same opinion about TV as me.

Check what he wrote in a post today called “Deliberately uninformed, relentlessly so (a rant).”

“Many people in the United States purchase one or fewer books every year.

Many of those people have seen every single episode of American Idol. There is clearly a correlation here.

Access to knowledge, for the first time in history, is largely unimpeded for the middle class. Without effort or expense, it’s possible to become informed if you choose. For less than your cable TV bill, you can buy and read an important book every week. Share the buying with six friends and it costs far less than coffee.

Or you can watch TV.

The thing is, watching TV has its benefits. It excuses you from the responsibility of having an informed opinion about things that matter. It gives you shallow opinions or false ‘facts’ that you can easily parrot to others that watch what you watch. It rarely unsettles our carefully self-induced calm and isolation from the world.”

I LOVE this guy!

I’d also love to hear how you stay informed. How do you get your news? Who do you listen to? What are you reading and how does it make you a better you?

~TV STiNKS

About once a week, my wife takes our kids to our local library where our girls procede to check out about 50 books at a time and our son tries to pull everything off the shelves. Any book is fair game but they sometimes come back to the same stories again and again. They’re into books about girl things like ballerinas and princesses and the Civil War – typical 4 and 6-year-old things. We’ve learned not to limit what our girls are interested in and we can see how amazingly intrigued they are in so many different topics.

What are you doing to promote voracious reading appetites in your kids? I’d love to hear your ideas!

~TV STiNKS