When I got this assignment, I set out to try and understand the latest salvos in the great TV debate. I’d planned to do a sensibly journalistic, fully objective treatment of both sides. Then I realized that, especially as a dad, that’s nearly, if not totally, impossible.

My wife and I have operated under the notion that I’d ascribe to most people — we allow our son, Owen, age 2, to watch some television, though we worry about him watching too much. We’ll give into the pressure a little too often, pushing in a Teletubbies or Elmo video when we need a mental break, or need to actually get something done.

It’s worth confessing here that I like TV, and maybe slightly more than the average bear. I watch enough shows regularly to have strong opinions about, and feelings for, fake people: Carrie on Sex and the City, Jack on Will & Grace, Donna on West Wing. I do feel like I know them. I, of course, hide behind my occupation as a "writer," tricking myself (but not others, I’m afraid) into thinking that watching these shows is really work, as if talking about them in important terms — "Sorkin’s gift for writing that crisp, banter-y dialogue makes these shows feel more like plays than movies" — will make them important, will turn them into high art.

And so, actually, I feel slightly ashamed of my own viewing habits. Why not include my son in my neuroses ("Paging Dr. Frasier Crane")? These overlapping guilts lead to a creeping sense of hypocrisy, whereby I deprive my son of watching Clifford: The Big Red Dog but, when he leaves the room, quickly switch over to Today so I can see Katie banter with Matt about listening to the Shrek soundtrack in her minivan. At least Clifford’s got a "big idea of the day" — usually something like "respect" or "sharing" — on at the end of every show. Katie and Matt just have Willard and his jelly jars every few days.

In the great American spirit of rationalization, I’ve convinced myself that my son — who goes to daycare during the week — actually watches less TV than a kid who stays at home full-time with a parent or a nanny. I know that occasionally his teachers roll in the television and slip in a video, but it’s certainly not every day. Owen has always been somewhat fickle about watching TV, and in this I see the tendencies that stay with you through adulthood. Sometimes, the dude just wants to chill out and watch the Teletubbies (or, in his lingo, simply "Tubbies"). Other times, he’s far too busy, and actually walks over and turns it off in favor of reading a book, coloring or building Lego towers.

After wading through the positive messages from the purveyors themselves, I found the Washington, D.C.-based TV-Turnoff Network, which appears to have a reputable staff and advisory board. I gave them a call they mailed me a packet of materials supporting a TV-free lifestyle, including the requisite bumper stickers. The one that made me chuckle was designed to mimic the warnings on cigarette boxes: "Surgoen Generel’s Warnig: Telivison Promots Iliteracy." They also feature some startling statistics, like the fact that the average 2- to 17-year-old viewer watches nearly 20 hours of TV per week. And that 73 percent of American parents would like to limit their kids ‘ TV-watching.

Writing this story forced the topic to the front of my mind, and as I chatted with friends and colleagues, even interview subjects for other stories, about various other topics, I often tried to sneak this one in. One friend told me that his kids watch about an hour of TV a month. It took me a full minute to stop saying "Wow." He and his wife both work, and have had a full-time nanny since their now-7- and 9-year-old children were born. The nanny knows that no TV is the rule. "And the nanny’s a TV junkie" in her off-hours, my friend tells me.

In an odd turn of events, two days later we go with another family on a Sunday outing, loading three adults and three kids comfortably into their family minivan, one of the new, decked-out Honda Odysseys. The high-end versions of these veritable cruise ships on wheels have a VCR and video screen installed; the player sits in the middle console up front, and the screen flips down from the ceiling just behind the front seats. Our hour-plus trip was nearly silent. We could’ve ridden for days it seemed, despite the fact that we had three sub-6 year olds in the car.

I’m starting to come to grips with the idea that this is just how it is, that we live in an information and media drenched society. We can’t stop it, as the wise man said, we can only hope to contain it. Then, as I’m putting all my thoughts together, I come across one more thing that makes me throw my hands up.

Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death is a book I read in college that paints a stark picture of what TV is doing to us, and our children. He spends 163 pages undermining just about every idea set forth by the Cable in the Classrooms and PBS’s of the world, namely that "educational television" is a contradiction in terms. While his data is old — the book was published in 1985 — his arguments likely have more, not less, relevance.

And his voice, while somewhat histrionic, does echo in my ears: "Like the alphabet or the printing press, television has by its power to control the time, attention and cognitive habits of our youth gained the power to control their education."