Life's too short for TV. (Scan).(Brief Article)

Two years ago, back when I worked in television, I got a chance to serve as a judge for TV's Emmy awards. I was an ABC news staffer, and helped judge the news category. I voted for things like a National Geographic story about an elephant that got its foot blown off and needed a prosthetic, an ahead-of-its-time 60 Minutes story on smallpox risks, CNN footage of the carnage wrought by limb-hacking rebels in Sierra Leone, and an ABC piece on asthma.

I dealt harshly with goofy items such as a Dateline story about a dentist who brutally manhandled his child patients, though the piece contained such entertaining and memorable lines as: "But Debbie found there were no clowns or magic shows at this office--only a dentist who didn't care about children or their parents."

How did my favorites fare when the Emmys were finally announced? I'll confess: I didn't even own a television any more by the time the awards were aired. In an astonishing coincidence, my television broke about two weeks after I left ABC News--I ...