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The TV Window to Other Worlds

Readers respond to an Op-Ed essay on learning through watching.

 Credit...MISHKO

To the Editor:

I was touched by Rob Henderson’s cogent reflection on and appreciation for the outsized role TV played in forming his understanding of America’s elite culture and enabling him to navigate it (“I’m Not Rich, I Just Watch a Lot of TV,” Sunday Review, Oct. 11).

His essay made me grateful for all such external stimuli that expand my world, whether comic books (which I devoured as a kid), newspapers, books, movies, art, music or, yes, even TV.

Addy Whitehouse
Waukesha, Wis.

To the Editor:

When I was growing up as a lower-middle-class kid in an Alabama cotton town, necessity often dictated that I successfully navigate worlds as disparate as those of sharecroppers and gentry. With parents from backgrounds a rung below even mine and my siblings’, I realized early on that to learn the spoken and unspoken languages of the worldly and educated, I was going to need tutors.

So I had a smile on my face as I read Rob Henderson’s essay affirming that my consciously attempting to adopt the quick wit, eloquent delivery and confidence of television characters like Hawkeye Pierce and Alex P. Keaton hadn’t been such a bad idea after all. These characters enhanced my perspective on “the educated” and added to the chorus of other voices in my life that were encouraging aspiration to more than just financial success.

The essay left me recommitted to the inherent value in perpetually examining what I want, what I do and why I do it.

Paul Colson
Birmingham, Ala.

To the Editor:

If only we could learn what motivates some people to look beyond themselves and to aspire to do more than what life seems to offer them, as Rob Henderson did. His story certainly shows impressive accomplishments, and if it was television that inspired him, so be it.

The turn-on can come from so many different sources — sports, an individual role model, even comic books. The important element is learning, and eventually recognizing that education is the key to success for anyone, regardless of one’s social or economic background.

Miriam Kagan Margoshes
Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 22 of the New York edition with the headline: The TV Window to Other Worlds. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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