European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - October 23, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse                                The tube s multiple choices Are fit for a Boob Andy Rooney they do a lot of announcing about All the new channels we re going to be Able to Geton out to sets pretty  big Deal according to what i read is the advanced satellite technology with a dish that s about the size of. Well. A dish. A pie plate at the most. This new dish they say will bring into your Home 140 channels. Or did i read 1,200 channels i forget. I forget because i Don t care. If they la please Pardon me i Don t want any More television channels. I already have More channels than i d Ever look at if i lived to be 100. What i want from television is not More but better. Diversity and Competition among companies is the american Way but like every place else where com petition is rampant it has led to a diminution of the Quality of what comes into our Homes. Big Compa Nies always end up deciding that junk Sells better and to More people than Quality. That s what has happened on television. There s a lot of junk that was produced cheaply and they re dumping it into All those channels and killing anyone who Ever tried to produce Quality programming i was leafing through the sunday newspaper television listings recently. The wonderful thing about them is i can never Tell when anything is on and nothing i Williams m. London England read about is anything i want to watch anyway. Here were just a few of the choices i was presented with a couple of weeks ago Simpsons. Sideshow Bob gets a Pardon from Pris on and joins the Springfield mayoral  hardball. Mike ends up having the Best hitting game of his life after indulging in pregame sex with his  internal affairs. A detective investigates the suspicious dealings of two police officers and the ritualistic murder of a prostitute. 4 hours motorcycle racing. From Delmont a. Taped Como Hay Gente Silver Gurnza. Silvia final Enrique Guzman. Una Pareja do Estafy adores e impose Tores causal Muchos probe cams y  quilting from the heartland. Strips Are Cut at a 45-degree Angle and Chain sewn together to form the Star Flower  i Don t know How much that show quilting from the heartland would Cost but i decided not to sub Gradisher Usa does this thing have an Oft Button or shall i just get the sledgehammer scribe to it. I m going to wait until they make a movie of it starring Tom Hanks and i Don t want to ruin it by knowing How it comes out. We bought a satellite dish for our House in the country several years ago because we re a Long Dis Tance from the nearest City and we Don t get Cable. We wanted to watch the Republican and democratic conventions and that was the Only Way to get them. There were a few other things like the . Open Tennis championships that we wanted to watch. For some reason i was under the impression that when you bought a dish everything up there came cascading Down out of the heavens free. I should have known better. The most frequent words that come up on our screen when the dish is Active Are no subscription for this service. There s a lot to be said for television in Australia where they have just three channels Tribuno Media services Andy Rooney is a former stars and stripes reporter. Trying to see reality amid slavery act by Mike littwin Baltimore Sun f you have been to Virginia s colonial Williamsburg you know what to expect. Lots of Candle making. And Ruly mobs of actors in period costume. You go to colonial Williamsburg to see 18th-Century american history in a Pretti fied Cobblestone Street sort of Way. Which is my favorite Way. You can stay in lodges with fireplaces. You can order roast boar cooked the Way George washing ton s Mother might have. It s history Lite. Which is Fine. It encourages time travel As amusement which makes it easy on the kids. Heck it s a vacation it s not mrs. Marsden s . History class. Which is the problem. Because recently on the Way to the barrel making exhibition you could have also seen slaves on an auction Block which puts us right Back into the Dis Nev scenario. / you know about the Disney history Park project that is now on hold. Early in the going Disney pro posed a virtual reality exhibit in which a visitor would experience a Day in the life of a typical slave. In your mind s Eye you can almost see Jiminy Cricket lecturing on the evils of slavery. Disney backed Down even before retreating on the entire project. But now colonial Williamsburg has stepped up. The year is 1773. And up on the Block Are four Black actors playing the roles of slaves. It in t pretty. It can t be pretty. It s slavery. Or slavery Lite. In one Case the husband is sold to one new Mas Ter and his pregnant wife to another she cried while clutching her swollen belly. Many of the peo ple who watched most of them White also cried. People applauded. Because it was a show. Can slavery Ever be a show even a tasteful show not everyone thinks so. There was an angry Demon stration before the mock slave auction although even some of the demonstrators later admitted they were moved by the show getting people to cry at a slavery re enactment is not a hard thing. But is it a Good thing you wipe your eyes shake your head and then March away from the auction Block and Over to the soap making exhibition. History does not come easily. Ask the people at the smithsonian whose exhibit on the 50th anniversary of dropping the bomb on Hiroshima has caused such controversy. Was America right or wrong to drop the bomb should we even ask slavery is a tougher topic. In school we get the Short version of history african slaves were brought to our shores. They were treated badly. In other words like slaves. A great civil War freed them. The one thing that All countries have in common is that they Don t like to dwell on what you might Call the negative aspects of history. We like heroes. We give them special Days. Man s inhumanity to Man is a Little harder to teach. It used to be worse. Where i grew up not far from Williamsburg slavery was taught As an almost benign institution seen in terms of the White Man s Burden. If you visited colonial Williamsburg in that period you did t see Many Black people even though in 18th-Century Williamsburg the population was half slave. Times change. Now you Sec Black actors As slaves. You can visit slave quarters at a nearby plan tation. If you re presenting 18th-Century America with anything like accuracy it s hard to ignore slav Ery As an institution. But How can you bring it  without trivializing it slavery remains with us. You can t separate slav Ery from our racial problems today. The anger re Mains. Bring up the Confederate Flag and Sec How much anger remains. What can we do there is a move for the smithsonian to build a museum of african american history. Jesse Helms the benighted senator from North car Olina blocked the latest Effort. There will be others. That could be a Start. If a museum treated slavery in much the Way that the holocaust museum in Washington treats the nazi persecution and enslave ment and mass murder of jews it might work the holocaust museum is a House of horrors that will make you weak with anger. It will also make you learn. And it will assure that you never forget at colonial Williamsburg you might not forget either the problem is you might not have any idea what you re remembering. T. Los Angeles Timos Washington Post news Sonvico Claronce Pago is on  23. 199$ sunday Page 9