When I'm watching the six o'clock local news on channel 4 and I see Dan Lewis and Kathi Goertzen on the screen of my TV set, I know that at that moment they are sitting in the studio down on 4th Avenue near the Seattle Center speaking as I watch and listen. That's live. Then later in the evening, I switch over to channel 7 (CBS) and watch a rerun of Everybody Loves Raymond. Ray Romano and Patricia Heaton were live in the studio when they shot the show, but what I saw the first time around was not live, it was a tape. And the rerun is still a tape.

When I watch one of the Inspector Morse mysteries on my local PBS affiliate, that's a tape. John Thaw was live when they taped the show, but he (the actor who played Morse) died a few years ago. What I'm seeing on my TV screen is not live. Nor is the actor who played the lead role live. It's on tape.

When I watched a Grateful Dead concert on the tube, the announcer said, "And now, the Grateful Dead, live from—(wherever it was)." But by then, Jerry Garcia was dead, and the group had disbanded. The group, indeed, was dead. No way you looked at it was it live. Once. Not anymore.

Don't believe everything you hear on TV, Clinton. A lot of it—most of it—is sheer illusion, no matter what the booth announcer tells you.

(By the way, butt-scratching is always a big favorite. . . .)

Don Firth