TV can make you smarter

I used to think I was “vegging out” when I was watching “Seinfeld” (every single night) or “West Wing” (when I can remember it).

I was actually improving my mind. Who knew?

Steven Johnson did, that’s who. Johnson, my new pal, has penned “Everything Bad is Good for You” (Riverhead, $23.95).

Johnson, not the former Rockland police officer, is the former editor of the online magazine Feed and has penned a number of books on science and technology.

Johnson has leapt on a statistical quirk in IQ tests, which have shown a steady increase of about three points per decade. The increase is so persistent that a person in the top 10 percent in 1920 would end up either in the White House or among the bottom third in the country today. The increase is across the board, for rich children at Choate and poor inner city children working their way through substandard schools.

I would guess that there are as many theories for this phenomenon as there are unemployed sociology majors. But I like Johnson’s the best.

Everybody blames television for everything from violence to teen acne. Not our boy Johnson. He said the maturing of television from “Gilligan’s Island” and “Starsky and Hutch” to my very favorite show, “The Sopranos,” allows us to employ “the part of our brain that monitors the emotional lives of the people around us – the part that tracks subtle shifts in intonation and gesture and facial expressions – and scrutinizes the action on the screen looking for clues.”

We part company with Johnson on his praise of the curse of this new century, reality shows, which in fact have exactly nothing to do with reality, no matter how much bug eating is involved.

He writes: “We absorb stories, but we second guess games. Reality programming has brought that second guessing to prime time, only the game in question revolves around social dexterity rather than the physical kind.”

We stay parted in his praise of video games, which I am too dumb to operate. But he notes that “Grand Theft Auto,” the violence-riddled game that has been decried from the pulpit and classroom, has an instruction guide of 53,000 words, or about the length of Johnson’s book.

I promise that I will never play any game that requires a 53,000-word introduction.

The best I can do is my nightly viewing of “Seinfeld” and my habitual rentals of “The Sopranos.”

I have only recently discovered, thanks to the assistance of televisionologist Mark Preston, that Superman appears in virtually every episode of “Seinfeld.” (Look for the statue in the cabinet.) The episode of “Bizzaro World,” in which Jerry, George, Kramer and Elaine find their opposite sides walking the streets of New York City, is based on the first Superman comic.

“Hello, Newman!” remains one of the funniest continuing gags ever.

And some people thought I was just wasting my time, watching a comedy show.

“The Sopranos” is the second best show ever to appear on television, finishing behind only the classic “Lonesome Dove.”

I recently watched the first three years of the HBO gangster drama, thanks to the magic of Netflix. I was never bored for a second, even after watching them back to back for hours at a time several nights in a row. The humor in the show, which sometimes spreads over several episodes (often at the expense of the bumbling FBI), is much more evident in such an orgiastic viewing.

Now, when I am criticized by worker bees, like Blue Eyes, who would much rather sand her woodwork than watch television, I can reply that I am actually improving my mind, which can use all the help it can get.

Just ask my new pal, Steven.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.