A familiar paranoia is gripping Washington. As it has every so often since the inception of television broadcasting, the Congress is leading a charge against the so-called consummate evil.

These days they blame the cathode-ray devil for instigating the violence that blights the American landscape, as they have before blamed it for sexual promiscuity and the perennial under-performance of American students. Television is a popular target for legislative crusaders, largely because it is a devil, which promises to be far easier to exorcise than the real ones it sometimes echoes.

This recent round of congressional hearings on TV violence seems to have produced nothing more than a vague commitment from broadcasters to play warnings before "violent" programming. If these warnings operate anything like those imposed on the record industry by then-PMRC chair Tipper Gore, all they will accomplish is to enhance the success of shows which bear them.

The hearings, however, also witnessed talk of forcing television manufacturers to place lock-out devices on all new TVs--the ongoing Congressional hearings on TV violence could lead to legislating that clamps down on broadcasters' freedom. For that reason alone, the otherwise ridiculous spectacle of Senator Paul Simon attempting to pin the savagery of guns and knives in the hands of Crips and Bloods on the likes of "MacGyver" and "G.I. Joe" should be taken seriously.

If we are to believe Senator Simon's assertion that the TV, insidiously taking hold of one's brain, forces the hapless viewer to imitate of all the behavior depicted thereon, we may deduce from the Senator's wardrobe that it has been a long time since he watched. The idea that a man who is known more for his garish bow ties and his grotesquely proportioned earlobes may well decide what can and cannot be beamed into American households is just as frightening as America's violence problem.

But if Senator Simon's performance was odd, then Ted Turner's was disgraceful. The industry's Judas, Turner pilloried broadcasters for showing violent programming. Aflame with righteous indignation, he claimed an obvious causal connection between the violence in television programming and that of America's streets.

If Turner is serious, perhaps we can look forward to a TNT devoid of John Wayne movies. It's ironic enough that a crusader against violence should name one of his networks after a high explosive.

Yet Turner also gingerly avoided mentioning the violence on CNN--after all, seeing real people blown to pieces in Sarajevo is far more disturbing than seeing Tom get clobbered by Jerry. Though Turner could take the point that children--the group which both he and the committee deemed most affected--do not ordinarily watch CNN, his inconsistency betrays the basic conceit of TV-bashing.

For the elite (or more accurate, those who consider themselves a part of the elite), the pleasure of watching TV is a guilty one. Anyone who has talked about TV with Harvard students well knows that "I hardly watch any TV--just the news" is a common boast. To admit that watching TV is sometimes more fun than reading a book is a heretical apostasy--the entertainment of TV is steeped in sin.

Blaming TV, then, has the satisfying character of a righteous act. For scientific support, the TV-blamers enlist the child psychologists. They crow about the dangers of exposure to violence on TV, for the moment.

Yet this field is less a science than a fashion--its tenets fluctuate more capriciously than hemlines. If we are to trust these mealy-mouthed purveyors of truisms and (for the moment) take a stab at violent behavior by censoring television, it amounts to a running retreat on the real moral front.

There is no choice in behavior; what we think of as morality depends merely on correctly timed exposure to the right stimuli. TV becomes the latest in a litany of lame excuses for sociopathic behavior.

If the difference between law-abiding and destructive behavior is so simple, then maybe we should rethink the idea of a fundamental right to free expression--since free expression (violent television) would preclude freedom of action (the ability to choose not to be violent).

Even assuming for a moment that TV does wield the incredible influence Senator Simon and his intellectual cronies claim, the result would hardly be wanton violence. TV may be violent, but on TV the bad guys always get killed in the end and murderers are always uncovered.

The killing of any innocent character is invariably portrayed in such a maudlin, mawkish way that there can be no mistake about the moral status of the act. If TV shaped our behavior, then America would likely be a continent of self-righteous citizens out to exact justice in a morally simplistic world of good guys and bad guys--violent, perhaps, but not random.

For Senator Simon, Mr. Turner and their boosters to claim that TV causes random violence, they must plumb the depths of cynicism. Young people do perceive "the violent message" of television, but they are too stupid to absorb anything else, even if it is just as obvious. This comes from men of a generation, which relies on its children to operate its VCRs!

Intellectually lazy people are suckers for an easy target. Getting guns off the street, even after reaching a consensus that it is a worthy goal, would be a difficult task. Restoring hope to neighborhoods ravaged by the real cycle of violence would be expensive and uncertain.

But eliminating TV violence is, at bottom, a matter of flipping a switch. It has no apparent cost. It is a simple solution--to simple, in fact, to really solve anything.

In the end, if Senator Simon really wants to look at atrocious behavior on TV, he needn't go far. He should turn to C-SPAN. From the thievery of the House Post Office, to the gratuitous sexual overtones of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, C-SPAN is a virtual moral dunghill. What sort of an influence must such depravity have on the viewer?

I think Senator Simon would agree that C-SPAN should carry a warning: "This network depicts graphic hypocrisy, moral turpitude and duplicity. Viewers should be aware that this is ONLY the United States Congress. You should UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES imitate such behavior in real life."