(FORTUNE Magazine) – Easily the dumbest question raised on the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather during the holiday season just ended was the one proposed by Indiana housewife Elinor Vaprin and presented to the viewing audience as a conundrum that could well baffle King Solomon and his Council of Economic Advisers. Question: ''If, as the figures show, inflation is under control, why does everything cost so much?'' The CBS folks gave this subject an extraordinary amount of time and dramatized it with cameo appearances by an economist, a Wall Street analyst, and Mrs. Vaprin herself, depicted in a supermarket kvetching over the prices with lines like ''Just awful--skip it'' and, contemplating a box of cereal, ''Two dollars and 15 cents--unreal!'' Not having General Westmoreland's lawyer at our disposal, we have no way of knowing whether the outtakes show the lady crowing over a bargain in Wheatena. The question propounded by the Ratherites is dumb because it tells us that they think the inflation rate reflects the level of prices when, of course, it measures only changes in prices. The answers served up were even dumber, however. First answer, supplied by correspondent Ray Brady: ''One problem with the government inflation index is that it's a list of average prices, some up, some down.'' (But Ray, you're supposed to be explaining why ''everything'' costs so much.) Next Brady tackled Mrs. Vaprin's gripes about food costs. In a period when food prices as a whole have been relatively stable, he asked, ''Why does an item like cereal cost so much?'' Proposed explanation: ''Only a third of the cost of making that cereal comes from wheat and sugar. Most of the cost is for services, like transportation and advertising.'' (But Ray, the stable food prices we're talking about are measured after those costs are factored in.)

And they have a solid 13 rating--unreal!