Toddler eating with cartoons

What is everyone's opinion on this? Lately my two year old refuses to come to the table for dinner (he just started refusing everything though, going to bed, putting on shoes, getting in the car, you name it, so maybe it's just the terrible twos) and will basically only eat if he's allowed to watch cartoons at the same time. You can feed him literally anything at that time, however it drives me insane, how zombified he looks and I swear he doesn't know where he is, or what he is. It feels very wrong and I am trying hard to have dinners without TV, as we used to most of the time, but it comes at a price of tantrums and occasional sending him to bed without dinner. The question is whether this is a worthy battle?