Sunday, January 31, 1999
TV causes blindness
BY PETER BRONSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
“Or-fay or-scay and even-say ear-yays ago ...”
I'd like to recite the Gettysburg Address in pig Latin on one of those Clinton impeachment cage matches on TV. Just to see if anyone out there is still listening.
“You looked pretty good,” callers would say. “You sounded like Sen. Robert Byrd quoting Ben Hur — but you looked OK.”
That's what counts in show business. It doesn't matter how things actually are. It only matters how they look. And the way they look on my TV lately is like a tanker-spill of raw, unrefined opinions. Like someone forgot to lock the door at the Home for the Criminally Obtuse. Like a circus train crashed and the clowns are running amok.
I've often wondered as I shoot through the all-Clinton channels with my hair-trigger remote: Where do they dig up these political poltergeists?
Now I know.
The insatiable appetite for opinions is so hard up, they have finally gotten around to me. Last week I was invited on ABC's Nightline, with Ted Koppel and four other editorialists. (Not that I'm keeping track, but that leaves only three minutes remaining on my 15-minutes-of-fame meter.)
“You are all journalists, so I think it's safe to assume that you are more intelligent than the lawyers we usually have on our show,” Mr. Koppel joked before the cameras rolled. He gave us each 120 seconds — which was more than enough to make him reconsider our combined IQ.
Each of our newspapers had called for the president to resign last September when Ken Starr tipped over the Clinton outhouse. Mr. Koppel was hoping one of us would break down and confess that doubting the president was a terrible sacrilege against the gospel of the almighty polls.
Mr. Koppel must not know many editorial writers. We are never wrong. And this case is no exception. Once we take a stand on principles, we don't race after polls like a dog chasing cars. The residents of TV Land will pluck out their own eyebrows if they offend a focus group. But the print world still has a few old-fashioned notions about integrity, consistency and convictions.
And that's what separates quaint, bowtie editorial pages from blow-dry TV. Gray, cerebral editorials strive for thoughtfulness and logic. Visual, emotional television spills out in a stream of consciousness, like Robin Williams on fast-forward, desperate to please and entertain.
Maybe that's why so many talking heads sound like the weasels at the president's law firm, Kendallsneer, Ruffupstarr & Harkindung. First the TV talkers whined that the House impeachment hearings were undignified. Now they gripe that the Senate is dignifying itself to death. But they don't want witnesses — no, that would be too sensational.
“It's bad TV,” they say in unison, so change the channel to soaps or Oprah. What a shame the Founders didn't have Jerry Springer around to add a chair-throwing clause to the rules for impeachment.
Mr. Koppel started our discussion by wondering if any of us had regrets about “the mess we are in.”
Objection. I don't see a mess. I see heroes, such as Sen. Mike DeWine, Rep. Steve Chabot, Rep. Henry Hyde and other House managers who are risking their political careers to stand up for what they believe is right. One senator, Russell Feingold, D-Wisc., actually honored his oath of “impartial justice” by voting against his party's shortcut to dismissal.
I've heard some of the finest oratory since Winston Churchill hailed a cab and Thomas Jefferson dined alone. But polls show 70 percent aren't paying attention. Could they be the same 70 percent who get all their news from TV? The same “majority” that cheers for an impeached president?
I added a few bricks to the tower of Clinton babble, without leaving any footprints on my tongue for a change. The next day I had e-mail and calls from all over the country.
And just as I was starting to get a real sweet tooth for all that ego candy, I picked up the phone and heard a voice that inspired me when I was 9 years old. It was my fourth-grade teacher from Ann Arbor.
“Straighten that out some,” she said, when I gave her my address using “oh's” where zeroes should be.
I straightened it out.
She also tried to straighten me out on the president, but I remain bent on impeachment, conviction, incarceration and a tar bath followed by a feather shower.
Still — if the best teacher I ever had supports the president, I guess all of the people on the other side are not imbeciles with “oh” integrity.
As Julius Caesar Lincoln said, “Overnment-gay of the eeple-pay, by the eepl-pay and for the eeple-pay shall not erish-pay from the earth.”
Translation: We will survive Clinton — but I'm not sure a nation of the TV, by the TV and for the TV can long endure.
Peter Bronson is editorial page editor of The Enquirer. If you have questions or comments, call 768-8301, or write to 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202.
Peter Bronson is editorial page editor of The Enquirer. If you have questions or comments, call 768-8301, or write to 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202.
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