The Great Gadfly

By Peter Kenney

Calling today’s television a wasteland is an insult to wastelands everywhere. Television in America today is an indescribably vile and silly realm. Because there are too many cable channels and not enough content, production companies and networks reach ever deeper into the intellectual cesspool of television creativity just to fill their bandwidth and garner advertising revenues. Worst of all is the fact that there is so much programming aimed at young people that depicts nothing more or less than idleness, ignorance and false reality. Even tattoos have their own programs featuring pierced, punctured, clumsily illustrated and spaced-out sillies who are supposed to represent mainstream America. These people give trailer trash a bad name. Who is this breast-enlarged, lip-gloss queen called “New York” on one of the cable networks so-called dating shows? Her first season featured her pursuing that cultural icon Flavor-Flav and it has been downhill since then.

The Gadfly: Eyewitness to history
From the lofty perch of my sixtieth year I can survey much of American television’s history based on first-hand, personal observation. My first encounter with television was in the very early 1950s. I actually watched broadcasts of the original Senate McCarthy hearings and live press conferences with President Dwight D. Eisenhower. That was when the big three networks actually carried these press conferences live. Now they cover them after the fact almost as historical artifacts and air their own talking-head “experts” more fully. Of course, back then, presidential candidates were nominated by their party conventions, not by the media. Other than that I watched Ding Dong School, Superman, I Led Three Lives, Captain Kangaroo, Gunsmoke, The Jackie Gleason Show, Playhouse Ninety and a few other original programs. Boston’s Channel Two began as “Educational Television” two miles from where I lived. Other than that, our antenna picked up Boston’s channels 4, 5 and 7 plus (usually at night) channels 10 and 12 from Rhode Island. The entry of VHF stations into the Boston market with channels 38 and 56 came much later.

When news was news
News was news, not hairstyles and ego. By today’s standards our television was primitive, but it was head and shoulders above what is commonly available today. It featured first-rate drama, comedy and variety and the closest thing to reality television was Candid Camera. The soap operas were charmingly bizarre and all was well. Somehow we managed to convince ourselves that we were informed with two half-hour news broadcasts, one at six and one at eleven o'clock. Walter Cronkite read the news; he did not make it up or change its molecular structure.

Not to mention newspapers
Of course, we also had real newspapers and wide choices among the various papers available in each city. I grew up having four: the Boston Globe, the Herald-Traveler, the Boston Post and the Christian Science Monitor. There were morning and evening editions and even some late afternoon and later evening editions. Of course, there were also the mighty New York Times and Wall Street Journal, plus a Time magazine that held twice as many pages then as now.

 

Forget the CIA -- Send in the paparazzi
Things have certainly changed in media, but they have not improved. Consider the amount of time and resources being spent by dozens of national network and cable operations covering the meltdown of one twenty-six-year-old spoiled brat, Britney Spears. Why is her personal nightmare so important to anyone outside of her family and perhaps her hangers-on? What is the social or historical significance of the fact that she drinks, drugs, ignores her children, has blown up her career and drives like a maniac? How many millions of dollars are spent in a month by the media covering her? I have always found it fascinating that the world’s military and intelligence communities have so much trouble finding people such as Aidid in Somalia -- or any of a number of other terrorist dignitaries -- yet these same characters routinely hold press conferences for the world press. I bet that if we sent one hundred paparazzi each into Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan they would find Bin Laden within a week. Forget the CIA.

 

Doctor-patient-public confidentiality
Worst of all in this media meltdown is the gradual erosion of professional and ethical standards tolerated -- even encouraged -- by the old-line networks. Clinical psychologist Dr. Phil McGraw, hero of the Oprah Winfrey saga and multimillionaire television host, was called by Spears’ family to intercede with the dopey diva and try to lead her toward meaningful treatment. On most planets what transpires between a licensed caregiver and a patient/person needing help is strictly confidential. Not with Dr. Phil. He couldn't wait to tell the world how pathetic the strung-out songstress’s situation was. And then he had to proclaim that she needed both medical and psychiatric help. So much for confidentiality. I am sure that Spear’s two young sons will so glad to have this publicity albatross around their necks as they grow.

As wrong as he was to say anything about Spears or her condition, McGraw is merely one solitary ethics slut compared to the legions of them who run major media corporations. CBS comes to mind because Dr. Phil was given the platform of the CBS Early Show to spread his tripe across the nation. Where do media draw the line? At what point does an offense become so serious that a network will not be part of it by setting up cameras and lights and selling time?  Would CBS televise executions, crimes in progress...? Probably. They would probably call it economic opportunity due to the undoubtedly huge ad revenues they would enjoy. And why would the revenues be so high? Because millions of people would watch. What is wrong with us?

 

From teenage witches to dancing carpenters
There are series about spoiled-rotten housewives, spoiled-rotten kids, teenage witches who double as crime fighters, really screwed-up bounty hunters and even shows for folks who like to see animals being hunted and killed. The worst of all to me, just because I am a carpenter, are the home-improvement programs brought to us by HGTV (House and Garden TV). The so-called workers are all young and pretty (men and women both) and about as skilled as my Aunt Fannie. They are clearly actors, disc jockeys and assorted show biz wannabe types who sling tool belts over their fashionably grubby jeans and pretend to know what they are doing. They use power tools with a recklessness I have never seen in real life and they claim to perform makeovers in a matter of days that cannot be properly done in less than weeks. And -- for anyone who knows how to evaluate the workmanship and materials – calling it schlock is being kind. Worst of all are the antics they use to fill the shows’ running time. Bad jokes, dancing, singing, clowning around...and an occasional spurt of pneumatic nailing...this is what HGTV calls good television. These people would not even be allowed on the set of This Old House.

Kangaroo and Cronkite – report for duty
Think about this: as you read this piece there are American service men and women risking their lives far from home and family to do good things for people who probably would kill them if allowed the chance. They are building and re-building schools, hospitals and housing destroyed by our war. They are working hard to do what they think is right and to show people who nominally hate us that Americans care and are willing to help with their own hands. How many times have we seen these stories come out of the war zone? How much ink do these ordinary Americans get for their efforts and sacrifice versus the attention paid to a twenty-six-year-old multimillionaire drunk, drug-using air head who would rather party than tend to her two young children?

God, how I miss Captain Kangaroo and Walter Cronkite.