Good is bad, bad is good; Big Bird and Big Brother

Last month, Mark Felt, former Assistant Director of the FBI admitted to being “Deepthroat,” the high-level Justice Department official who was the secret background source for the Watergate stories in the Washington Post in the early 1970’s that eventually pressured President Richard Nixon to resign.

Nixon didn’t just want to win re-election in 1972, this time he wanted to win big, so that he could claim a mandate.

Burglars broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate office building in order to know the Democrats' strategies. They wanted to plant bugs, and they wanted to dig up dirt on the Democratic candidates in order to discredit them.

Thanks to the Post’s investigative reporting by Carl Bernstien and Bob Woodward, was only part of a much bigger campaign of intimidation, corruption, and “dirty tricks.”

Nixon seemed to have thought that because he was the President, he was somehow “above the law.” But the whole point of the United States is to be a governed not by men or political parties, but by laws and regulations.

Felt (Deepthroat) should’ve been lauded as a hero, but instead the mainstream media (not just Fox News, mind you, but all the networks and CNN) brought out all the President’s men instead, who proceeded to slander Felt’s character as someone who broke the law and violated the trust of his superiors.

Hello? Who broke the law? Who violated the trust of the American people? Chief among these Nixon defenders was Charles Colson. Colson is now a Conservative-Christian pundit who founded a prison fellowship ministry, but for Colson to portray Felt as some kind of sinner is the ultimate in hypocrisy.

I think that instead of the “love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you…turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, give them the shirt off your back (Matthew 5)” theology of Jesus and ‘the Bible,’ Colson subscribes more to the “the ends justifies the means” doctrine of Machiavelli’s ‘the Prince.’ Nixon’s followers believed that they were the only people morally qualified to control the country, therefore it didn’t matter what they did to guarantee that they remained in power.

Things haven’t changed much in thirty years. Last week the Republican controlled Congress decided to cut funding for the Corporation of Public Broadcasting (CPB) by 46%. That means that “Sesame Street” may be on the chopping block. Some PBS stations won’t be able to offer local programming, like the “Market to Market” and Iowa State Fair coverage we enjoy on IPTV, a few stations may shut down entirely.

Why? Because some Republicans don’t like it when PBS and NPR news programs fail to report on Bush policies in the most favorable light possible. Public broadcasting was created to be an objective, independent agency that is free both from political pressures and from commercial pressures of ratings. There motto used to be “If public television doesn’t do it, who will?”
Like Woodward and Bernstien at the Post, public tv and radio should take a skeptical and challenging position toward any administration, Republican or Democrat. That’s what a free press is for.

But first Bush made Kenneth Tomlinson chairman of the CPB, a man who spent $10,000 to scrutinize the content of “Now,” a PBS news magazine hosted by Bill Moyers, because he didn’t think Moyers was “Fair and balanced” enough. Of course, to Tomlinson (like for Sean Hanity and Rush Limbaugh) “fair and balanced” means biased in favor of the Bush Whitehouse.
Tomlinson would’ve loved to make PBS stand for the “Propaganda Broadcasting System.” Who is Bush nominating to replace Tomlinson? Patricia de Stacy Harrison, a high ranking State Department official who’s a former co-chair of the Republican National Committee. Does that sound like someone objective? Unbiased? Fair? Balanced?

Besides, wouldn’t you think that the head of public broadcasting should be- oh I don’t know- someone with a background in television? Radio? Journalism? Education?

I honestly haven’t figured out if this is all part of the right-wing philosophy that wants to privatize any and all social programs so that all the Federal government is involved in is the military, or if it’s more sinister. An attempt to exert one-party control over every aspect of our culture- “total” control (as in “totalitarianism”).

Maybe I’m over-reacting here, but either way, but it seems like things we were always taught were good, right, and helpful: standing up for what’s right, reporting crime, freedom of the press, free speech, and public television are all things that are under attack by the very people who claim moral superiority.

Happy Birthday Idiot Box

Today is the anniversary of one of the most important events in all of history. This is the 79th birthday of perhaps the most powerful invention to ever change the world. On January 27, 1926, a Scottish inventor named John Baird gave the first public demonstration of a television in London.

Baird operated two ventriloquist dummies in front of a camera. He just showed their heads, so that viewers couldn’t see him working them. a German scientist had actually patented a television system in 1884. Baird also made the first trans-Atlantic broadcast from London to New York over phone lines and came out with the first color TV in 1928.

Frequent broadcasts to a few homes began in New York that same year. Regular television broadcasts began in the United States in 1939, and permanent color broadcasts began in 1954. By the late fifties, televisions were in a majority of American homes.

Television had a unifying effect on the nation for the second half of the twentieth century. Since there were only three major networks and the Public Broadcasting System in the airways, Americans had television in common. Southerners and Northerners both watched ‘I love Lucy.’ Easterners and Westerners watched ‘Dick Van Dyke.’ City dwellers and country folks all watched ‘I Dream of Genie.’ Television wore away at regional differences and cultural divides. TV made the myth of a “melting pot” a reality. America was no longer a deli tray of Monterey Jack, Cheddar, and Provolone; it was finally becoming a Velveeta fondue.

Television shed light on our wrongs and influenced us toward reform. Television exposed Northerners to the injustices of Southern segregation. It brought the horror of the Vietnam War into comfortable suburban living rooms. It chronicled the Watergate hearings.

We all remember fondly gathering around our families sets to mourn President Kennedy, to pray for the Apollo Astronauts, to listen to Bing Crosby and laugh at Bob Hope and Johnny Carson, and to cheer for our Olympic Hockey team.

When people my age were kids it was clear that there were patterns we could count on from TV. Local news at five and six, world news sandwiched between at five-thirty. A lively game show at six-thirty was followed by “the family hour at seven;” kid-friendly situation comedies like ‘Happy Days’ and ‘the Brady Bunch.’

Younger Elementary school kids were sent off to bed, or at least bath, at eight so that the grown-ups could watch those more edgy sitcoms with mature themes like ‘Maude,’ ‘All in the Family,’ and ‘M*A*S*H.’ Once those kids were safely asleep, adults settled in for the romantic dramas, detective shows or mini-series. Local news again before bed, Carson and Tom Snyder if they couldn’t sleep.

Weekdays were filled with soap operas. Saturday mornings were always cartoons. Sunday mornings were public affairs and weekend afternoons were sports. That structure made you feel like you knew what to expect and where and when to look for what you wanted or what to avoid.

Back then we believed that America owned the airways together, so our government regulated them. Who could own TV stations, how many they could own, no obscenity was allowed, both political parties had to be given equal-time, even a minimum amount of children’s and educational programming was required.

Then came the advent of cable, and now satellite- not to mention the Regan, Gingrich, and Bush W “revolutions” of de-regulation and corporate welfare. Television wasn’t a utility, it was a commodity. If viewers paid for programming, then there were no limits for content, language, or nudity. The government could stand between the trash and your living room so long as it was over the airwaves that everybody owned, but if you pay for it, you’re inviting it in- if you didn’t want it, you wouldn’t have paid for it.

Today reality shows are on some channel any hour of the day. Daytime talk show guests air their dirty laundry all day long. And we are bombarded with commercials for lingerie, birth control, venereal disease treatments, and erectile dysfunction aids at any hour on any channel. If American culture has declined, if we are more coarse, less civil, more sensual, more violent can we blame each other or do we have to blame ourselves? Of course there is the age old question, does TV REFLECT society, or SHAPE it?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m the first guy to support the First Amendment. I enjoy the edginess of’ Law and Order’ the witty sarcasm of ‘the Simpsons’ and the gory details of ‘CSI’ as much as anyone. I’ve even been drawn in by the relationship dynamics of ‘Sex in the City’ on occasion, but would it be so bad to have at least SOME boundaries? Would it be so difficult or some how Socialism to have well structured guidelines for when certain shows are shown?

The anniversary of TV may be a good time to remember what Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Newton Minow had to say to National Association of Broadcasters back in 1961.

He’s the one who called TV “a vast wasteland.”

“When television is good, nothing--not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers--nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you--and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.

You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience-participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western badmen, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And, endlessly, commercials--many screaming, cajoling and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you will see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, try it."

Minlow believed that television should serve "the public interest?" Some say the public interest is merely what interests the public. And in a day and age when so few corporations own and control the media, their bottom line is the bottom line. GE owns Universal/NBC, which includes USA, Discovery, History & Learning channels, MSNBC etc. Viacom owns CBS, MTV, VH1, CMT, Nickelodeon etc. Disney owns ABC, ESPN, HGTV etc. FOX and AOL/Times-Warner own pretty much everything else. They pander to our lowest common denominators. What makes money.

Government has been complicit in this corruption. The current administration’s philosophy is less regulation, less oversight, less competition, less law and order, more law of the jungle, more law of natural selection (Darwin); the survival of the fittest TV network, and fit means fat. Get kids hooked early on sex, violence and consumerism and you guarantee the advancement of your feces (I’m sorry, I mean species). Minlow had a better vision:

“Television and all who participate in it are jointly accountable to the American public for respect for the special needs of children, for community responsibility, for the advancement of education and culture, for the acceptability of the program materials chosen, for decency and decorum in production, and for propriety in advertising. This responsibility cannot be discharged by any given group of programs, but can be discharged only through the highest standards of respect for the American home, applied to every moment of every program presented by television. Program materials should enlarge the horizons of the viewer, provide him with wholesome entertainment, afford helpful stimulation, and remind him of the responsibilities which the citizen has toward his society.”

This will no doubt be one of those columns that will have my Republicans saying things to me like, “Clean up TV? Ted, you’re starting to sound like a conservative!” You’re absolutely right. I’m a social conservative Democrat. The current government, controlled by people who call themselves “neo-cons” are the radical libertarians at least where culture is concerned. Minlow was appointed by John F. Kennedy.