WASHINGTON REPORT: The Entertainers
Getlein, Frank
official publications, to the near status of house organs. This is particularly apparent in the case of diocesan newspapers. It is a clich6 that the freedom of the press is never fully won, and...
...Adamo appears on solid ground...
...WASHLNGTON REPORT THE ENTERTAINERS It's professionally humiliating is what it is...
...Jack Levine, I think it was, finding his painting praised lavishly by some sawbones who claimed to have profited in his own weekend dabbling in oils by studying Levine and who rashly went on to inquire what Levine himself did for a hobby, Jack Levine said, "On Saturday, I like to do a little brain surgery...
...as yet there was a mere trickle of results, but my friend, a rabid supporter of Ed Sadlowski the challenger, had heard enough to reach his melancholy conclusion...
...Kissinger and Hunt, in their new incarnations, are the rankest kind of amateurs...
...no less certainly, Kissinger's jollying up of the press, a form of club date entertainment, was his greatest service to his master, as was evident from the things the press got into when it was not kept sufficiently amused...
...A day or two earlier, Henry Kissinger, the big bomber and bugger of the Nixon crowd, caused it to be made known that not only was he one of the big buck men in literature, on the basis 18 March 1977:164 of volumes still to be outlined, but that he had signed with NBC as a television entertainer for sums previously approached only by such fellow superstars as Sonny and Cher...
...The paradox is that it was all supposed to be so different by now...
...If all these crooks incompetent crooks, at thatMand their servants can have such easy access to our professions, why shouldn't we have the same to theirs...
...She has, after all, exactly as much experience in crooked politics as Nixon has in popular entertainment...
...It was a classic and possibly the last of its kind...
...He can claim vindication of his leadership...
...Likewise, Kissinger, before he hit it big with Rocky, had published his later well-known piece of hagiography on Prince Metternich, but that doesn't count, either: when written, it was a punch in the ticket of academic advancement, had nothing at all to do with its writer's contemplated new professions as best-selling author and public entertainer...
...There ought to be some kind of turn-about-is-fairplay involved here...
...What's more, at least at first, the one-shot spots weren't selling very fast among the nationals...
...Until they have the courage to make demands and to fight, the official Catholic Press token as a whole cannot be other than as described by Msgr...
...But there are others...
...The thing about Sonny and Cher, no matter what you think and I don't think much of them myself, is that they are professionals...
...There will be something appropriate, a sense of returning to beginnings, if the Dick and Dave Show ends up being sponsored by local used car dealers and in-and-out, one-time-only Pop record floggers...
...it would appear that they want a prudent union which will look out for them without too much conflict, getting along with management where possible for the good of the industry...
...Hunt and Kissinger are hardly the first, merely the latest, in a long line of failed Nixionians who have gone into literature and entertainment...
...Moore being known for her good taste and good humor, it may be that she is leaving television when she is precisely because she does not want to be associated with an industry that employs Nixon and Kissinger...
...Adamos and the Father Ed Byingtons, the editor who lost out in Fall River, who supply what lead there is...
...They do what they have always done, what they have worked at doing, what, within the rather strict limitations of their capabilities, they have at least tried to perfect...
...One feels like an independent dry cleaner, perhaps, watching the trade being taken over by the Mafia...
...Adamo...
...With the exception of the United Mine Workers, other unions vote during conventions now...
...The capo di tutti capi himself has equaled Kissiuger's twinned achievement as blockbuster best-seller writer and t~levision entertainer combined...
...Nice enough in themselves, both of them, but both so isolated, so accidental...
...What that tells us about those professionsmmy own, as it happens--is melancholy to say the most...
...E. Howard Hunt, the well-known burglar, got sprung from the pokey the other day and immediately flew to Boston to sign up with a lecture bureau...
...John Dean, the engaging little sneak who arranged for his own lifeboat and then pulled the seacocks on the rest, was the first, may quite conceivably have conducted literary negotiations as one element in his decision to cop a plea and point the finger...
...Accepting all of the administration's figures, its slate won by upwards of 80,000...
...Johnson's day, patriotism may have been the last resort of scoundrels...
...What's worse, Hunt has revealed that while tucked away he has become a painter and proposes now to gain his livelihood in part by the practice of that art...
...It will...
...Personalities enlivened and embittered the struggle, but they were not decisive because a legitimate issue predominated...
...Of course there are editors, some of them laity, who are fighting the good fight, without great fanfare...
...At the same time, freedom-of-the-press issues have not noticeably caught up the lay editor, the one who was supposed to bring new dimensions of freedom...
...Only 600,000 voted and that was considerably less than half of the eligible...
...FRANK GETLEIN 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 UNITED STEELWORKERS IeBRIDE FOR "When I seen them old guys pushin' in to vote, I knew we was licked...
...In such reflections, the professional can try to put a good face on this invasion of his craft by the criminals and political rejects...
...Father Karl Rahner's words of 1959 lose nothing of their pertinence in 1977: "If they [the ecclesiastical leadership] do not allow the people to speak their minds, do not, in more dignified language, encourage or even tolerate, with courage and forbearance and even a certain optimism free from anxiety, the growth of public opinion within the Church, they run the risk of directing her from a soundproof ivory tower, instead of straining their ears to catch the voice of God, which can also be audible within the clamor of the times . . . . " This quotation would seem to put the burden of responsibility for a free and open Catholic Press on the bishops and their clerical command, but it does not excuse the editor, clerical or lay, from demanding, indeed fighting for the freedom and openness without which their job cannot be adequately done...
...Indeed, so certain seemed the latter that observers were projecting as a problem of the future the job security of these lay editors committed to journalistic freedom...
...It will be a pretty point and a show biz barometer as to whether top dog or toady makes out better in the ratings, the box office and consequently in total take...
...Putting it another way, it is a long trip back to the John O'Connors and the Donald Quinns, lay editors who thought principle important enough to lay their editorships on the line over it...
...If you are a total failure as a crook or a sleazy politician, don't worry, you can always get a good job writing books or otherwise entertaining the public...
...It wasn't always thus...
...Not that the Show won't get the ratings...
...To the extent that anyone has been caught up, it has been, rather, the occasional priest-editor, the very one who was figured to be inhibited in the performance of his journalistic tasks because under a pledge of obedience to a bishop...
...Further consolation can be sought in the thought that Nixon and Kissinger always were entertainers anyhow: certainly Nixon's entire public career up until the presidency was concerned with the theatrical, not the substantive, aspects of political discourse...
...Tough on Dave, of course, but he did rush in where the nets had feared to tread and then, too, like so many before him, he has to grasp the cardinal rule for dealing with Nixon: Don't count on anything 'til the check has cleared the bank...
...And they get fired...
...When there is unemployment in a unionized facility, the proportion of older men working rises dramatically...
...The added tragedy is that it is not only the Catholic Press as entity that suffers as a result of all this, but the Church itself...
...But for once, perhaps the first time, American television advertisers are showing the sophistication to distinguish between brute, raw high numbers and the kind of atmosphere, texture, character, you want your product associated with...
...It was February 9, only one day after the gigantic United Steelworkers of America had conducted a nationwide election for its top officers...
...Msgr...
...in general, they are not so well paid as true steel workers, nor as union-oriented...
...Adamo speaks of a "loss of nerve" among editors, and about top talent being "cowed...
...The results are safe, inoffensive publications which, however bright and lively, are still unfree and managed...
...However, one must realize that USW is a conglomerate with more than half its members outside basic steel, which workers are not covered by the experimental no-strike agreement...
...The freedom challenge applies just as surely in religious journalism, except --unfortunately--the same journalistic sensitivities obviously do not come into play and the issue currently goes by the boards...
...Check Variety, but meanwhile note that the most heartening evidence of the classical link between selfinterest and the general welfare has been the extreme reluctance of American advertisers to have anything to do with the four-part special, two hours each, with which Nixon is starting his career in entertainment under the tutelage of David Frost...
...The majors---oil companies, for example--that usually grab the tab for public affairs shows and give them a very soft, often "informational" sell have unanimously turned down the chance for solo sponsorship of the series...
...There are indications that the controlling and surviving faction in the Steel union would rather not go through this sort of test again...
...If Nixon had had the imagination, for example, to have Balanchine do the original choreography, the Watergate break-in might still have ended the same way, but would have done so with style, class, pizzazz...
...Adamo's article, and our eyes, are to be believed, the official Catholic Press has settled comfortably back into its old obsequiousness...
...eventually they did and that was that...
...Meanwhile, however, there is the depressing fact that all these clowns, totally innocent of experience and, as far as is known, of talent, are rushing into literature, the lecture platform and the television tube and scoring resounding success...
...When the time is ripe, an attempt will be made to change the constitution so that referenda will be discarded, and voting for top office will be conducted at conventions...
...The truism of this is demonstrated time and again in the daily general press--as recently, in fact, as the Washington Post's rejection of the oblique Carter White House attempt to quash a story about CIA payments to a Middle East monarch...
...It is a curious reversal of roles, and of expectations...
...If Norman Lear's factory had had the contract for the Watergate dialogue, instead of the duds who did, we'd at least have had more laughs than we did and quite likely have got a glimpse of the ambiguities of public morality as well...
...The tragedy of their fate is compounded by the fact that, once removed, their places are filled by bureaucratic types---often clerics with little or no experience . . . . b in journahsm, but possessed of that precious ecclesiastical virtue: understanding of the bishop's mind and an ability to think as the bishop does...
...In Dr...
...In that conservative record was a controversial innovation, ENA, Experimental Negotiating Agreement, the essence of which is abandonment of the strike weapon even in contract negotiations...
...And evea then...
...He does not except the lay editor, who, he suggests, has been thoroughly institutionalized and has learned to survive all too well, thank you, in the woods of ecclesia...
...Why shouldn't she become a successful crooked politician, perhaps following a crash course at San Clemente...
...The purpose of the Adamo removal seems to indicate that this will be Camden's lot...
...if you threw out all the doubtful votes it still has a solid margin...
...It doesn't wash, of course, it never does...
...Later he called again to say that his gloom was fully justified...
...This was a long and bitter election campaign and wounds do not appear to be healing...
...The small turnout meant that the unemployed did not come out to vote, which hurt the challengers...
...Mary Tyler Moore, for example, is now retiring, or at least regrouping, after heading up the most popular and longest-running situation comedy in television history...
...On the other hand, of course, Ms...
...That was debated fiercely and attacked by Sadlowski as improper unionism...
...As it was, in all those days of arid, reluctant, inflated and self-serving testimony, only two laugh lines linger in the mind: Tony Ulasciewicz's professional contempt for the way the burglars bungled a fairly simple operation: "I can tell you this, I wouldna gone in there with no army," and the beautiful found-art quality of the burglar's apprenCommonweal: 165 tice, who, squatting over his radio in Howard Johnson's, startled by Howard Hunt's return with the call to Fly at once, all is discovered, asked plaintively, "Does this mean I can't go to Miami...
...But these can now be elassitied as historical phenomena...
...It appears to have been an idle concern...
...If the change is attempted there will be a mighty row, but the powers may decide: better one big final row than a succession of them...
...Sadlowski's slate had to win big in the basic steel locals of the Northeast and Midwest if it were to carry the referendum, but he noted that it was just scraping through...
...To the extent that that judgment can be verified in terms of "witnesses" and "victims," Msgr...
...If Msgr...
...Abel jumped right into the debate...
...Finally, the truth must be faced, however bitter...
...The laity who moved into the Catholic Press in such impressive numbers after World War II and through Vatican Council II were supposed to bring not only a new professionalism to the medium, but also a new openness...
...For those of us who have gained a moderate livelihood from writing, lecturing and performing for public entertainmentmin my own case, all three--the situation is exactly that of The Old Theater Cat who complained to that imprudent pussy, "Mehitabel, both our professions are being ruined by amateurs...
...The old favor the status quo and are cool to challengers...
...Interestingly enough, the administration slate fared better with these than with those directly affected by ENA, who are evenly 18 March 1977:166...
...The ultimate irony will be if the commercial rejection of Richard M. Nixon opens the door to discrimination, intelligence and quality as optional balances against pure numerology in television...
...Everyone recognized the virtual certainty that Canada and the South would turn in overwhelmingly for the administration slate...
...In our own, super-patriotic scoundrels find their last resort in literature and entertainment...
...In a way they were discovering what the members want their union to be...
...It is a clich6 that the freedom of the press is never fully won, and that it must be forever watched over and constantly re-energized...
...Abel, the retiring president, who had anointed Sadlowski's opponent, Lloyd McBride, as his chosen successor, laid his record on the line...
...The result will repay study because of what it reveals about American trade unionism and the mentality of the working force...
...Now it is the Msgr...
...Hunt, to be sure, during his long career in the CIA, used to while away the idle hours between bag jobs and drainpine shinnies by grinding out spy thrillers, but that doesn't count: half the curates in the Church of England have always done that: it's like crocheting...
...In the 1950s and well into the 1960s, there were some spectacular exercises of freedom of the press in Catholic journalism...
Vol. 104 • March 1977 • No. 6
