Editorial/That Warm Oval-Shaped Vacuum
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
EDITORIAL THAT WARM OVAL-SHAPED VACUUM March 6, 1981 was a very sad day in television land. Dr. Cronkite presided over his very last edition of the CBS "Evening News." Then he was gone. We all...
...He was pictured on the cover of national magazines...
...Yet he is esteemed as an authority and a moral paragon...
...Cronkite is a good and decent man...
...never very strenuously discouraged it-and forget not how he glowed and looked heavenward when Parson Anderson tendered the Vice Presidency to him...
...Cronkite has done anything all that transcendent...
...The television set brings us fiction, even in its news...
...Time marches on, and things get worse...
...Not even a scandal...
...I recognize that Dr...
...After all, here is a man who in all of his public years has never passed on more than a hint of intellectual substance...
...Cronkite in his glory days: wars covered from a newsroom, government policies wedged into 30-second expositions, humanity observed from the back seat of the CBS corporate limousine, from film clips, from peering over the soup bowls of the giants of our time...
...Well, I do not want to be caught snickering during such a solemn ceremony...
...He just sat there in front of that infernal microphone...
...In truth he occasionally scaled down their absurd claims...
...Over the last 20 years television has done more than anything else to darken the middle-class citizen's understanding of public events...
...It conveys a sense of immediacy and intimacy...
...Cronkite never demanded the adulation accorded him, though he by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...At least he has been good and decent enough to avoid a stretch in Leaven-worth...
...Countless tributes to him were heaved up...
...Nevertheless, Newsweek spoke of his "awesome stature as a national icon," his "almost mystical appeal," his "integrity, credibility, sagacity, geniality...
...Viewing that inglorious event, Peregrine Worst-horne, sharp-eyed English journalist that he is, wrote: "The exaggerated admiration accorded the hostages . . . suggests a sadly low level of expectation . . . How serious can the new American nationalism be if it is so easily aroused and assuaged...
...Yet the appalling fact is that in America nowadays the fictions of television are actually taking on a life of their own...
...One of the ironies of television land is that the camera, a device that was thought to give viewers a more accurate perception of the world, actually gives viewers a distorted perception of the world...
...It falsifies events and personages...
...Life just does not happen the way it appears on television...
...Surely we ought to expect a bit more from our icons, even when they are television journalists...
...The week after Walter's exit, the House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment, investigating the pharmaceutical industry and orphan drugs, introduced as its star witness Jack Klugman, an actor who plays the role of a medical examiner on the NBC show "Quincy...
...Millions of thoughtful Americans, who a generation ago would return from work to read an evening newspaper or a popular periodical, now get their news from television...
...Consider Dr...
...Months in advance the news stories began fluttering to earth...
...He dwelt in the land of bromides and wholesome attitudes...
...But, of course, the sense of immediacy is meretricious and the sense of intimacy is false...
...More to his credit, he never joined the television sages in exaggerating the benefits and the possibilities of television news...
...and when all the professors of the television art have finished their testimonials to the brilliance of the tube the simple fact remains that the spoken word coming through a television set does not engage the brain as vigorously as does the printed word...
...He leaves behind him no books, no essays, no memorable epigrams...
...Nonetheless, on that Friday night tears were shed in the CBS newsroom, and all over America the historically minded roosted before their television sets for a last glimpse of the warm oval-shaped vacuum that was Dr...
...Television cannot convey the information that print conveys nor can it cultivate the critical faculties of its audience...
...The reverence accorded the man in his last days was even more witless than the pageantry accorded the return of the hostages...
...Dramatic filming techniques, different lenses, different lighting all combine to present different images of life...
...I cannot think of a heroic moment, nor even a romantic escapade...
...The very art of placing public figures and public happenings within a rectangular frame, with voice-overs and musical backgrounds, is a falsification of reality...
...American nationalism aside, all the hoopla over Dr...
...He was amiable, but he was unexceptional too...
...Its only virtue over newsprint is that thanks to television cameras it allows us to see certain public figures in action...
...On his behalf it must be said that Dr...
...Cronkite does indeed suggest a rather low level of expectation, at least toward American journalism...
...He will be missed, but for how long...
...It was his only public view that ever suggested that deep intelligence might lurk beneath the avuncular veneer...
...Cronkite may be a genius, he may even be a philosopher, but throughout his career never was there an indication that he had a very deep understanding of any of the thousands of news stories he reported or that he knew anything more about them than the handful of words he spewed forth during an evening performance...
...He was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom...
...Still, beyond meeting the standard requirements of good citizenship I cannot see that Dr...
...We all should have been prepared for the historic passing...
Vol. 14 • May 1981 • No. 5
