The Nation's Pulse/Dream Street

...Kirkpatrick and many other conservatives-the fallacy of "moral equivalence...

...Nor, of course, did Jeane Kirkpatrick's question derive from any such lamentable obfuscation...

...There is, on the other hand, much to be said for the view, not by any means a monopoly of the neoconservatives, that the difficulties which the Soviet Union is experiencing within its existing empire might be a catalyst for further expansion, rather than an inhibition against it...

...The boat was allowed to go free, and the bombardment stopped as if it were November 11, 1918 on the Western front...

...Is the day coming when we'll all be pining for the likes of Dan Rather...

...For, in advancing this proposition, Mr...

...They are, after all, as much into cement as Jimmy Hoffa once was...

...And the news content of the broadcast is, not surprisingly, nil...

...There may be nuances and points of philo sophical exegesis, but to imply that there is any difficulty in making a clear distinction between freedom and democracy on the one hand and totalitarian oppression on the other is to engage in the most perverse form of disputation...

...The Gemayels are into protection, as legitimate a profession in Lebanon as banking is on Wall Street...

...The same kind of attitude is doubtless behind the failure of "Miami Vice" to pick up more than four of the fifteen Emmys for which it was nominated...

...great unwashed as is ABC, the network that made David Hartman and Geraldo Rivera household words...

...The stories are shorter and far more visually oriented than their "60 Minutes" counterparts...

...There's no question they're after the old guard," said one veteran staffer still with the network...

...Any resemblance between the first three minutes of "West 57th" and of a conventional network news program is clearly accidental...

...And there are some other people they would like to get, but their contracts aren't up yet...

...Needless to say, no selfrespecting Arab would ever admit that drugs play the major role in the Lebanese conflict...

...PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE MEETS HIS CRITICS Most of us know at least one person who habitually wears some accessory or item of clothing by which he can easily be recognized and with which he eventually comes to be associated-it may be a bow tie of some distinctive pattern, colored socks, or a flower in the buttonhole...

...One recent episode featured segments about a football player who used steroids, the PCP market in Washington, D.C., a young deaf actress, a music video set in Viet nam, and George Romero, director of the movie Night of the Living Dead...

...Peregrine Worsthorne, a gifted and perceptive political journalist, clearly has this mechanism of defense against the tedium of predictability...

...From time to time he turns upon some personality or policy associated with the High Tory ideology which he usually wears with such elegance, and defiantly displays his colored socks...

...The impression is of an exciting new dramatic series about young investigative journalists in search of corruption: a cross, perhaps, between "Lou Grant" and "The Mod Squad...

...been consistently caught off guard in that unhappy land...

...It is not altogether surprising that some Americans should get the impression that some Europeans are not quite as serious about the threat of totalitarian Communism as Mr...

...All this tends to be exacerbated by the manifestations of disarray to which Mr...

...You can guess the rest...

...So it's interesting to read this item from a recent issue of TV Guide: Despite management reassurances to the contrary, insiders fear that the firing at CBS News two weeks ago of some of the network's most experienced correspondents and producers is only the beginning...

...I will not offend him by suggesting that it might have been Mrs...

...Both Mossad and Israeli army intelligence are well connected with Lebanese shenanigans, but they use their information selectively when it comes to telling Uncle Sam...

...Do you have to wait for me to get to speed...

...One might as well have Kate and Allie as correspondents...

...SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE...

...After all, they did not prevent the Red Army from invading Afghanistan and establishing a brutally oppressive military regime in a country where the "ideological lure of Communism" could scarcely be regarded as being at an all-time high...

...It is the most dangerous game in the world, and the only ones who can and do play it well are the Israelis...

...Peregrine Worsthorne's claim to be a lifelong conservative is incontestable, as is his detestation of Communism...

...The moral here is that the difference between news and entertainment on television is-let's just call it subtle...

...The mind boggles...

...About six months ago, Amin Gemayel's palace was rocked by persistent cannon fire coming down from the Druse stronghold...

...In stories like these, "West 57th" shows a remarkably acute sense of its true audience: the cocaine conservatives of the post Vietnam era...

...One recent segment dealt with the Grateful Dead, the aging rock band whose drug-sodden fans travel endlessly from concert to concert, driving gaudily painted vans and subsisting on tofu and marijuana...

...What he, and others, describe as neoconservatism, might have been expected to find a sympathetic echo in Mr...

...0...

...Individuals associated with the MurrowCronkite era, rather than those with higher salaries, seem to be the targets of the cutbacks...

...Like a good Lebanese, Amin quickly got on the telephone and rang his old enemy-friend Walid...

...El...

...The theme music is synthesized rock...

...The truth, as always, is somewhat less simple...

...It's surprising, in a way, that "West 57th" doesn't go even farther than it currently does in its attempt to make diverting pap out of the news...

...She knew quite well who Peregrine was...

...And CBS, Murrow tradition or no Murrow tradition, is every bit as obedient to the implicit commands of the Terry Teachout is an assistant editor of Harper's...

...NBC took "Hill Street Blues," changed the setting to a Boston hospital, and came up with "St...

...Well up to a point, Lord Copper...

...His explanation for what he diagnoses as the antipathy of American neoconservatives to Europe is that they "are trying to blacken Europe's character so as to justify the United States leaving us in the lurch...

...indeed, it would be rather like asking the Pope to identify himself at the door of Westminster Cathedral...

...As there is as much tax collection in Lebanon as there are traffic jams in Albania, the various warlords have to have a front that is legit, just as our own beloved Mafia over here has...

...Although one of those identified by him as having received the neoconservative seal of approval, I had always regarded myself as being close to him, not only as a friend, but as a political animal...

...You've got one of my boats down in the harbor," answered Walid...

...Where "60 Minutes" emphasizes the star quality of its veteran reporters, "West 57th" deemphasizes its four novices to the point of fungibility...

...But the underlying point of view is generally right on the mark...

...Except for you know what...

...He likes and uses his own product, which explains Jumblat's infamous disappearances during "frank" discussions between himself and the rest of the warlords...

...The show itself is not quite as depraved as the credits promise, but it comes close...

...My friend Anthony Haden-Guest, who recently spent over six months in that happy country researching a book on the drug trade and being kidnapped by one group and then another, told me the following story...

...Elsewhere...

...Along with this perception goes the suspicion that the European partners in the Western alliance are interested only in the European Atlantic area, and that threats to free political institutions elsewhere are none of their concern...

...The "60 Minutes" framework is obvious enough, but the choice of material is suggestive: All five stories are either about young people or about subjects which young people tend to find interesting...

...It is true that there are not many luncheon tables among the gratin of London at which the appearance of Peregrine Worsthorne could legitimately evoke the question "Who the hell is this guy...

...The Druse are not so lucky...

...Worsthorne has seriously misunderstood the nature of the stresses and strains which are undermining the capacity of the free world to meet the "Soviet challenge...

...If "West 57th" is any indication, even Jesse Helms may now be wondering if he might have been a little too quick on the draw...

...They have clearly been cast not for reportorial ability but for visual appeal, 33 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1985 great pains evidently having been taken to balance John Ferrugia's sober mustache and red suspenders against Bob Sirott's curly hair and apple cheeks, with the pretty, forgettable faces and stylishly informal attire of Meredith Vieira and Jane Wallace serving as pastel contrast elements...

...He was also the star of "Person to Person," the fifties talk show that was a sort of Pleistocene version of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous...

...Okay, okay," came the presidential reply...

...The rest of the players do not even bother to give themselves labels...

...If you doubt it, take a look at "West 57th," CBS's new prime-time newsmagazine...

...Worsthorne's system of political ideas...

...I need that boat badly...

...C'est lout...

...The Franjiehs call themselves cement tycoons, and they are probably correct in doing so...

...Given this, why has the U.S...

...what she was expressing was astonishment that anyone at that gathering could suggest that there was "no agreed sense in the West" as to what the terms freedom and democracy actually mean...

...It is made up of a number of disparate elements, including a belief in a substantial spectrum of informed American opinion that the principal geopolitical threat to the United States has shifted from the European Atlantic area...

...But he did it anyway, and it made him rich...

...Incidentally, the boat was carrying a full load of heroin, destination unknown...

...Not that obviously commercial concepts necessarily make for bad television...

...The current by Terry Teachout joke making the rounds is that CBS originally planned to call the show "60 Seconds...

...What's going on...

...As Muggeridge said, everything they say is true...

...34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1985...

...Regular viewers of MTV or "Miami Vice" are likely to find the show's camera work and conservative use of background music rather tame...

...Incidentally, as this is being written it is now clear that it was the Israelis who signaled to the U.S...

...Worsthorne was coming perilously near to a flirtation with that intellectual heresy which so deeply offends Mrs...

...He declined the offer, saying that he wasn't sure the color was right...

...Well, operating in Lebanon under cover is not exactly like trying to catch the senior senator from Massachusetts with a blonde on his arm...

...Jumblat is reputed to be a bit like Frank Perdue...

...Not close enough, apparently, to prevent his classifying me as an Englishman, a description which may well have been intended to alleviate my natural Welsh sense of inferiority...

...Ask any employee about the "Murrow tradition" and you're liable to come away with an earful of slimy cant...

...Bob Sirott's cool, amused commentary made it clear that while he didn't object to an occasional toot after work, such extravagantly nostalgic shenanigans were strictly for sixties rejects who hadn't yet discovered the joys of entry-level executive positions, raspberry vinegar, and Reebok tennis shoes...

...Each episode, for example, begins with a flashily edited credit sequence that intercuts footage of the program's four correspondents standing in a control room mouthing videofluent jabber ("Let's prepare for a twomachine roll...

...They are simply into the drug trade...

...DREAM STREET The news division at CBS takes itself very seriously indeed...

...The Syrian High Command takes a healthy cut, and it is rumored that the Syrian chief of staff rivals Khashoggi in wealth and selfindulgence as a result...

...There are politicians, writers, and academics who are so alarmed at the possibility that they might be regarded as representing a shared body of opinion or school of thought, that they reach out for their distinctive intellectual haberdashery at the merest whiff of conformity...

...What is it, apart from an instinctive taste for iconoclasm, that has provoked Mr...

...He has done so most provocatively in his "Tory Critique of Neoconservatives" [in the October 1985 issue of The American Spectator...

...at first demurred at intercepting the plane, it came around once the wily Israelis made it clear its refusal would be leaked to the press...

...It is possible, too, that Mr...

...The key to his quarrel with the "neoconservatives" lies, I think, in the question which he poses early in his article: "Is the Soviet Union, we ask, not having difficulties enough holding down Eastern Europe without trying to extend its faltering imperial sway even further into Western Europe, where the ideological lure of Communism is now at an all time low...

...Even allowing for a certain legitimate measure of polemical hyperbole, this really is a little over the top...

...The political overtones, such as they are, are glibly left ish...

...Murrow, his biographer assures us, was no more comfortable chatting up the likes of Marilyn Monroe than Dwight Eisenhower was comfortable filming sixty-second advertisements for himself...

...Haden-Guest himself was offered Lebanese hospitality in the form of $500,000 of counterfeit money in exchange for $20,000 of the real thing...

...There is a feeling, too, in the United States that its allies are reluctant to make the unpopular political decisions which are needed if Western Europe is to assume a reasonable share of the burden of its own defense...

...The party of God (God forgive me) controls the Bekaa Valley and deals in heroin...

...One thing American intelligence has known all along is that drug peddlers are the main bankers of the various militias, but just as it has been unable to stem their flow into the U.S., it is hard pressed to do anything about them in a place like Lebanon...

...West 57th" has been doing poorly in the Nielsens, largely because the older and less video-fluent executives at CBS News, recognizing a threatening innovation when they see one, have apparently been trying their best to sink it through inept scheduling...

...THE NATION'S PULSE...

...I mention this not to attempt some deep psychological analysis of the phenomenon (indeed it probably has no profound significance at all) but merely to observe that this compulsive idiosyncrasy is often extended into more general areas of behavior...

...Jeane Kirkpatrick's wounding comment at the American ambassador's luncheon...

...that the Egyptians had sent the Achille Lauro murderers out of the country, and that although the U.S...

...he screamed above the din...

...Worsthorne refers, somewhat dismissively, in his article-differences over Grenada, the Soviet pipeline, the neutron bomb, cruise missiles, the Strategic Defense Initiative, the Middle East, international terrorism, and Nicaragua...

...But Edward R. Murrow (who, lest we forget, was canned by William Paley for excessive editorializing) was more than just a nattily dressed war correspondent and the chain-smoking host of "See It Now...

...with insert shots in which they breathlessly tell each other about the stories to be covered that evening...

...There is, most assuredly, an agreed sense in the West about the concept of individual liberty...

...It is possible, however, to doubt his judgment about the nature and scale of what he demurely calls "the Soviet challenge...

...But "West 57th" is startling in the naked candor of its motivational appeals...

...The Shuf Mountains are hostile places for the poppy, therefore the enterprising Druse import it and act simply as middle men...

...Indeed, the whole enterprise smacks of nothing quite so much as Jim Aubrey's legendary (and serious) proposal that CBS replace Walter Cronkite with Paul Newman...

...Worsthorne's philippic against the American neoconservatives...

...A hopped-up retread of "60 Minutes" aimed squarely at the Yuppie market, "West 57th" is quite possibly the single most blatantly commercial endeavor ever undertaken by a network news department, give or take Barbara Walters...