Editorials/Hoodwinked/TheFall Season
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
Across the Great Republic our noble politicos have now auspicated their off-year elections, and on one matter both sides agree: this election lacks a national theme. In 1982 the Democrats made...
...By contrast, Ronald Reag^'s six years in office have been a success...
...There are two themes available this election...
...They are apparently unaware that the comparable off-year elections of 1966 and 1974 were dominated by war and Watergate...
...In the art of pcditics, misstatement is an essential skill...
...At the Republicans' last national convention the only speaker who evoked memorable whoops was Jeane Kirkpatrick, a lapsed Democrat...
...Scholars, of course, have harvested fields of data proving television's unwelcome influence on the national mind...
...In comparable off-year elections as many as forty-eight representatives from the President's party have bitten the dust...
...In recent years they have actually dreamed up a few constituencies, for instance the handicapped and homosexuals...
...Secretary Bennett challenges ABC to broadcast reading lessons before sports programs...
...These are not victims of government retrenchment...
...And so once again the Republicans are unhappily out there on the campaign trail, the Democrats having hoodwinked them into believing that they have nothing to say...
...Over the years the masters of misstatement have with admirable regularity been Democrats...
...The first is the success of Reagan conservatism...
...Do the RepubUcans agree with the Democrats that what the American people really want are higher taxes, more inflation, more government regulation, a feeble defense—in fine, all the miseries bequeathed them by that Carter Administration of unwelcome memory...
...Then what could have been an era of Republican dominance will end with Ronald Reagan...
...Illiteracy is, says one of the project's barkers, "the hidden disease that threatens the well-being of the country...
...Henceforth the American Broadcasting Corporation, or ABC, as it is called, shall be known as the Network of Conscience...
...What is more, ABC's campaign is disingenuous...
...How would ABC feel if one-fifth of its audience gave up an hour of daily television for an evening newspaper, a book, or a magazine...
...Even at their national conventions, with all the diverse and embittered special pleaders assembled, the Democrats transform what could be a gruesome session into a grand old time...
...The fact is, television is hostile to print...
...Television communicates with pictures, as did the caveman...
...They even agree with the dubious Democratic claim that though Ronald Reagan is admired his policies are loathed...
...Most viewers need hardly any language skUls to roost gleefully in ABC's audience...
...The venerable educator Jacques Barzun deplores the discontinuation, years ago, of media programs that stressed literacy and learning...
...Recently, a study from the National Assessment of Educational Progress demonstrated that television often has an adverse influence on children's reading ability, an embarrassing finding that the promoters of PLUS deal with very gingerly in their promotional literature...
...they offer no plausible alternatives...
...The new political era that Ronald Reagan's conservatism and the liberals' futile radicalism have ushered in will be endangered...
...The campaign has been named Project Literacy U.S., or PLUS, and its pollens blow even now through ABC's "World News Tonight," "This Week With David Brinkley," "20/20," "Nightline," "Good Morning America," and more...
...Once again Republicans have been hoodwinked by their crafty opposition...
...Their campaigns never end...
...Republican campaigns are tedious, their conventions soporific...
...Department of Education spends more than $100 million on seventy-nine adult iUiteracy programs and related research...
...ABC's portrayal of illiterate adults as victims of failed programs is inaccurate...
...Even behind such fated candidates as 1972's McGovern and 1984's Mondale they depart the convention full of fire and vows to slay the dastardly Republicans...
...If, owing to their timidity, the Republicans do not capitalize on their success and lose the Senate, their President will be forced to battle both houses on the budget, foreign policy, and judicial appointments...
...Dozens of false issues will destroy the relative tranquillity of the present...
...He and many of his colleagues are relieved that only a dozen or so Republican members of the House of Representatives are expected to perish in the voting booths...
...In fact, the more literate one is the less likely he is to be in ABC's audience, save to throw an occasional spitball or to have a rude laugh...
...Ifelevision's defenders boast of how, with its high tech wizardry, television is an enormous advance over those gray pages that bring information so slowly and arduously to readers...
...In 1982 the Democrats made the economy the national theme, and the Republicans lost twenty-six seats...
...The problem is not lack of remedial English courses for adults but that some students are not learning, and as Secretary of Education William Bennett observed in August in his report on elementary schools, this country does a rather good job of teaching students to read...
...I would be content if sports commentators would speak standard English and employ English subtitles to compensate for the defective elocution...
...Now there is no theme, and according to Mr...
...They are always in search of some new babies to kiss, some new constituency to embrace...
...The precise nature of how television misinforms can be seen in the gravamen of ABC's literacy campaign...
...The Democrats attribute the success of Ronald Reagan, whom they scorned as a has-been and a clod as recently as 1979, to a sudden burst of charm acquired at age 70, and the Republicans agree...
...Fewer and fewer writers are welcomed into media to talk intelligently on serious matters...
...Six years into the most successful presidency of modem times the Democrats preemptively declare that no national theme exists, and the credulous Republicans acquiesce...
...Once again, TV sends reality down to the makeup room, and when it emerges it has been transformed into gaudy fantasy, all for an improved Nielsen rating...
...In many immigrant neighborhoods they get along adequately...
...The U.S...
...The second is the Democrats' disunity and lack of alternatives...
...Actually, illiteracy in America is a complicated matter...
...Doubtless many are competent in their native tongues, and advocates of bilingual education are disinclined to rush these people into English...
...If they lose the Senate, however, it will not be because the Democrats had more attractive alternatives but because the Republicans did not stir up the electorate...
...Broadcast media have steadily diminished the importance of reading and writing...
...Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Post column syndicated by King Features...
...Suddenly the Democrats' amazing truculence— displayed most recently over the Rehnquist appointment—will confuse and envenom every presidential initiative...
...How often has a politician been elected by ever larger margins though his policies be loathed...
...By contrast...
...Its personalities recoil from mentioning books or a guest's books...
...Here the illiterate is presented as a victim of American society, a consequence of insufficient government spending...
...Republicans will not be defeated by superior policies but by Democratic cleverness and by voter indifference...
...By and large, Democrats are simply better campaigners than the Republicans, not only because of their mastery of misstatement but also because, unlike the Republicans, the Democrats relish a campaign...
...It misinforms, lowers artistic standards, and diverts viewers from reading things they really ought to read...
...Both the Department of Education and the Census Bureau place illiteracy at 13-14 percent of the adult population, but this tells us little...
...To be sure there are high school graduates entering adult Ufe with inadequate language skills, but 70 percent of our English-speaking illiterates never complete high school...
...Residual illiteracy in this country frequently is a consequence of inadequate motivation, and aside from coercion it is hard to think of any government program that can instill that motivation...
...This fall it joins with the Public Broadcasting Service, or PBS, in a vast campaign to smite illiteracy, particularly adult illiteracy, in America, a nation whose benightedness has increased with each additional educational dollar that the government spends...
...Many have no desire to speak English...
...Given their futile policies and the number of cranks among them, the Democrats do surprisingly well...
...It does seem curious for a network suddenly to manifest such solicitude for the printed word...
...Joseph Gaylord, executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee, "that helps...
...Thus this themeless election pleases many Republicans...
...Nearly a third of these people are not American-born, and many do not speak English at all...
...His opponents are bankrupt...
Vol. 19 • November 1986 • No. 11
