Watching America
Lichter, S. Robert & Lichter, Linda S. & Rothman, Stanley
WATCHING AMERICA: WHAT TELEVISION TELLS US ABOUT OUR LIVES S. Robert Lichter, Linda S. Lichter, Stanley Rothman Prentice Hall/322 pages/$24.95 reviewed by DAVE SHIFLETT Janet Richardson was,...
...Isn't it possible that the tubers are similar to Lou Cannon, who has always insisted that his personal beliefs don't show up in his work...
...But the exaggeration doesn't stop there...
...What they discovered could be likened to a vast polyp field, swollen to the bursting point with lies, filth, and corruption...
...Ditto for violence—another growth area...
...Seven out of ten believe the government should substantially reduce the income gap between the rich and poor," the authors report, and 44 percent think anyone who wants a job should be guaranteed one...
...In addition, the authors discovered that51 percent of these Randy Andy's (the tubers are almost exclusively white males) do not think adultery is wrong...
...Nothing could rouse her from her advanced torpor...
...One of the many fine features of this book is that a reader can learn much more than he needs to about the television industry, if that is his desire...
...Gradually it dawns on the officers that the man may have died from a heart attack while having sex...
...Then came a miracle...
...It's clear that if Pat Robertson had written a book on television and made up all the facts, he wouldn't have dared assert what is in fact true...
...Everyone wondered how the television could have revived Janet when everything else had failed...
...Then there's this: though 93 percent had religious upbringings, 45 percent now claim no religious affiliation whatsoever, with the rest saying they seldom if ever attend services...
...In the 58 programs [the other investigators] watched, they counted forty-one instances of extramarital sexual intercourse and only six instances of marital intercourse, a ratio of almost seven to one...
...And everyone wondered about the nature of the television gods who had transformed that pitiful clam back into a young woman...
...This was more than 1,400 times the actual murder rate for the United States during the same time period...
...The authors begin their study with a general survey of television's brainchildren, whom we can refer to hereafter as the tubers...
...As the authors point out, in the real world, only three to five percent of murders are over money or property...
...Since the mid-1970s, the ratio has dropped to one in six, and continues to narrow...
...The answers to these questions, as it turns out, are found in Watching America, a frightfully in-depth look at the passions and beliefs of television's creative geniuses...
...Doctors and family were astounded, as were the townspeople...
...WATCHING AMERICA: WHAT TELEVISION TELLS US ABOUT OUR LIVES S. Robert Lichter, Linda S. Lichter, Stanley Rothman Prentice Hall/322 pages/$24.95 reviewed by DAVE SHIFLETT Janet Richardson was, for all intents and purposes, a human clam...
...Isn't it fairly clear that the television industry is much further outside the mainstream than Clarence Thomas or even Robert Bork...
...Janet's eyes flew open...
...I remember her focusing in on the television and that's why I turned it on," nurse Gael Martin told the Associated Press...
...Likewise, an episode of "Hill Street Blues" investigated another modern preoccupation, as described by the authors: "The man is found in his room with only his pet sheep as witness...
...The cause of death is at first obscure...
...Another investigation indicates a higher degree of romping...
...Blacks, meanwhile, "are about eighteen times less likely to commit homicide than in real life, whereas the Asian homicide rate is three times as high as in the real world...
...And didn't the tubers actively oppose those two pristine candidates (we speak in relative terms, of course...
...The sound of that television show woke her up...
...The motivation for most of these television murdersgreed—is also wrong...
...Or, as the deacons down at the Overland Park Baptist Church might put it, Janet may indeed have been revived by the disciples of Beelzebub...
...And lastly, isn't it true that Clarence Thomas probably won't have nearly as much influence over regular Americans as the television industry, which actually practices what Anita Hill only dared allege...
...For the rest of us, the authors have supplied facts to buttress a very old belief: that nothing becomes a television screen like a power outage...
...Again, the answer is yes...
...As a result,one can imagine the deacons putting down the book and saying aloud: "Eureka...
...Did you miss that episode...
...Right again, and if Thomas is half the man we think he is, he will move quickly against these people...
...Needless to say, at least half the angels in television heaven are butch...
...of the national media, have pried the television beast open at both ends and peered inside with very powerful flashlights...
...Patty Richardson, the victim's sister, picks up the story...
...During the 1970s extramarital sex cropped up on about one out of every eight shows...
...But if the tubers live in a spiritual Lapsedland, they have active political beliefs...
...The authors, famous for their investigations Dave Shiflett is deputy editorial page editor at the Rocky Mountain News and TAS's Rocky Mountain editor...
...These deeply held impulses, as the authors point out, are in profound contrast to a poll by the National Opinion Research Corporation, which found that 85 percent of the public thinks adultery is wrong, while over three-quarters firmly believe that homosexuality is not an appropriate human activity...
...It was the first sign that her memory was coming back...
...The 27-yearold Overland Park, Kansas resident had fallen from a bunk bed five days earlier, lapsing immediately into a coma...
...The phenomenal increase in extramarital television sex makes for better reading, however...
...Which is why, to give but one of many examples, an episode of the old Daniel Boone series portrayed schoolchildren in Boonesboro taking instruction in "Red Indian studies...
...The pope ain't the Antichrist after all...
...To their credit, the tubers don't insult their audience with such transparently false suggestions...
...For instance, the authors provide these details about the professional credentials of television characters: "Nine out of every ten highly educated profesThe American Spectator January 1992 71 sionals on prime-time television have been male...
...It's that damn box in the corner...
...Ninety-seven percent are pro-choice, and 80 percent think homosexual relations are fine, with 86 percent saying homosexuals should be allowed to teach in public schools...
...In addition, most of the scientists are crazed, the businessmen are crooked, and the priests, while favorably portrayed, are not the kind of people to give the Old Deluder too much grief...
...Given that the vast majority of tubers are live white males, you have to wonder why, over the past thirty years, "nine out of ten murders on television were committed by whites," when the actual rate is much lower...
...Like a snake from a basket, Janet's consciousness wove its way out of the darkness as the theme song from "Growing Pains" filled the room (one of Janet's favorite shows, it had become apparent...
...On television, however, three of five murders are so inspired...
...For the deacons down at the Overland Park Baptist Church, Watching America makes it very clear that the television gods have created a world that Old Scratch would be most comfortable in, a world where people sport with sheep and their neighbor's wife...
...blood runs nostril-deep in the streets...
...Hispanics, for their part, are often portrayed as dope smugglers and other sorts of scum, committing crimes twice as often as other characters...
...Seventy-three percent live either in California or along the Boston-Washington corridor, a fact that immediately raises suspicions out here in the Great Flyover...
...As the creator of "Happy Days" and "Mork and Mindy" once said: "Because sitcoms reach so many people, we might as well try to put some issues in them...
...At this point, some may question how much these personal beliefs actually translate into what we see on television...
...and criminals kill for envy and spite...
...In the policy arena, they are like men with serious amphetamine problems, swarming about supporting dubious causes...
...Though all relevant measures were taken, Janet remained unresponsive in the intensive care unit at Shawnee Mission Medical Center...
...For are we to make of all this...
...Prior to 1969," the authors write, "we coded fewer than one instance of extramarital sex in every thirty shows...
...Since 1955 men have portrayed 93 percent of all doctors, 87 percent of lawyers and 93 percent of judges, 86 percent of corporate executives, and 87 percent of college professors...
...In the first decade of our study, there were seven murders for every one hundred characters seen on the screen...
...Seventy-five percent describe themselves as left of center, while only 14 percent call themselves conservatives...
...An extraordinary datum, most will admit, and my sympathies to the researchers who did the counting...
...All of which brings up a few questions in the wake of the Long Dong Silver scare...
...Without a doubt, this is true...
Vol. 25 • January 1992 • No. 1
