Culture Vultures: As Seen on TV
Steyn, Mark
"Culture Vultures: As Seen on TV" by Mark Steyn As Seen on...
...He's on television, but, pace Rollins, he barely matters...
...Luckily, Binty the gorilla came along to rescue some hapless moppet in the Brookfield Zoo and restore Ted's flagging interest in the exciting world of network news...
...Just like they say on "Oprah" and "Ricki...
...Most of them feature the same limited personnel...
...Three days after the Olympic pipe bomb, CBS News was running a montage of images from the disaster concluding with the line "To Be Continued...
...But she has a point: How did we end up in a world where the backroom boys are Playmates of the Year...
...Now, we're divided by welfare...
...I'd say Pat Buchanan in New Hampshire...
...In sucking up to the network news, the Republicans were remodeling their man for a TV era that's come and gone...
...They only ever say two things: first, they tell you how terribly interesting your ideas are but...
...The Republican response to its difficulties punching through the dozy blur of TV news is a curious one: "Let Dole be anybody but Dole...
...Elsewhere in this issue, you'll read about how the network news teams are biased towards the Democrats, which is undeniable...
...The networks' bounce consultants suggested that the Republicans would have got more bounce to the ounce and, crucially, a better perception of their bounce if they'd downplayed expectations of it, by scheduling, say, Phil Gramm as the keynote speaker and then substituting Susan Molinari at the last moment...
...Was he upset at not being allowed to speak in prime time...
...Steve Forbes spent a fortune, was profiled on Time, Newsweek, and every network, and got nowhere...
...Like every politician, Jesse wants to be on TV because TV is supposed to make you famous...
...To Generation X slackers, Clinton is just like your dad-a boring boomer who plays golf and sings along to Fleetwood Mac...
...But Sullivan was right...
...Once upon a time, there were events that television turned up to cover...
...46 October 19 9 6 • The American Spectator regret that they're too complex for American television so could you please condense them to six words or so...
...like Beavis and Butthead, he's too cool to be bothered learning a speech...
...American Politics is most definitely on television-which is why, to increasing numbers of the electorate, it barely matters...
...But, if you don't have a show or an album to plug, why play along...
...What's the real story of this election year...
...Now all the events-the Oscars, the Tonys, the conventions -are made for TV...
...Buchanan offered real populism, not the phony TV variety of Lamar...
...So the poor fellow struggles to be phonily genuine, while President Clinton breezes along as a genuine phony...
...walking across New Hampshire" for a few hundred yards until the cameras had enough footage, and then getting back in his car and driving to the next photo-op...
...And "Bob Dole-Whatever" could be the ultimate youth-appeal catchphrase, the most exquisitely all-encompassing since that of President Wintergreen in the Gershwin operetta O f Thee I Sing: "A Vote for Wintergreen Is a Vote for Wintergreen...
...But anyone who believes in democracy ought to at least feel ever so slightly ashamed at the spectacle of so many intelligent, articulate Republican adults going to such lengths to present themselves as simpletons...
...The real scandal of campaign finance isn't the amount of money involved, but the fact that most of it's blown buying airtime on three networks who degrade and trivialize American politics even as they suck up their budgets...
...secondly, they explain how the most important thing is to remember the name of your interviewer and use it frequently...
...47 The American Spectator . October r 9 9 6...
...Besides, received opinion held that much of the bounce had been offset by the flounce-the flamboyant walkout of Nightline's Ted Koppel...
...There's no technical reason for this: they could have small, barely visible mikes and earpieces, as visiting BBC correspondents do...
...Thatcher's campaign strategy or the pedophile allegations about Michael Jackson...
...Foreign commentators are always amused by U.S...
...MARK STEYN is theater critic of the New James Carville goes on Letterman and Criterion and movie critic o f the Spectator does lifestyle ads for American Express...
...This is all you need to know about network news as a whole: a recent poll showed that over 50 percent of the American electorate did not know Bob Dole was a war veteran...
...Buchanan understood that the most significant political platform of recent years has been Rush Limbaugh's-quaint, antiquated steam radio...
...Well, the Republican Convention was certainly on television, but did it matter...
...Traditionally, we're told, every party gets a post-convention "bounce" in the polls...
...For politics, for society, for foreign affairs, for ideas, there is little room...
...Convention managers run around town giving interviews about how everything's being packaged and scripted for TV and how anything as tiresome as "delegates" who want to talk "politics" will only be allowed onto the podium during the networks' commercial breaks...
...Heaven forbid that you should be so careless as to mistake Diane Sawyer for Paula Zahn...
...At both the Republican and Democrat conventions, Dan Rather spends most of his time interviewing Rita Braver and Bob Schieffer and other CBS colleagues...
...On the other hand, precisely because we'd been told it and therefore the bounce was expected, leading bounce commentators were eager to emphasize, even as the bounce was happening, that bounce-wise it wasn't much of a bounce...
...But his sixth rule couldn't be more wrong...
...The Weekly Standard was pretty sniffy the other week about an Andrew Sullivan column claiming that Dole had potentially more appeal to the under-35s than any other candidate...
...they were too far north of where Ted and Cokie were hanging out...
...even before it's happened...
...But, more than that, they're biased towards themselves...
...as if real life were no different from their moronic daytime soap operas...
...Of course, this is what network news personnel do every day of their lives...
...production teams...
...Meanwhile, those who make it on to TV play by TV rules, acquiring such expertise in delivering 9-second sound-bites that normal human conversation is beyond them...
...This was an inside-theBeltway bullshit game that I've become the victim of...
...Years ago, Rollins reports, Barbara Bush was annoyed with Lee Atwater because he'd been profiled in Esquire and photographed in his boxer shorts...
...On the first night of the Democratic Convention, Rather interviewed Jesse Jackson...
...Almost any other outlet energizes the audience more than network news and its insular self-preoccupation, spinning itself into circles...
...In London, I used to get the occasional call from ABC's "Nightline" or "CBS This Morning" to go on and discuss Andrew Lloyd Webber's new musical or Mrs...
...Any time I speak is prime because I have a prime message," he said...
...Helprin wrote a fine speech, but it was a speech that could have been delivered by any politician of Dole's generation and which wasn't in the Kansan's speech rhythms: he was cheered for getting through it without tying himself in knots...
...As has been noted, he's not bare knuckled: in the photograph, he's wearing boxing gloves...
...ed politicians, the career-detonating hook er scandal...
...But the old Dole was one of them: like Letterman, he keeps letting you in on the artifice-the slogans that he can't get right, "A better plan for a better man, or whatever it is that the boys in the backroom have cooked up...
...The delegates are mere set dressing for the crowd scenes...
...All those soundbites, all those photo-ops, all those left-handed waves, and the single most obvious, visible fact about Dole never registered...
...And where has being good at soundbites got Jesse Jackson...
...There is still a difference-justbut the fate of Richard Jewell, who went from the networks' designated hero to designated villain in the space of 48 hours, suggests the difficulties TV has with any story that doesn't fit the simplest scenario...
...If you're going to re-cast Dole for the TV age, why not do it properly...
...But the big mikes, like the delegates, are props: the CBS team are acting at being reporters, though nothing approximating to real reporting is going on...
...But does it matter...
...The Republicans lost in '92, so why not go with the bright-eyed rather than the Bushyfailed approach...
...It's peachy for sitcoms and cop shows, but TV is a passive medium...
...Meanwhile, advisers announce that Dole will be coming out strongly in favor of Independence Day, so they're now trying to get him in to see it...
...But, even in a celebrity age, the biggest celebs are those, like Streisand and Sinatra, who don't do TV at all...
...All the backroom boys are on TV, as ABC News consultants and CNBC talk-show hosts...
...of London...
...But he's not in the back rooms, either...
...With the support of the Union-Leaderjust about the oldest-fashioned newspaper in the land-and a bunch of shoestring radio stations in Berlin and Littleton to whom he made himself endlessly available, Buchanan met face to face with real people in nowhere towns Dole couldn't be bothered coming to...
...And all the bits that have been expressly designed as "good television" never make it onto television because, during, say, the Republicans' video tribute to President Reagan, the anchors cut away and explain that what's going on is not a proper political convention but a slick ersatz convention designed to make good television...
...I don't blame Susan Molinari...
...Victim...
...So, when Bob Dole makes a good speech, it's Mark Helprin who gets profiled and interviewed about where this or that image came from...
...But wasn't the party hopelessly divided...
...Dick Morris has even cornered the mar ket in that traditional prerogative of elect How television's importance has made it irrelevant...
...Rita and Bob always have big, bulky hand microphones and head sets...
...In between the ads, the network news increasingly prefers soft lifestyle stories - on this week's health scare or human-interest tragedy...
...Almost everything you need to know about this approach to politics can be found on the jacket to Rollins's book, Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms...
...According to Ed Rollins, the sixth rule of campaign combat is, "If it's not on television, it barely matters...
...The cast of the Broadway hit Rent did a number at both the Tonys and the Democrats', though in New York they'd been plugging the show while in Chicago they were plugging the album...
...In '68, we were divided by warfare...
...Christopher Reeve was at both the Academy Awards and the Democratic Convention, though the Hollywood speech was better...
...On the last night of the convention, they were beaten in the ratings by a "Seinfeld" rerun...
...Great to be with you, Peter...
...Today, politics is not populist but postmodern: like the Pompidou Center, the plumbing's all on the outside...
...I'm not being flippant here...
...Thus, the first speaker at the Democratic Convention was a Chicago cop who'd been shot in the line of duty, but, instead of showing us the speech, Dan Rather talked all over it, explaining who the man was, what he was saying, and the rationale behind letting him speak-and then interviewed Bob Schieffer about whether this rationale was sound...
...Rollins really is "good television...
...This is all you need to know about CBS News: nine out of ten Americans don't watch it...
...And then all the anchors interview each other about whether the "good television" strategy is working...
...Buchanan spent $17.99, left the organization to his sister, and won...
...Pleasure to see you, Harry...
...C U L T U R E V U L T U R E S by Mark Steyn As Seen on TV...
...The Dole campaign wants to put over the real Dole, which, in television terms, means constructing an entirely artificial Dole...
...After his unfortunate remarks over black ministers and Christie Whitman's victory, Ed Rollins said: "I spun myself out of control...
Vol. 29 • October 1996 • No. 10
