Media
Smith, Karen Sue
Jews in the Holocaust. First, the facts don't fit. If the German perhaps long overdue. Catholic thinkers have taken the lead in people had mounted a public demonstration opposing Nazi ...
...it can also be tions...
...gressman Barney Frank join the panel to talk over how a No one ever pretends these questions or the decisions under decision is made to bring or not to bring a damaged fetus to discussion are simple...
...a moral statement...
...One very minor argument within the larger case is cerns a fortyish woman who attends her twenty-fifth high thereby closed...
...I don't know the answer," a doctor admits to Miller...
...Fifteen to twenty flict, their commendable vision of greater harmony and coop- panelists sit around a U-shaped table...
...The differences in ecumenical understanding then were universities, eminent lawyers, surgeons, members of Conmostly between the idealists and the realists or those who saw gress and the clergy - and you have veteran producer Fred W. few obstacles to full ecumenical understanding and coopera- Friendly's formula for "instructional television...
...What would (embarrassing her kid sister with "weird" expressions of you do...
...film, not always clearly, concerns this basic plot...
...As political interests place such groups in con- and more...
...Therefore, the possicover-up of their government's foreknowledge of the mas- bility of widening and deepening understanding is enhanced...
...The moderator sympathetically asks: "And what kind of car do you drive...
...For example, a supporter of the New York City Gay responsibility between doctor and patient to the duties a doctor Rights Bill, Mayor Ed Koch, shares the table with Georgia owes society, the duties the patient owes his neighbor, the Congressman Newt Gingrich in a discussion on AIDS (Oc- responsibilities incurred by informing or withholding medical tober 28...
...the moderator roams eration suffers shipwreck to their immediate political needs...
...who faces genetic risks in light of his father's fatal Hunspeak before professional peers, many of whom hold publicly tington's disease...
...the types of roles medical practitioners play in programs...
...Live taping means fore, impresses the outsider as being a little too arcane and that two elements crucial to theater are present: the audienceabstract to have any profound consequences...
...envision a panel of Scholastics disputing with each other Today it has shifted more to religious and historical issues...
...botched communication and plain error in skill, judgment, and From the pacing, coffee-cup wielding, strong personality of moral reasoning...
...Commonweal: 532 The panelists themselves are professionals with a personal sues his doctor...
...looks, and she does a fine job portraying, often simultaneThe program on confidentiality, for example, considered ously, glee at revisiting old friends and sad foreboding at their the case of Joe Taylor, an assembly line machine operator who fate...
...has previously addressed...
...Now, televise such a sion is also different...
...from the difficult arenas of politics where the severest tests In the first installment on doctor-patient confidentiality occur...
...on stage before cheering troops of students, and you have the Perhaps for that reason, the tone and texture of the discus- rudiments of the modern university...
...lemma in the Newsroom" (1982...
...I can't tell...
...mother and older relatives...
...to be accurate...
...Each discussion is taped live...
...the moderator asks initially...
...one early scene as she enters the reunion with her own high Finally, there is the case method itself - not actual case school daughter, an usher comically invokes the dishwashing studies, but hypothetical cases for discussion that no panelist liquid commercial, asking "Who's the mother...
...among them...
...THE GREAT virtue of Professor Friedmann's discussion on A PORSCHE OF A SERIES Catholic-Jewish relations is its renewing of an important ecumenical dialogue in the context of the mid- MANAGING HEALTH CARE MIRACLES 1980s...
...I recall vividly the intensity of the process - updated so that the participants include a Supreme exchange within the Board of Editors of Christianity and Court justice, a few presidents and faculty of prestigious Crisis...
...tion and those who pointed to certain persistent problems in the The producers of the Columbia University Media and Socistructure and creeds of the several religious groups...
...vard law professor known for his series "Miller's Court," As Professor Friedmann argues, we need to approach such jokingly asks one panelist: "Do you have a pathological desire questions in the context of man's hubris and human survival...
...Or in the episode on INVENTIVE ADVENTURES malpractice (October 21), a defense lawyer complains about 'PEGGY SUE' & 'DOWN BY LAW' the excessive fees received by plaintiff lawyers...
...It is removed performer dynamic and the possibility of surprise...
...A Porsch," the-lawyer replies to peals of laughter...
...In turn, Kenneth W. Thompson Jewish leaders must reach out to meet halfway the efforts to give life to more enlightened practices as well as understandKENNETH W. THOMPSON is director of the White Burkett ing...
...the audience sits behind the table so that their Some of the discussion of Catholic-Jewish relations, there- reactions may also be seen by TV viewers...
...Arthur Miller to the mild-mannered, unobtrusive style of Pro- KAREN SUE SMITH fessor Charles R. Nesson of Harvard, moderators are experts in forcing panelists into introspection whenever possible, but Screen without brow-beating...
...Each is called upon to Jr...
...forthright stand on Catholic-Jewish relations...
...Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and a limits of a doctor's knowledge, the biases of a doctor's own representative from Reynolds Tobacco discuss smoking moral code, and the prudence and respect with which a doctor (November 11...
...Later still, we find ourselves considering Joe stake in the field under consideration...
...The hard issues that divide are left unexplored...
...As his presentation makes clear, the context of present-day discussion has characteristics that differ from IMAGINE a Socratic dialogue in a spectator-filled Greek those of the 1950s and 1960s...
...You've got me in a corner...
...Yet participants must refrain from name- enters the professional relationship with a patient...
...The (September 30), the ebullient moderator Arthur Miller, a Harobserver wonders if he is being exposed to rhetoric or reality...
...He is associate editor of The Review of Poli- Media tics and the author of several books including Principles and Problems of International Politics...
...They aim for a public rethinking of a position in light of new information, a pointed question, a peer's retort...
...the Media"(1985...
...and "Anatomy of a Libel: Business interests, an issue which Professor Friedmann raises at several vs...
...No," comes the reply, "I'm a doctor, not a Yet the raising of the question is necessary and proper and lawyer...
...In this, the Holy Father confronts both an opportunity and a challenge which calls for all the vision and persistence of which he is capable to make concrete what is yet a notable proclamation...
...The comparison is obscene...
...the lives of their patients as well as the human foibles of Moderators have been selected for skill, humor, and candor...
...Soon, we are told that tenderness, outraging her father by laughing at the new Edsel Sam, the worker next to Joe on the line, is at risk because of he has proudly bought) and melancholy vignettes with her Joe's condition...
...segment command a disproportionately large share of the She is played by Kathleen Turner, one of the few actresses comments (at least in the episodes I previewed), making up for around who could pass, arguably, for either forty or twenty...
...sues Joe...
...Then, Sam is killed and his widow...
...The best scene in the film occurs Or, because the doctor reveals the epilepsy, Joe is fired and when she can't even talk to her grandmother on the phone, Commonweal: 534...
...Another ety Seminars have already earned an armload of awards for difference worth noting was the far greater emphasis on three previously televised series - "Eyeball to Eyeball: DiProtestant-Catholic understanding in that moment in history...
...Catholic thinkers have taken the lead in people had mounted a public demonstration opposing Nazi raising some of the most crucial issues...
...The call for religious tolerance can be a health care measures ip to viewers' now-heightened expectapolitical weapon which the weaker side invokes...
...P EGGY SUE GOTMARRIED will be glibly compared to Back Within minutes, an insurance representative discloses that the to the Future, but it is time travel with a difference...
...It is heartening that on persecution of Jews that brought the same proportion of the this question, if not on all the most urgent world problems, the public into the streets as Israelis mounted against a possible source of leadership is the Holy Father...
...Happily, their new ten-part series on points in his essay...
...stated views with which other panelists wholeheartedly dis- As the scenario expands so do the issues: from the mutual agree...
...percentage of lawyers' fees his company pays varies little: 35 Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Peggy Sue makes the percent to plaintiff attorneys and 33' percent to defense motif much more serious, even sad at times...
...The viewer calling, sloganeering, or other rhetorical devices all too com- gets a taste of the hazards of patient autonomy as well as the mon in one-on-one debates or in confrontational-style news benefits of it...
...The story conattorneys...
...When she first finds herself back at her 1960 home, has epilepsy...
...In the 1970s and 1980s, some parties every Tuesday evening on PBS through December 2. Episodes who have spoken out for religious and political tolerance have range from discussions of organ transplants to the human heart been rather narrower in their ecumenical outreach than in machine, medical treatment for the aged, battered children, earlier years...
...Furthermore, while the number of women per panel is But Peggy Sue involves its heroine in a multiplicity of small, the moderator assures that one or two women in each relationships, all treated with a compelling bittersweet tone...
...Since (in later life) she issues without being manipulated, condescended to, or neces- is about to divorce the high school sweetheart she married, she sarily persuaded, all without benefit of a strained consensus wants to undo the past, and dump him at eighteen...
...Throughout the hour, cases are Turner's versatility, however, involves mood as well as subtly changed, gradually complexified...
...The Constitution: That Even in the 1950s and 1960s, the key issue was mutuality of Delicate Balance" (1984...
...Especially in the sixties, the amphitheater . . . or, leap quite a few centuries and emphasis of the dialogue was on social and political issues...
...What more can one expect in an hour...
...Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville...
...John Cardinal Krol and Massachusetts Con- information from family members, on and on...
...Joe asks his doctor to withhold this fact on an Turner perfectly catches this ambivalence in comic scenes insurance form requiring the doctor's signature...
...Most of the among panelists...
...The ecumenical rallying cry may conceal "Managing Our Miracles: Health Care in America" airs an appeal to self-interest...
...Viewers find themselves facing the term (November 4...
...school reunion, passes out (a contrivance, but essential), and The viewer watches a raw decision-making process, enters "goes back" to 1960, meeting all her old friends with her later into it, and enjoys an intelligent sorting out of complicated experience of them completely in mind...
...It sacres of Palestinians by Lebanese Christians, there might may be that this papacy will be remembered for a strong and never have been a final solution...
...In their limited number...
Vol. 113 • October 1986 • No. 17
