Give! Give! Give!
GOODMAN, WALTER
Game BY WALTER GOODMAN Give! Give! Give! For some years I have been making out small checks to worthy organizations that depend on small givers when they can'tget big ones. But my resistance to...
...The favorite items are repression in Chile, riots in South Africa, an-tinuclear protests in Europe, and pollution in the United States...
...It may be commendable, bul I can't see why I should subsidize slanted journalism...
...I shall give to the library again, but not until the taste has gone away...
...The reason for this is not only a wholesome reluctance to give away money...
...Still, it strikes me as peculiarly unbecoming for the New York Public Library, that temple where people may study or browse or just hang around in untroubled solitude, to be intruding upon the evenings of their Friends...
...are not unfathomable...
...Whoever is selecting those items is on a mission...
...Nothing I can do or say will bring some perspective, much less a sense of calm to those fund-raising letters...
...There is little else...
...And I shall continue to send in my few dollars annually, feeling a touch shamefaced lest someone on the receiving end may conclude that I am contributing in response to the baloney rather than in spite of it...
...I also know that dinner time was selected because some consulting firm figured out that a lot of people are at home between 6 p.m...
...On the subject of WNYC, what is probably going to end my contributions is not their money-raising efforts or even the incessantly repeated commercials for themselves, but the news headlines on the Monday-to-Friday morning music show...
...This is Brenda Bullshit calling from Shining Crest Paradise...
...Everybody knows how much the listeners despise the stuff...
...Yet such disagreements are indigenous to the faith...
...All one can do is tune out for pledge week, which, incidentally, lasts nine days, in order to spoil two weekends of broadcasting...
...The organizations seem to be on a campaign designed to exasperate me...
...Okay, money must be raised to pay for those entertaining British shows...
...You know—McCarthyismis around the corner or maybe already on this side of that corner, and if I don't send in my Special Contribution it will mean a sad day for the Supreme Court...
...Twice a year or more, with these galas of money-grubbing, Public Broadcasting confirms the old lesson that when the high-minded go in for low-minded activities, they can out-vulgar the vulgarians...
...Take, for example, the American Civil Liberties Union, to which I have belonged for some time despite occasional disagreements over tactics and perhaps over principle as well...
...Nevertheless, there is an obvious and sad irony to these occasions, when broadcasters whose reason for being is to present something besides claptrap give us an orgy of chatter that rivals sportscast-ers for sheer dribble and makes talk-show hosts seem witty by comparison...
...But my resistance to their solicitations has been increasing faster than my contributions, or even than their proclaimed needs...
...Goodman, how are you this evening...
...a few of them are old enough to remember McCarthy...
...And where does any of them get off calling me at home...
...The ACLU has to pretend that it is at the barricades—and it will remain there, quoting from Tom Paine or Tom Jefferson, as long as it has to squeeze out contributions...
...What isn't at all fine, however, is the call I received a few weeks ago, at home at dinner time, from a woman who was soliciting my pledge for the library...
...Rehnquist, civil liberties remain sturdy, but that message catches no fish...
...The fellow who announces the recordings has a good radio voice and plays enough Mozart to satisfy me, but the news selection confirms everything that Jesse Helms believes about the people who run radio and television in this country...
...as he rends his garments and lays on the ashes he seems to be giving me the wink, the nudge with the elbow: "Sure, youandl know that whatever the intention of the Reagan Justice Department and Mr...
...What is my public library doing in the company of those hucksters...
...Nor do I mind being identified as a Friend of the Library, though I have a hunch that such expressions of friendship are only wallet deep...
...Yes, I am aware that the hysteria-mongering is an act...
...Bad Taste Then there is the New York Public Library, an institution to which I owe a lot and for which I have deep affection...
...Meanwhile, I have a suggestion—that the library make up a list of people who are rude to their telephone voices and scratch us from their phone lists...
...Along with everybody else whose name appears on sucker lists, I've been getting increasing numbers of such calls from worthy groups, like the American Cancer Society, less worthy ones, like newspapers that want me to subscribe or brokers who want me to invest, and worthless ones, like the people who offer powerful inducements to buy a condominium in the Poconos...
...I'm Frank Famous and I'm a Friend of Channel 13, because before it existed I used to spend my evenings in despair and now on Sunday I have Alistair Cooke and only 84 more pledges are needed to meet our quota and here's the great Luciano Pavarotti singing TakeMeHome Again Kathleen...
...and 8 p.m...
...I realize that in the reach for money, one cannot be fastidious...
...Pace, ACLU, I defend the right of any peddler to annoy me at practically any hour of day or night...
...What is putting me off is the unending stream of give-more letters written by some hired hysteric and designed to scare me out of my pants...
...I'm not entirely certain what some of the callers are trying to sell me, because I don't let them get that far...
...On WNYC, my local Public Radio outlet, during money-seeking days the disk jockeys sometimes hold back on playing a record until a certain number of calls come in...
...It appears to me that the ACLU's principles have changed more than mine, and in a direction that diverges from my notion of civil liberties...
...The people who run the ACLU are not lunatics...
...Although the refurbishing and exhibitions and lectures now enlivening the great old building on 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue have nothing to do with my feelings for the library, insofar as they excite attention and contributions, that's fine by me...
...Gala Gabfest Then there is Public Broadcasting, with its interminable pledge drives and auctions and galas and all those faces and voices telling me how terrific they are, how terrific I am for appreciating them, how America will turn into a desert if I don't send in my check right away —and, hey, I can a get tote bag, too...
...Norman Dorsen, the organization's head, signs most of these howls...
...For insufferable condescension and shameless patronization, there is nothing to beat this stuff...
...But the opening lines— "Good evening, Mr...
...They simply want the money, and evidently the only way they have found to get it is through scare tactics...
...It's a kind of torture—Amnesty International, whose fundraising letters are heart-tuggers, but, alas, with justification, might look into it...
...Of course, I have the right to hang up, yet the aftertaste is sour...
Vol. 68 • March 1985 • No. 4
