The Scum at the Top
Commentary on the Rats in Washington
By the Tube, For the Tube
By Anna Quindlen
Newsweek
© October 3, 2005
Page 104
You're not qualified to govern this country if you don't
understand the uses of TV. Those in public life should
be required to watch it.
On the second day of judge John
Roberts's confirmation hearings, CNN's Jeff Greenfield
felt moved to ask a question. The guest was Sen. Charles
Grassley of Iowa, and Greenfield inquired why his fellows
on the Judiciary Committee felt the need to use their
limited time for bloviation instead of actually asking
the judge questions. Senator Grassley replied in one
word: "television."
I can reply to that in three words: aw, come on.
Members of Congress have had more than a quarter century
to get used to the idea that cameras are recording
their proceedings, and that this is an invaluable
thing for the American people. Watching the hearings
to decide whether Roberts should become chief justice
was quite illuminating from several collateral
perspectives. How could senators complain that they
had not learned enough about the nominee when so
many of them had wasted their allotted time giving
pocket stump speeches? How come the aides who sit
behind them don't realize that they, too, will be on
camera, and that therefore they should not behave like
small children in church? And didn't Sen. Tom Coburn
think anyone in the room would notice that he was
doing a crossword puzzle? Isn't it strange how these
people are both mesmerized by the cameras and weirdly
insensible to them?
You're not qualified to govern this country at this
moment in time if you don't understand the uses of TV.
In fact, those in public life should be required to
watch it. It's like Google Earth for the national
psyche, hovering over the landscape, zooming in. Much
of what it zooms in on makes you wonder what we've
come to. Are teenage girls and their parents really
as venal, acquisitive and without standards as "My
Super Sweet 16" would suggest? Has the revolution in
science and technology in our time really led inexorably
to the breast implants (and man tans) of "Dr. 90210"?
But saying that there's a lot of junk on TV and that's
why you won't watch (or, for purists, won't have a set
in the house) is like saying you won't read books
because there are a fair amount of cheesy ones published.
Just look at the government debacle surrounding Hurricane
Katrina. Apparently they didn't know. This is
mind-boggling to those of us who understand how
to work a remote. Every network, every moment, was
showing what looked like a disaster movie with the
most terrifying special effects possible. And everywhere
there were the same sentiments, hand-lettered on
placards, painted on roofs, screamed by women with
children outside the Superdome: HELP.
We Americans were ahead of the administration curve
because apparently its members weren't watching TV.
Lots of huff-and-puffs in D.C. don't. Some of them make
the argument that they're too busy to channel-surf.
Bull. The members of Congress find time in their
schedules to consume finger food with lobbyists. The
president currently holds the world record for vacationing
by a head of state.
The nature of his job is that he's divorced from normal
human experience. He doesn't have to buy a gallon of milk
or a gallon of gas. He doesn't hear people talking about
his shortcomings or their own despair. Everything seems
to take him by surprise, so that while we were watching
the end of the world in New Orleans he was giving some
lame speech spelling out how many pounds of ice were
being sent south. If he'd been watching all those black
women with hungry babies on their hips in New Orleans,
he would have known that we were heading into the teeth
of a national storm on poverty and race as devastating
as any hurricane.
But the president doesn't see what we see. He doesn't
know what we know. He needs to find some way to transcend
his isolation, and one way is to watch TV. Instead of
those stagy red-white-blue events with the cheering
crowds, he might want to take a look at some episodes
of "Cops" to see what's really going on in parts of
the nation. Maybe the sight of the battered buildings
of Fallujah, once stores and schools and homes, would
provide a clue to why some Iraqis aren't thrilled to
have us there. As a lifelong print person, I have to
admit sadly that the small screen owns some of the biggest
stories of our time, because of the footage, because of
the immediacy, because of the range. More than 30
percent of us watch TV news for more than an hour.
The average home has three TV sets.
A certain snobbery has developed around the notion of
TV viewing, a certain "let them watch 'Raymond' " attitude
that television is declasse, a thing best left to the
masses. Well, it's the masses who decide elections, and
who live with their results as well. Think of it this
way: The Founding Fathers are sitting around in
Philadelphia and New York, the 13 Colonies stretching
up the coast and down, Virginia and Rhode Island a long
slog on horseback. And suddenly someone offers them a
way to know what people are thinking, on farms, in towns,
from the North to the South. Not a perfect way, not a
way that tells you everything you need to know, but a
way nonetheless.
They'd jump at the chance. So should their successors.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
The Scum at the Top - Home
E-mail: dwagner2@isd.net
©2007 DJW
Last Modified:
January 15, 2007