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 Recent commentary from National Journal: Social Studies: Why Bush (Senior) Didn't Blow It in the Gulf War (October 31, 2001) The reasons for Bush Sr. to quit fighting in 1991 are equally good reasons for Bush Jr. to persevere. By Jonathan Rauch. Legal Affairs: The Bill to Combat Terrorism Doesn't Go Far Enough (October 31, 2001) To win the war and prevent future catastrophes, we need to think outside the legal box. By Stuart Taylor Jr. Political Pulse: Not Exactly a Bush Flip-Flop (October 31, 2001) Under Bush, the United States apparently still does nation-building—just not with the U.S. military. By William Schneider. Legal Affairs: The Media, The Military, and Striking the Right Balance (October 23, 2001) The military and the Administration have ample reason to distrust some reporters and editors. By Stuart Taylor Jr. Political Pulse: Nation's New Attitudes Boost GOP (October 23, 2001) Before attacks, it was the Bush economy. Now it's the Osama Bin Laden economy. By William Schneider. On Books: Still, It's Home (October 23, 2001) A review of Curtis Wilkie's Dixie, a South-toward-home memoir. By Jim Wooten Media: Tone Makes a Comeback (October 23, 2001) In the news trade, there are times when substance isn't everything. We're in one of those times; it's only a slight exaggeration to say tone is what matters these days. By William Powers. More from National Journal. |
Media 
The Solace of LucyNeed a break from bad news? Try losing yourself in old TV comedies. You'll still love Lucy by William Powers ..... The national anxiety attack rages on, and a new consensus is emerging about who's to blame. Sure, terrorists are still the prime suspects, but lately it's fashionable to finger another scoundrel, a notorious hellhound based here in the homeland, as the source of our discontent. It's the media that's making us scared and crazy, see, and if really we want our sanity back, we have to break the media's stranglehold on our lives. If it's time to kill Osama bin Laden, then it's also time to heed the counsel of that old hippie bumper sticker, and kill your television. "For more than a month, we have been bombarded with bad news, and for some Americans, it is too much," said Dean Reynolds of ABC News, in a typical recent report on the media menace. Cut to Linda Prince, a middle-school teacher from Minnesota, who seemed to channel the anguish of the whole media-battered heartland when she told ABC: "The veil of apprehension that we feel now that we've never felt before is a lot harder to lift when it's ever present on television and in the headlines." Then, Gina Miness, a nursing supervisor in Chicago, added: "It's way too much. It's putting fear into everybody when it doesn't need to be." This is all inarguable, as far it goes. In the past few weeks, most Americans didn't need to be terribly concerned that an envelope of lethal anthrax might pop through their own personal mail slot at any moment. Many were worried sick about it, however, thanks to the Cipron-popping media. But there's a second element to this new blame-the-media movement that's a lot less solid. It's the prescribed solution to the problem, the one that a lot of smart people, including some medical experts, are advising: Flee the media. Last week, National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation devoted an entire show to the psychological effects of recent news events. One of the guests was Dr. Robert Ursano, a professor of psychiatry at the Uniformed Services University School of Medicine in Bethesda, Md. Ira Flatow, the show's host, asked him: "Should people just fight the attempt to turn that TV on every minute that they're wondering what's going on, I guess as an attempt to gain control of the situation or be more in control? Should they just fight it and just say 'I'm not going to do that'?" Ursano said, basically, yes, those who have watched a lot of television and found it traumatic should be urged to break the habit. "You have to remind them that they can turn off the television or they can not read that extra story about the victim." Flatow observed: "And, of course, you could do things good for yourself. You could buy some flowers or ... go outside in your garden or something. Change your venue." Sure, you could do those things. But you could also do something that's a lot easier, and doesn't require you to leave the sofa: Flee the scary, hyperventilating, and (let's face it) war-relishing media, for the pleasant, amusing, often downright comforting media that live right next door. In short, change the channel. Forty years ago last spring, Newton Minow, the then-chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, gave a scalding speech to the National Association of Broadcasters in which he called television a "vast wasteland." This became one of the most quotable quotes of the 20th century, and is often repeated today. I was born the year Minow gave that speech, and have always wondered what he was talking about. Though I wasn't much of a television-watcher yet, the record shows that the top-rated television programs of 1961 included Andy Griffith, Gunsmoke, The Untouchables, Jack Benny, and Candid Camera. Some wasteland. Lately, when I begin to feel I've watched one too many cable-TV anchors jumping out of their suits about the war's coming attractions (crop dusters! smallpox! suitcase nukes!), I find myself heading straight to the wasteland, and losing myself in its delights. Last week, I caught Dan Rather's appearance on Larry King Live, which featured not just this statement by the CBS anchorman: "I have no symptoms. I have had no difficulty whatsoever. I have talked to the city doctors for the city health department and to my own private physician. And I'm comfortable, up to and including now, with not being tested. If any symptoms develop, if I have any reason to think that there is a need to be tested, why, certainly I will do so." But also this one: "I am concerned about so much attention being paid to the media and press problems and cases involving the media." My head throbbing, I clicked away, to the cable channel TVLand, which was in the midst of a weeklong celebration of the 50th anniversary of I Love Lucy. It was the episode in which Lucy was doing an impersonation of Harpo Marx, only to have Harpo himself show up and, as it were, meet himself. At one point, as the real Harpo was playing a transcendent "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" on his harp for Ethel Mertz, I got to thinking that among all the great good things we're fighting to preserve in this war, I hope we're also fighting for the many small good things about this vast lovely wasteland of a culture. TVLand drew its biggest audience ever last week, one night attracting 1.8 million viewers. Many cable war-news shows are lucky to pull in half that many. People know what heals them.
What do you think? Discuss this article in the Politics & Society conference of Post & Riposte. More from National Journal. More on politics and society in Atlantic Unbound and The Atlantic Monthly. William Powers is media columnist for National Journal. He recently spent three months in Japan as a Japan Society Fellow, studying the role of reading in Japanese life. This column appears every week in National Journal, a weekly magazine covering politics and government published in Washington, D.C. For information on National Journal Group publications, see NationalJournal.com. Copyright © 2001 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved. | [an error occurred while processing this directive] | ||
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