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Michael Chabon and Frank Rich

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from: Frank Rich

Talking Heads Talking Themselves Up

Posted Thursday, Jan. 25, 2001, at 10:59 AM ET

Dear Michael,

I agree with you about this "transfer of piety" nonsense on TV. I think it is a new development, and it first could be spotted during the impeachment when talking heads desperate to bring dignity to their endless discussion of the Starr Report started to tell us over and over that "in America, we settle these things without tanks in the streets." Well, of course we do! How obvious and smug could they get? The real point of the exercise was to make the TV gasbags sound as if they were engaged in constitutional repartee worthy of the Continental Congress rather than recycling endlessly dirt about the president's sex life. On Inauguration Day, the theme was repeated--peaceful transfer of power, no tanks, blah blah blah--and repeated and repeated--out of sheer laziness and as a way of avoiding too much discussion about the way the election had been decided (no tanks, yes, but still not a dream vision of democracy in action). The next variation on the theme occurred once Bush gave his inaugural address: It was overpraised by almost every commentator. Why? Not because the speech was great or because the talking heads are necessarily pro-Bush. The real point--as in all this filigree about no tanks, peaceful transfer of power, etc.--was once again to elevate those mouthing the pieties. If a TV talking head is waxing poetic about George W. allegedly waxing poetic, said talking head looks patriotic, civic-minded, noble. This may yet pay off in Nielsen numbers once regular programming resumes.

You know: "Good for the Jews/Bad for the Jews" is more than a column idea. It may be a way of writing history in shorthand and perhaps should be officially introduced into Hebrew school curricula--e.g., Meyer Lansky vs. Hank Greenberg. (By the way, did you see the wonderful obituary of Morris Lapidus, the 98-year-old architect who gave Miami Beach the Fontainebleau and Eden Roc Hotels? Good or bad in this case may be a Talmudic question.) I laughed reading your list as I recalled the crooked Maryland Gov. Marvin Mandel, the Jews' own answer to Spiro Agnew. Isn't Mandel the one whose wife locked him out of the governor's mansion? Not even Gracie Allen and George Burns could top that.

Best,
Frank

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Frank Rich

Talking Heads Talking Themselves Up

Posted Thursday, Jan. 25, 2001, at 10:59 AM ET
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Michael Chabon's latest novel is The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Frank Rich is an op-ed columnist for the New York Times and author, most recently, of Ghost Light.
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Reader Comments From The Fray:




Thank you Mr Rich for bringing up the no tanks in the streets comment repeated by all the talking heads on TV. I too was shocked by it. We should be celebrating because there are no tanks in the streets? We settle for so little. They had an election in Canada recently, with very high turnout(by American standards) modern voting machines, and yes no tank in the streets. The winner was declared within hours. Unlike the US they can be certain that the man in charge was elected fair and square.

Why do the talking heads repeat empty pieties? Healing, closure, no tanks, peaceful transfer? Is it to create a false sense that the system works even when there are signs that the system failed?

--James Lynch

(To reply, click here.)


The news coverage of the inauguration seemed so rote. It reminded me of my local cable access channel, which replays the same prom footage over and over and at odd times. It's odd to channel surf and come across high-schoolers decked out in tuxes and gowns, standing awkwardly on lawns, getting into limos, walking into a dance hall over and again. I'm sure the kids in the video might like the event, and must love seeing it.

So too this inauguration. The hard core Bushies and the hard core Clinton-haters were likely cheered and moved by the whole coronation process. But really. It was so forlorn.

And even Bush's well-crafted--it's a pleasure to read--acceptance speech sounded tin coming from him. Every time he speaks, even when the rhetoric's lofty, I can't help but hear the C- student he usually is, the one who describes or explains things by restating the obvious (I'm a uniter, not divider, and that means I try to bring people together, not push them apart.). I'm so used to circular logic from Bush that I'm edge whenever he speaks.

And too, Clinton's 7.5 minute farewell, it seemed to me, had more oomph and staying power than W.'s 14 minute at bat. So as Rich suggests, W. pales not only because I usually find him dim, but also, in this case, by comparison to Clinton's superior oratory style.

--Nick Carbone

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