COMMENTARY
Jeff Simon: A great day for Couric and CBS News
“Afghanistanism” it was called, with all the haughty smugness that an experienced professional could muster in the journalism of the ’60s.
It was, according to a journalistic elder a few decades ago, the perfect word to describe lengthy journalism about some absurdly far-flung place—oh, I don’t know, say, Afghanistan— that couldn’t possibly matter to a reader or TV watcher as much as a new carpet store in your favorite plaza or a local church deacon busted for cleaning out the rectory safe.
The implication, as always, is that there’s something deeply comic about wonky buffoons and clueless pointy-heads stealing our valuable time with worldly information that just couldn’t matter.
Then came Sept. 11, 2001. And every self-satisfied dimwit who might chortle at creeping “Afghanistanism” among his journalistic colleagues suddenly discovered that: 1) Afghanistan is an eminently real place where 2) the Taliban are of immediate significance to Americans in a world where 3) suicide bombers fly airplanes into the tallest structure in Manhattan and cause the death of 3,000 people.
And while we’re at it, 4) the fellow whose group did that— Osama bin Laden—is still reputedly there, i. e. Afghanistan, protected by hostile landscape, hostile native tribes and all the hostility that is virtually a direct result of Western smugness and xenophobia.
Let me be brutally honest here: the big news to me, at this exact moment, is that a very promising combination of Japanese and Chinese restaurant has opened a few blocks from where I live. And that the Letterman Follies are instigating a series of X-rays of what so many of us watch daily, which is likely to continue well into 2010.
Who has the patience for Afghanistan? So distant, so foreign, so boring, after all. Jon and Kate couldn’t even find it on a map.
And that, I submit, is why the Croix de guerre for media heroism above and beyond the call of duty in the 21st century (where fatuousness and smugness are virtually the sworn duty of everyone cashing a check from our increasingly troubled media) should go to Katie Couric and colleagues at CBS News for taking up the lion’s share of the CBS Evening News Monday through Wednesday with Afghanistan and America’s troublesome involvement there.
Sure, we’d all rather hear about Letterman—has Stephanie Birkitt made a public statement yet?—but there are American soldiers living and dying in Afghanistan. And the fundamentalist fanatic who sent his minions on suicide missions against the World Trade Center and Pentagon is—best guess—still residing among the goats and stones and jihadists of Afghanistan.
And CBS, to its credit, devoted whopping portions of its news broadcasts Monday through Wednesday to examinations of Afghanistan and U. S. policy.
A fellow from CBS public information called me and explained that it was, in fact, a direct outgrowth of some CBS News soul-searching after the death of Walter Cronkite disgorged reams of news stories about what a great day it was when Cronkite and his colleagues devoted so much air time to explaining Watergate and its implications.
Just imagine the moment: CBS News continues to run third in the nightly ratings. And a monstrously weird news story has revealed that the man who is, arguably, the greatest of late night TV stars, is allegedly being blackmailed by a CBS News employee with much wartime experience. And not only that, the accused blackmailer is being publicly defended by former CBS News anchor Dan Rather, who said how little it sounded like the “Joe” Halderman he knew. (MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann says he knew Halderman at CNN years ago, and, yep, that was exactly “the Joe Halderman we knew.”)
And what does CBS News do? Take up valuable news air time examining, in exhaustive detail, Afghanistan and our involvement there, with all its future implications. Take a minute and contemplate that: The world of miracles hasn’t vanished. Sometimes, you can see one through a glass screen right in your living room or bedroom.
The Letterman Follies
On the Letterman Follies, no comic, late night or otherwise, was funnier or more brilliant than Letterman himself, the reigning master of jokes about zipper excesses of the rich and powerful.
On his Monday return, he got to a point in his opening monologue where he mentioned Bill Clinton and then trailed off into frustrated silence. And Gov. Mark Sanford. Followed by more consternation and silence. And Eliot Spitzer. Followed by still more silence.
It was wickedly funny.
But if you think that’s not a tiny glitch in our national agenda, think again. When the idiocies of the passing parade can’t be pointed out by our best witness because they’ve been so clumsy themselves that they’ve joined the parade, we have a major problem.
Let’s call it “Lettermanism.” The only solution? Hypocrisy. Total rank hypocrisy. Lord help us, but sometimes it does have its uses.
Log into MyBuffalo to post a comment
MyBuffalo is the new social network from Buffalo.com. Your MyBuffalo account lets you comment on and rate stories at buffalonews.com. You can also head over to mybuffalo.com to share your blog posts, stories, photos, and videos with the community. Join now or learn more.
Reader comments