Television – Page 5 – Don't Gel Too Soon

RePost: Best of Don’t Gel 2009 – The End of the Berlin Wall: Twenty Years Ago

This is the Brandenburg Gate in the center of Berlin. The first time I saw it, in 1974, there was a wall built right through it.

Here’s a photo of it then, from the Hotel Adlon website. The hotel stood, from 1907 to 1945, when it was decimated by a fire, just to the left of the Gate. It was the stopping place for world leaders and socialites and was rebuilt shortly after the Wall fell.

Because Berlin has such a dramatic history, it was always exciting to be there — maybe more so while the wall remained.

I remember especially coming through Checkpoint Charlie
(that’s it on the left) on a dark fall day (Americans were allowed to
visit for the day after going through this scary border station and
having cars and packages searched) and, as we approached the Gate,
seeing an old man standing, looking over into the West. In his hands,
clasped behind his back, was a rosary. Not so popular in communist
East Berlin. I recall thinking immediately “Oh. His daughter is
getting married in the West today and he can’t go, and he’s standing
there, thinking about her, praying for her.” Berlin in those times
lent itself to imagining such things. The drama was palpable.

The first time we went to Berlin after the wall fell, I remember, it was
pouring. Oblivious to the weather, we walked back and forth beneath
the lovely arches in the now-open gate, kind of giddy at what it meant
to the people of Berlin and all those who care about freedom and, I
guess, redemption. For despite what happened in Berlin during the war
(and we’ve studied it extensively and spoken both with survivors and
those involved in the rebuilding of the Jewish community) the Wall caused immeasurable suffering and was a diabolical slash through the heart of the city and every one of its people.

I’ve written about Berlin before: from its playgrounds to its grim Communist years. We go there often. It seems to pull us back, its intellectual energy
and re-emerging Jewish community irresistible. Once, when we’d taken
our kids there while the Wall remained, one son, around 5, bought a
stuffed wool pig and told everyone he “got it out of jail.”

Here’s one last photo – of two buildings: one redone and the other still old and rickety, in the very cool neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg, which is in the old “East Berlin” and now, last I heard, had the highest childbirth rate in Germany and was home to artists, writers, musicians and fashionably cool people who don’t have to work. What you see stands for it all: the struggle to renew, still only partly complete.

Art Imitates Life and Dr. Horrible’s Nemesis Is an Author!

I'm not sure who's on first, which chicken chased which egg or even how to tell you about this. See this book cover? It's a real book – and Entertainment Weekly says it isn't even bad. But the author – well, the author isn't real!!! He's a character on an ABC TV program called – guess what — Castle!

Played by Dr. Horrible's own Biggest Enemy Captain Hammer — aka Nathan Fillion – he's a debonair, wealthy mystery writer with an actress mother and a typically New-York-wise daughter with whom he has a refreshingly healthy relationship (Mom too, actually.)

So there's nothing wrong with the show; it's slight, sweet and kind of funny although it could certainly be better written. In fact, from the reviews I've read, it might be better if Richard Castle (who remember, doesn't exist – really) wrote the scripts as well as his books.

Yes books because apparently this is the first of many. And you can get it on Kindle and Castle even has a brief (equally fictitious) bio on Amazon "Richard Castle is the author of numerous bestsellers, including the critically acclaimed Derrick Storm series. His first novel, In a Hail of Bullets,
published while he was still in college, received the Nom DePlume
Society's prestigious Tom Straw Award for Mystery Literature. Castle
currently lives in Manhattan with his daughter and mother, both of whom
infuse his life with humor and inspiration."

Got that? Fillion/Captain Hammer (this guy) also plays a fictitious writer on a lightweight TV show and somebody – whose name isn't anyplace and as far as I can determine hasn't played anyone (other than a ghostwriter) has written a novel in his name.

This isn't a scandal or a crime – it's just so damned funny. Fillion seems like a fine fellow and Castle is certainly likable enough. But it's hard to get books published these days – especially fiction.

So all you struggling writers out there — now you know how to sell your novel. Make it into a TV show and your literary career is assured.

As my mom used to say, "Only in America!"

Is There a Draft in Here? Should There Be a Draft?

I can't believe I missed it! Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the first United States draft lottery drawing, Every young man my age and many older and younger waited in front of their TVs with sweaty palms and pounding hearts (I'm not kidding) as the numbers came out of the barrel. And those in this photo were the "old white guys" who did it. The one drawing the number is Republican House Armed Serviced Chairman Alexander Pirnie (R-NY) and the man to his right is the (then) despised Chairman of the Selective Service (the Draft) General Lewis Hershey.

OH and one more thing: just beyond that camera, over to the left, was me. Sitting with a telephone and reading each drawn number to the CBS News studio where the number was then posted on the screen. Each number was a birthday, and the order in which they were drawn determined the likelihood that the men in the list would be drafted and, most likely, go to Vietnam. First birthday drawn – lottery number 1. Last birthday drawn – lottery number 365.

As I read the numbers into the phone, I was reading death warrants. Of men my own age. And I knew it.

Every number, every birthday, could be someone I knew – an old boyfriend, a cousin, someone's brother, a high school classmate, a teacher, another someone's son. The war was real in a way it hadn't been before, even though there had always been a draft. Up until the lottery, college students and graduate students were deferred and so were married men. In fact, there were more than a few weddings to keep boyfriends home.

Many of these rules, which were, after all, based on class since there were so many more white middle class men in college than other groups, were wiped out when the lottery began.

That meant that on a theoretical level, I should have been proud. My country was spreading the risk, spreading the pain – and even if I opposed the war, I knew that others were not being asked to fight it for me and my peers anymore. Those we loved were also at risk. All I felt though was fear, and anger, and despair. Which is probably not a bad way to feel when loved ones are about to be drafted to go fight in a "dirty little war" in Vietnam.

So today, after the President's speech last night, I wonder. We know the military prefers a volunteer military even with all the re-deployments and disruptions. It's building a "military class" in our country of people who know things we don't – won't learn. And they're proud to be there, scared or not. It's effective. But is it fair? Is it even productive, when it insulates so many of us from an imminent sense of loss? When we never have to fear the husband in a wheel chair, the son whose PTSD will not fade and, worst of all, that dreaded knock at the door,

9/11 Predicted the Role of Bloggers (I’m Not Kidding)

I don't know about you, but 9/11 footage still wipes me out. It doesn't get any easier to watch. But this morning MSNBC was running the first few hours of coverage from the TODAY SHOW in real time and I watched a couple of hours.

It was like watching a horror movie as Katie and Matt started out so cheerily, then began reporting a "small plane" flying into the first Tower. Then, gradually, the awful reality began to emerge. And for a good long time, and intermittently thereafter, it was "eye witnesses" and "neighborhood residents" and other information "civilians" who delivered the best information.

I listened as a young woman on the telephone, on her way to work at a downtown hotel and having just emerged from the subway just below the Trade Center, described the early sights of the attack. She calmly detailed what she saw, at least until the second plane hit when she responded with understandable emotion. Even then, she was able to carefully report developments – even putting her questioners on hold to check with a local policeman. No seasoned reporter could have done it better.

Later, other eyewitnesses appeared, one after the other. They used words like "reportedly," were very careful as they described what they saw, and offered careful, tempered accounts. This went on all day. Of course those closer to the real product of the attacks, the bodies, the people jumping out of the windows – civilian and reporter alike – were deeply moved and it showed.

So fast-forward to today. As the mainstream media fights for its life, as programs like my alma mater (9 years) the TODAY SHOW move more and more toward infotainment, the serious, thoughtful and original journalism is done as often on blogs as it is anywhere else. Of course there are impulsive writers and rumor mongers and gossip tramps but that's true everywhere and, as the witnesses demonstrated eight years ago, you don't need a network paycheck to deliver reliable and well-presented information. The citizen army of bloggers today is validated every time a caring and thoughtful eyewitness offers mainstream media a sane, helpful description of what's happening, or has happened.

So next time you hear someone going on about "those bloggers" and their untrustworthy nature, take it from a long-time broadcast journalist turned blogger: it's the content of character, not the brand of employer, that makes a journalist.

Photo via Creative Commons by macten

The Amazing Don Hewitt: CBS News, Conventions, 60 Minutes and Me

You probably saw the 60 Minutes tribute to Don Hewitt last night; I had meant to write about him when he died, got distracted and then, last night, realized I couldn’t not (if you forgive the double negative) recall him a bit. The photo you see here was during the production, I think, of an interview with President Kennedy. It shows him in action, rather than in a cute photo so it’s the one I wanted to use.

I was a kid when I first met Hewitt – 21 and new to the CBS Washington Bureau. It was late 1968 and he’d come down from New York to get everyone excited about his new show, 60 Minutes. That’s right – it’s almost 41 years old. He was introduced to me as “the only producer who could make you proud that you were the only one who’d gotten the recipe for Tricia Nixon’s White House wedding cake.” It was that infectious sense of competition — the joy of it, not the rest of it — that inspired the rest of us. Oh – and it was only later that I learned he had also been the producer of the Kennedy-Nixon presidential debates, the first ever to appear on TV.

Of course he could also drive you crazy – pushing, making last-minute changes, taking forever to finally appoint women as producers (his long-time secretary became one of the best) and, like all people of great energy, sometimes yelling. Really yelling.

I had the most to do with him at the presidential nominating conventions, which used to run “gavel to gavel” – from the moment the convention began until the moment it ended, live on TV. Four “floor correspondents” wandered the convention hall searching for stories. Each, and later each two, had a producer. And these correspondents were the top talent, showcased in the pressure cooker of 8 – 12 hours of live television. Over the years I worked with Roger Mudd, Mike Wallace, Ed Bradley, Leslie Stahl and Dan Rather, among others. No shrinking violets here. And, presiding over them all, in his control room above the floor, was Don. When you had a story to offer you would go to a “floor phone” and call the booth. Someone would take your offer and relay it to Don (sometimes you’d tell him yourself) who would accept or reject it. Remember at the same time he was dealing with Walter Cronkite in the anchor booth and all the live guests who showed up there, remotes” out in the convention city and hometowns of about-to-be nominees and more. For all those hours, he’d make decisions. Sometimes you could argue, but usually you lost. With all the incoming data, he kept things flowing for four days (and evenings.) And he did it all with the same sense of “story telling” that he described as the secret behind the success of 60 Minutes. And it was a blast.

So there you are. Another “legend” gone – and he was a legend who transformed the news business for the better and kept it that way for a long time before commerce made it much harder to sustain the kind of quality he demanded. Except on 60 Minutes, of course.

Colbert, The Word and Woodstock

The Colbert Report

Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

The Word – Hippie Replacement

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tasers

I know, I"m in London and I should stop putting up videos of TV shows. But I love this one. And, it's what we call "timely" since the 15th is the 40th anniversary of .. well watch this and see for yourself.

Kevin Spacey, David Letterman, Twitter and Moms Rising – All in One Post!!!

OK so I’m in London and a friend posts this on my Facebook page. And I should be telling you more about London and that we’re leaving for Paris this afternoon (on theEurostar!!) for the weekend but this is just fun.

ALSO on that same Facebook page though, from Moms Rising, is this:
Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner “…we are now lagging behind the rest of the world in closing the gender gap. According to the World Economic Forum, the US ranks 31st of 128 countries overall, but 76th in educational attainment, 36th in health and survival, 69th in political empowerment, and 70th for wage equality for similar work. In the representation of women in our Congress, we rank 71st.”

Reps. Maloney, Biggert reintroduce Equal Rights Amendment

So when you’re finished laughing at Kevin and Dave, think what we can do about these devastating numbers! I’ve just gone to work at Causes Managing Editor at Care2 and we have an active women’s rights section there – and we all know plenty of other places to raise some hell. Somehow, seeing it all aggregated like this makes it worse, no?

Avenue Q, in London! How Did We Miss It Before?

It’s more than a little crazy to come all the way to London, see an American musical – and find it so familiar, so real and well-observed, witty, loving and even joyous, that you wonder how it is possible that you hadn’t’ seen it before. The play is Avenue Q, and for most people it will be a “yeah, and???” because it won so many Tonys, including Best Musical, Best Book, Best Direction of a musical, Best Performance by a leading actor in a musical, and Best Performace by a leading actress in a musical, and because everyone has written about it for years. Hah! And Cindy thinks she made some great discovery!

In fact, I do think I’ve made a great discovery – that it’s still possible that an entire theater full of people from dozens of countries (just seated directly around us were India, New Zealand, Australia and France) can respond to something without helicopters or wild moving sets or TV/film stars in the cast — something so completely human (well, if you count the puppets who are in fact among the “most” human) that it inspired and moved us all. That all this can be accomplished with warmth and — I know this sounds corny — a real affection for what makes us human, for the power of laughter and of songs. Both of us feel that we had a perfect evening, one that inspires gratitude, even. Here’s a little of it for you, in case you missed it too.(From the Tony’s)

Norman Lear Reminds Us Why We Love Music (and Why We’re Right)

Leave it to Norman Lear, founder and early funder of People for the American Way and creator of All in the Family and Maude, two of the most successful sitcoms in American television history, to produce the remarkable Playing for Change. Musicians – street musicians, from all over the world, recorded and filmed separately and combined into a multi-national, multi-ethnic concert, recorded (with high-tech equipment) on city street corners and the red dirt of townships, Congo, New Orleans and right in front of the White House.
The message, as Lear freely admits "sounds like claptrap" but somehow it can't help but sink in: music, the universal language, reminds us how much we have in common across the barriers that separate nation and race, faith and gender. It won't change anything by itself, certainly, but it's a lovely reminder of what could be.

UPS Pulls Its Ads from O’Reilly: He Deserves It But. . .

I'm torn. Really. Nobody hates Bill O'Reilly and all he stands for more than I do. And when he went after my former colleague Amanda Terkel by sending a producer to prey on her on her vacation, a camera alongside, I was troubled. It's not the news gathering I was trained to do.

On one hand, it was totally unethical to follow a writer around and harass her for comments made about an anchorman. It's bizarre and a ridiculous waste of editorial resources, especially when the world of journalism is in such economic chaos. Chasing her down the street, peppering her with questions, when no one ever asked her for an interview she probably would have granted – it's all disgusting.

On the other hand, when we push advertisers to withdraw their ads from a show, we are doing something we ourselves opposed during the time of great TV from Norman Lear to Stephen Bochco to Diane English, among others. All in the Family, Hill Street Blues, Murphy Brown – they were among many fine, pioneering programs with a progressive bent that faced threats from major evangelical and other religious and political organizations like the Family Research Council. Their weapon every time was a threat to advertisers to remove their ads from these and other programs, or face boycotts. Of course there were no blogs in those days so it was tougher to organize but these people were scary and sometimes effective. We always defended free speech. Those shows deserved protection because they aired on licensed public airways. O'Reilly airs on cable – people pay to watch it so maybe that makes it a bit different.

On the other hand, (I know, this is the third hand) the Amanda gambit was totally unethical behavior, designed, I suspect, as chilling effect on its own. It raises the price for honest advocacy, exploiting the protection of the First Amendment to do so.

I guess what I'm saying is that what O'Reilly and his goons do is reprehensible; in my mind it's somewhat worse when the "victim" is a tiny woman, anything but threatening, who is on vacation. But using the weapons that I saw as so dangerous when they were aimed at "us" — I'm not so sure. What do you think?