Needed: Eye-Gouging Fun
A Clinton predecessor reviews his "60 Minutes" performance.
URL:http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110003187
BY NICHOLAS VON HOFFMAN
Wednesday, March 12, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST
When I read that Bill Clinton had gotten my old job doing the debate segment on "60 Minutes," my first thought was "Oh, how far the great have fallen." First impeachment and then doing tit for tat in the very seat once occupied by yours truly--what further indignities await the Man from Hope?
Then I read that the president's opposite number was former Sen. Robert Dole, the first man to go over Viagra Falls in a barrel and live to hold his head up in public afterward. Mr. Dole, of course, was a World War II hero as well as a man held in the highest regard by the Senate, neither of which you can say about Mr. Clinton, who may be thinking that partnering up with Mr. Dole is a step up in class.
My weekly debate opponent many years ago on "60 Minutes" wasn't a former Senate majority leader but a conservative Southern gentleman with a twinkle in his eye and a syndicated newspaper column. He used to refer to our act as "a form of political professional wrestling." James J. Kilpatrick didn't take what we were doing too seriously. Judging from the Clinton-Dole debut performance, both men are taking their new gig seriously indeed. They are in danger of recapitulating their somnolent 1996 presidential campaign in which this drowsy duo narcotized the tens of millions who failed to make it to the polls because they slept through Election Day.
In the spirit of the World Wrestling Federation, Kilpo and I grunted, groaned, eye-gouged and cracked wise lest the viewers' index fingers hit the remote. We learned early that in television it isn't what you say but how you say it. As these two august politicians ought to know by this stage in their careers, TV is a medium of the lowest common denominator, where wonkish carryings--on about the deficit or stately eructations on the national defense posture get the performer abysmally low ratings and a quick-time, escorted walk out the door and on to the street. Unless he punches it up, Mr. Clinton, who managed to hold on to his job after his personal popularity melted and Congress tried to give him the sack, will be treated more harshly by CBS than he was by the Senate.
I got fired from "60 Minutes," but it wasn't for sending the viewers into a deep snooze. Just the reverse. It was for jolting them out of their Barcaloungers. Somebody from the network told me that after I had committed my crime of lèse-majesté, so many protest calls hit CBS that they blew out the switchboard at Black Rock, the nickname for the network's skyscraper headquarters.
My demise was occasioned by Don Hewitt, the program's storied executive producer, who told Kilpo and me he wanted us to dilate on the subject of Richard Nixon, then in his last days in the White House. It seemed to me that we had been embroidering on this theme incessantly for months and there was nothing left to say. Alas and alack, I found an unfortunately colorful way of making that point by going on the air and saying something like, "Mr. Nixon is the dead mouse on the kitchen floor, and the American family, in slippers and bathrobe, is gathered around him arguing over who will pick him up by his tail and drop him in the trash." I said mouse, but millions thought they heard rat and raced for the phones.
While they were calling CBS, Don was calling me. He told me, "You have set broadcast journalism back 20 years." Naturally, I was both proud and elated although too modest to say so, but then broadcast journalism recovered with alacrity, my contract wasn't renewed and the incident was forgotten.
Messrs. Clinton and Dole should take heed. Don Hewitt is already grumbling in public to the newspapers. The senator came in for more grouching than the president, but all is not lost. The legendary producer said he'd be working with his boys, hinting perhaps they might do their next debate by rapping. Mr. Clinton is famously musical and it's said that Mr. Dole does an eye-popping soft shoe.
There is a fine line to be walked on the old-fashioned, on-air networks. On the cable news channels, where anything goes and they brawl day and night, you can make up what you lack in wit by pushing a cream pie in your opposite's face. It's doubtful if either of the two gentlemen have the chops for such clownishness, although they both are reputed to have fierce tempers.
After a long and splendid run, "60 Minutes" is in decline. Presumably, our two worthies were brought in to help save the program from eventual extinction, but, if they are going to do it, they will have to step up the pace. On their maiden voyage they looked like two old escapees from a Miami Beach bench accepting lifetime achievement awards from the American Association of Plumbing Fixture Wholesalers. Gentlemen, that won't do. Twist a nose, gouge an eye, kick a shin and, with any luck at all, you too can set broadcast journalism back a generation. It badly needs it.
Mr. von Hoffman is a columnist for the New York Observer. The opera "Nicholas and Alexandra," for which he wrote the libretto, has its premiere in September. |
