Television and Our Place in the World
First: an exercise in nostalgia and what matters most. When I was in grammar school, perhaps three years after arriving to the United States, I often entertained myself with the following game of perspective:
Jose Marquez
142-10 Roosevelt Ave, Apt. 121
Flushing
Queens
New YorkUnited States of America
Western Hemisphere
Earth
Solar System
Milky Way
etc.
I am one of millions of children, from around the world, who have played this game.
As I contemplate a career shift from arts and public broadcasting (in spirit when not in fact) to academic scholarship, I wonder: When was the last time you turned on the TV, wanted to know something about something, found a good looking news program, were shown and told the skeleton outline of the story and then eavesdropped on a conversation involving an academic, a skeptic, a capitalist and a leftist?
Not often. At least, not before 12am which is when my local PBS station — and current employer, KQED — has the charity to air Charlie Rose. At that hour, it’s almost like an afterthought. This despite the fact that KQED recently tried to emulate Charlie Rose without paying much attention to the details with their two-week long “On the Homefront.”
I have heard friends make reference to Charlie Rose’s verbosity and I remember when Spy magazine had an index of the amount of time Rose talked vs. his guests. I don’t buy that complaint. If I wanted to hear a speech, I’d just read the press releases that circulate in advance of television news stories.
What I miss on television is a smart conversation: I need to hear Rose engage in a discussion where the multiple viewpoints cited above (skeptic, capitalist, etc) are not clearly marked with lines of tape on the stage (in theatrical lingo, “blocked”) — you stand here, you here, no one move, EVER, OK, start rolling: “Fox News presents…”
Back to TV. It’s a sad, sad America when a program like “Charlie Rose” has to justify its (obvious) reason for being in the masthead: “I believe there is a place in the spectrum for really good conversation, if it is informed, spirited, soulful.” No shit, Sherlock.
But that’s the country I call home: a place where the “spectrum” of voices includes the equivalent of ultraviolet radiation: the non-news, the non-conversation, the non-exchange of information by way of literally scripted dialogue and focus-tested slogans that betray nothing but the listener’s confidence. And, so, Charlie Rose has to enter the fray of competition with a wink and a nod to the shit that pours out of the godless men and women who work in for-profit telecommunications.
It’s OK, Charlie Rose is a good winker.
Last Friday, 4/11/2003, Rose had on Fareed Zakaria. I smell just a hint of a liberal (read, “humanitarian”) agenda on Zakaria which puts me at ease. But in his friendly discussion with Rose of “the Road Ahead: Iraq’s democracy,” his list of potential problems left out the persistent danger that any democracy — let alone any nation state — faces within the framework of realpolitik: the law of the jungle, where dog eats dog.
I do greatly appreciate Zakaria’s precise handiwork on explaining both the varieties of democracy and the important role that the United Nations has played in fostering these whenever it has operated with U.S. approval. But, that’s just it: with U.S. approval.
Conservatives have the gall to present themselves on television and, like their partisans cousins on the left, l-i-e to the public about the history of foreign affairs with gross headlines like “The U.N. botched Kosovo.” They render verdicts for which there has been no trial, no evidence, no examination nor cross-examination. Most television viewers, without a clue as to how to find a record of this ongoing “trial,” will have to respond to these pundits words with faith rather than freedom. “I like that conservative guy’s choice of words, he must be telling the truth.”
In any case, Zakaria’s obviously been thinking alot about the big questions when it comes to Democracy. But I heard him on both Friday’s night’s Rose (Saturday morning’s, thanks KQED) and Sunday’s morning’s This Week with Stephanopoulos, and neither time did he mention that one of the nasty little factors that interfere with a fledgling democracy’s chances for reaching adulthood are its adult neighbors.
(It appears that Zakaria understands his role as a television personality quite well. He stays “on-point.” Last weekend, his point was that oil-rich countries have a poor track record when it comes to creating and preserving democracies. He cited some of the countries that prove the point — Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria — and, perhaps, this was his one nod to the law of the jungle. Sadly, “the jungle” and “the market” must be interchangeable.)
It’s not something that Americans, with the exception of the isolationists like Buchanan or Chomsky, appear to want to address: How do you interfere just so? It is the essential question of foreign relations.
Because, no nation is an island. Interference and intervention are facts of nature. Like every biological organism’s need to interact with its environment for food, so, too, do humans interact with other humans within families, neighborhoods, communities, cities, states, nations and among nations. This is the sum of the parts we call “international relations.”
Here is a piece of rhetoric that actually works: When two commercial airplanes, filled with tourists, businessmen, families and a handful of terrorists, destroyed the Twin Towers in New York City, international relations became a matter of national defense. Though the road from that point in time to the present has at times appeared crooked then straight, the unbearable lesson of that day remains no less clear to me: Citizens of the U.S., if you wish to live in peace, you must engage in international relations.
Telecommunications is one part of that. So is living with the inherently international constitution of the modern nation-state. The lowercase “constitution” refers not the single holy text but to the multiple and varied residents and citizens who literally make up the country we live in.
Last Saturday, I accompanied my wife to a low-key, bohemian and yet very successful auction (read “fundraiser“) for a local non-profit art gallery, SoEx. After an hour or two of waiting, I ran into a friend from the Bay Area Video Coalition. The story of BAVC, from a 1970s video artist’s collective to a 21st century media production non-profit, would be an interesting counterpoint to the story above. But the hopeful closing stanza is not found in the story of the nonprofit but rather its employee: my friend, Ted and his girlfriend Angie.
Ted is from Thailand. Angie is from Korea. I am from Cuba. My wife Ana is from Mexico. A few seconds after meeting Angie, she and I began to talk about Korea then Cuba. The contents of that conversation are for another story. Suffice to say that these two immigrants — similarly and distinctly shaped by the Cold War and its hotspots, its megalomaniacal and violent dictatorships, its culturally isolated U.S. participants — had a common passion for, surprise: talking about politics and international relations.
Plus, we both really enjoy — “en- + joir to enjoy, from Latin gaudEre to rejoice” — Frontline.
Angie is now a graphic design student while I work with graphic design on a daily basis. We are both young and middle class. We are a potential market that can pay its way through the airwaves. Why is it we only have Frontline once a month and Charlie Rose at 12am?
related links
New Yorker Iraq coverage (get it while it lasts) and, to be topical, this essay on television coverage of the war by Nancy Franklin.