And That's the Way It Is

I have been mad at Walter Cronkite for years. Here's why: On December 10, 2003, John Glenn went back into space on the Space Shuttle Discovery. Cronkite, forever associated with the moon landing, provided commentary for the network providing the coverage I was watching. He waxed nostalgically about the Mercury program and Glenn and how the film The Right Stuff did a great disservice to the program by comparing the astronauts to monkeys.

It angered me that he said that about The Right Stuff, a film I've admired since I first viewed it many years ago. In my eyes, Cronkite came off looking like a senile old man who couldn't understand how much the film admired the astronauts, and couldn't understand the subtle social satire of a media and culture that didn't just admire the astronauts but attributed to them god-like celebrity. It bothered me that the "most trusted man in America" couldn't understand what I understood at a very early age.


I guess I should forgive him now that he's dead.

Most of the things I know of the 1960's was delivered to me via clips of Walter Cronkite's newscast. I always picture Cronkite taking off his glasses and swallowing his tears when announcing JFK's death, or letting out an "Oh, whew" after Neil Armstrong's foot touches the lunar surface.

I mourn his passing. Not just because someone from my parents' childhood is dead, but because his death is a reminder of the looming death of America. Isn't it ironic that in the coming days, the anchors and reporters will eulogize a great American just two weeks after they soiled the country with their coverage of Michael Jackson's death? They will eulogize a great reporter who had the guts to say on national television that the war in Vietnam was un-winnable (as if a war could be "winnable") not six years after they were the lapdog of the Bush administration in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

I wonder at times like these how much shame today's TV news personalities feel when they go to bed at night. Do they beg God for forgiveness or do they call their producers to find out how well they scored with Nielsen? If what we've seen from television in the last two decades is any indication, they don't know who God is, or if they have a religion, they must feel that He too enjoys watching news as entertainment.

I was watching a documentary the other day about obesity in America. The documentary itself was interesting but unremarkable, but in it was a clip of Cronkite reporting on obesity issues in America. His broadcast didn't have the usual camera shots of fat people's torsos as they walk down the street, it had charts and lengthy sentences that informed the viewer rather than entertain him. I wondered to myself how it was TV news became so dumb.

And I wonder to myself how we can expect our republic to survive if her citizen's can't get basic information from the news anymore. The print media is dying; the internet flourishes, but it is much too jaded and cynical, replete with aggregators who post unsubstantiated articles and opinions by poorly-informed commentators. Does the Huffington Post even have an ombudsman? TV is where most Americans get their news, and there's just not that much news in "the news" anymore.

The most ashamed I've ever been of television news, before the Michael Jackson death coverage, was last year's presidential election, the debates especially. The post-debate wrap-up tells us who won based on the candidate's performance rather than his substance. Did he look presidential? Did he come across as a leader to the American people? I just wish one of the moderators had asked questions that couldn't be answered with a canned response or a campaign slogan, or involved issues that Americans really cared about such as single-payer healthcare or the escalating national debt.

When all we get from the media is scandal-mongering and celebrity worship, we fly blindly through our days with the hope that somebody, somewhere in Washington is looking out for us. But those politicians are rare, and those that work as if they have a higher calling are too often ignored and unappreciated. The majority, however, are in the pockets of the corporations who elected them, who donated so much money to the campaigns that their wishes cannot go unfulfilled. The same corporations, by the way, who advertise on cable and network news programs, who sell their brand without fear of critical examination of their shoddy merchandise or inhumane labor practices. I fear the day when the weakest among us wakes up and realizes that his world has become a wasteland of violence, mismanagement and corruption.

I try to tell myself that if Cronkite were on TV today he'd be the same old Walter Cronkite, that he would cover the news rather than the gossip and the hearsay, that he'd care more about getting a story right than getting it first, that his questions to politicians would be substantive rather an obvious reach for a headline, and that he'd have the courage to tell the network to go fuck itself if they ever tried to transform his newscast into a variety show--an all-singing, all-dancing tribute to death and consumption.