If Tommy Lee can go to college, why can't George Bush?
Before any Log Cabinettes get your knickers in a twist complaining about how L'il Georgie has a degree from Yale and one from Harvard (yes, and Paris Hilton has "written" two books), let us explain.
The new reality show Tommy Lee Goes to College is about more than just book larnin' and replacing the theory of evolution with the theory of rampant stupidity. It's about commanding a host of life skills, and it's actually pretty darn entertaining.
As we were watching a talking head on morning show Today who was explaining a "no-brainer" about which the President apparently had no brain, we were ruminating about how Tommy Lee has improved in the logic department in just a few weeks. Why not the President?
Perhaps what the country really needs is for George to get on the reality bandwagon. He could go to Kathy Hilton's nouveau riche etiquette class on NBC and learn how to be a Hilton. (Ah, if Kathy had only taught Paris what she's teaching these other poor slobs.) If Georgie took Mrs. Hilton's etiquette class, he would know that when a grieving mother turns up on your doorstep asking why you killed her son, the polite thing to do is talk to her.
Cindy Sheehan was the top TV story of the week. Nightline did a snippy piece on her on August 19. (She didn't rate Prime Time or 20/20; the former was reserved for a rerun about kids in trouble; the latter discussed the car-jacking of host Elizabeth Vargas' husband.) It was surprisingly whiny for Nightline, but then it was in their new Friday-night format that covers three stories inadequately, magazine-style, just like every other tabloid-TV show. Memo to ABC: Nightline is not Inside Edition, it's real news. Let's keep it that way.
Nightline senior correspondent Michelle Martin seems not to like Mrs. Sheehan and sounded more like Fox's Michelle Malkin than a real reporter. The spot was about as blatantly pro-Bush as one can get and still not be on Fox.
The interviewees (which did not include Sheehan herself) were Bush supporters like a husband and wife who run a storage company down the road from the President's place in Crawford. The woman whined to Martin that the protest was "getting to be real old-hat," and that "the President deserves a vacation and a rest." (A rest from what exactly? He's spent 27% of the time he's been in office on vacation, managing to outdo the former vacation king, Ronald Reagan.) The man was equally unsympathetic. "As a man, I can tell you, her son would be embarrassed and ashamed of what she's doing."
Martin described Sheehan as "a longtime activist," which is not accurate. She neglected to mention the nationwide candlelight vigils August 17 spawned by Sheehan's protest. Nor was there any sense of opprobrium over the neighbor of Bush's who ran over hundreds of crosses with the names of dead soldiers written on them (referred to as a "display" in the piece). The letter-writing campaign by mothers of soldiers to Laura Bush that Sheehan organized was virtually sneered over as a silly time-waster. Martin described Sheehan's "rage," but never her grief. If this a preview of Nightline after Ted Koppel leaves, we will not be watching.
Eye witness
In an in-depth interview on BBC World News, Sheehan noted that the purpose of her protest was to get the war back in the news and into the public eye, and to seek justice for her son and all the other dead in the war.
In that, she has succeeded. Local newscasts and the evening national news have the war front-and-center again. Coverage of Iraq has risen by nearly 10% since Sheehan's protest began. And as Bush vacations and Baghdad burns, the President's approval rating has plummeted, matching Lyndon Johnson's when the Vietnam War went irretrievably south in 1968.
Yet despite her success in bringing the war back home, newscasts have been very unsubtle on Sheehan, nearly as careful as Nightline to quote only counter-protesters, not supporters (and never mentioning how many protesters there are). We wonder if soon the smear tactics used to discredit Sheehan will include an accusation of homosexuality. Counter-protesters claim she is "no better than Al-Qaeda." Another counter-protester on NBC noted, "Go back to San Francisco, you can't do this here." Just as Bush has refined the 9/11 = Iraq equation, apparently his supporters believe anti-war protest = queer.
Conservative newscasters on Fox, CNN and MSNBC have a similar take. Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the inimitable Ann Coulter, the Leni Riefenstahl of the American Right, have focused on Cindy Sheehan like hounds on a fox.
The most appalling quote of the week came from Limbaugh, naturally. On his August 17 broadcast Limbaugh noted, "Frankly, I'm fed up — not fed up. I retract that. I'm weary, ladies and gentlemen, of even having to express sympathy. 'Oh, she lost her son!' Yes, yes, yes, but [sigh], we all lose things."
Yes, Rush, we all lose things. But losing a first-born child isn't quite the same as losing one's illegal oxycotin connection. Really, it isn't.
Key Koppel
The other protest leading TV news has been the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Nightline has done the best and most balanced TV reporting on the conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians over the years. Nightline covered the Gaza withdrawal in-depth all last week, culminating with an insightful if chilling interview between Koppel and Palestinian cabinet member Hannan Ashrawi.
Ashrawi has never decried violence against Israelis, only violence against Palestinians. Nor has she ever come out against suicide bombings. She has been harshly critical of all recent Israeli Prime Ministers and considers them the same, despite their quite obvious range from left to right to centrist. Yet in Palestine, Ashrawi is considered a moderate. Thus what she said was quite disturbing.
Ashrawi has been a participant in numerous town meetings Koppel has held in Israel. Last week she told Koppel Israel deserves no kudos for their withdrawal, that the physical withdrawal of 9,000 settlers was merely publicity for Ariel Sharon. Ashrawi insisted that the settlers in Gaza had always been a financial drain on Israel. According to Ashrawi, Sharon plans to refute any other return of occupied land with this dramatic show in Gaza.
The Arab News Network and Al-Jazeera are reporting the event much as Ashrawi described it, but with one fatal difference. They are giving credit for the withdrawal to Hammas and other violent groups. The word in the Arab world is that Israel was cowed into giving up Gaza by the impact of the violence of the Intifada.
Some American TV commentators agree. We were mesmerized August 18 & 19 by Hal Lindsey's broadcasts on Trinity Broadcast Network, the largest religious broadcasting network in the US. We occasionally watch TBN to see what neocon Lindsey, who has written several bestselling books including Hatred: The Roots of Jihad, has to say. His nightly International Intelligence Briefing is an hour-long presentation of the day's news in the context of fundamentalist Christian doctrine, with some historical background tossed in.
Lindsey is distressed with both Israel and Bush, enraged that Israel is giving land that "belongs to God" to the "godless terrorists." (He gave a brief history of the Balfour decision and the establishment of Israel, the 1967 war on Israel in which Israel occupied Gaza and the West Bank, and the current withdrawal.) Lindsey lauded Tony Blair for his decision to expel those who talk jihad in Britain.
TV is the voice of the people, all the people. So it's essential to watch a range of programming, especially news. The big three networks are carrying less international and "hard" news, and more fluff. BBC World News (nightly on PBS, check local listings) is hard-hitting, take-no-prisoners news, and unlike American newscasts, focuses on the whole world.
On a lighter but no less political note, Craig Ferguson's Late Late Show is slowly replacing the sort of political repartee we once associated with Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect before ABC pulled it. Ferguson has been doing daily ripostes on Rumsfeld that are simply fabulous. Included among his guests last week was Arianna Huffington, politically astute and wickedly funny. She and Ferguson discussed queer marriage (both are supporters). If you can't stay up to watch Ferguson, tape him; he's addictively good.
Finally, a sad note: Stephen "Cojo" Cojucaru, the queerer-than-queer fashion maven from ET, is currently seeking another kidney transplant. In 2004, Cojo's best friend donated one of her kidneys to him, but he developed a rare rejection complication and had to have the new kidney removed. He's surviving on weekly dialysis. In an August 22 interview with Mary Hart on ET, Cojo discussed his current crisis. Cojo has been tireless in his work for transplant education. His sharp, oh-so-gay repartee is always fun. We hope he gets that transplant soon.
Next column: Exciting new shows for fall! Stay tuned.