The spring TV season has ended with both a bang (lots of murders to wrap season finales) and some whimpers (the midsummer season begins with a whine, more on that next column) from us, because our favorite ABC show, Invasion, has been canceled. Apparently the multilayered storyline was too difficult for viewers to follow, to which we can only say: that's what happens when you put the Nielsen machines in the homes of people who voted for Bush. We loved Invasion, with its thinly veiled metaphors of government is dangerous, and Fascism is only as far away as the Pentagon. We'll miss its smartness.
Among the whimpering at season's end, we think we might be hearing some from ABC's Elizabeth Vargas. Or is it snarling? Vargas has been anchoring World News Tonight solo for months. After years as a reporter for ABC News, a weekend anchor, and a co-anchor of 20/20, Vargas had been anointed co-anchor with veteran news reporter Bob Woodruff after the lung-cancer death of longtime anchor Peter Jennings.
When Woodruff was severely injured in Iraq, Vargas became sole anchor of the evening news, a job no woman has held on network news. Katie Couric will become the new CBS evening anchor in September. But this week, ABC announced that Good Morning America co-host Charles Gibson will be taking over the news anchor position, shoving the pregnant Vargas out of her job.
Nice work, ABC. CBS lures Couric from NBC for millions, and ABC ousts their proven highest-ranked female journalist because she's going on a brief maternity leave. Sends a nice message to their female demographic, doncha think?
Speaking of sending messages: Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) was the only Republican to give a no vote May 26 on Gen. Michael Hayden's confirmation to head the CIA. Apparently Specter, a strict Constitutionalist most of the time, had some issues with the NSA spying on average Americans, according to NBC News. Since Hayden orchestrated that little event for the Bush Administration, Specter thought he made a poor choice for the job.
Remember last column when we told you that BushCo. would be providing the most exciting TV programming this summer? We were right! On May 26, the first episode in what will certainly prove to be the summer's most compelling drama aired on every network and CNN.
The killings by Marines of 24 Iraqi civilians, including women and children, in Haditha in November 2005 have not been swept under the rug like other atrocities committed during the war on Iraq. According to ABC and NBC sources, the investigations instituted on May 26 are likely to lead to murder investigations. According to news sources, five unarmed civilians were killed when they had their hands in the air as they exited a taxi.
According to NBC, there has not been such an investigation of possible wartime misconduct since the Vietnam War. Makes us wonder what the investigation of Abu Ghraib was. NBC news consultant Col. Jack Jacobs said, "The heat of combat is never an excuse for doing things that are corrupt."
Bad seed
Speaking of despicable acts, Mary Cheney was on David Letterman this week making the case for cloning. Or as a preview for the release of The Omen, it's hard to be sure. The reason given for her appearance (it's not like CBS is FOX, after all) was slogging for her new book, something else for us to boycott!
Rarely have we watched any TV interview with the sort of growing revulsion and rising cynicism we had when Letterman attempted to hold Cheney's cloven feet to the fire. She weaseled out of question after question on subjects from the war ("We gave them democracy") to same-sex marriage (Ms. Cheney supports it, naturally, but doesn't feel the Bush Administration's hateful policies are really an issue, and had to vote for the Bush team in 2004 because she's not a single-issue voter; apparently she forgot that the Bush team was running on a single issue, terrorism) to the shooting by her father of Harry Whittington ("I go hunting with my father all the time").
It was a pretty shocking half-hour of TV.
After Cheney left, Letterman muttered, "If my phone wasn't tapped before —"
The Dixie Chicks also appeared on Letterman, singing their new song about being trounced by Bush supporters when they protested the war. Nice segue.
Meanwhile, Bono and U2 appeared for the full hour on Conan O'Brien's show, talking about world hunger, aid to Africa and AIDS relief. Plus playing some fab tunes. Why is it that Bono can do more to help the world in crisis than the US government?
The same question might be asked about Oprah, who over on daytime was doing what Oprah does best: lightly slapping people in the face with their ignorance over genocide in a post-Holocaust world. She headed into intense territory when she traveled to the Auschwitz death camp with Elie Wiesel, who was interned there as a teenager. The episode is available on video stream over at Oprah.com.
They were there in the late spring, so there is snow everywhere, just as there was when naked female prisoners were forced to stand until they literally dropped dead in the snow. The starkness of the barbed wire and brick buildings against a grey-white, snow-laced sky was breathtakingly, achingly beautiful. But it's the graveyard of 1.5 million Polish Jews.
Wiesel, who has traveled back numerous times to Auschwitz, where his entire family was murdered, said it was his last trip. The brutal landscape told much of the story; the soft voice of Wiesel told the rest.
"And here is where you saw the babies being thrown into the fire?" asked Oprah, quietly. "Yes," he whispered.
Oprah followed her trip to Auschwitz with a show on genocide. The last book Oprah nominated for her Book Club was Wiesel's Night. When she announced the choice several months ago, she also announced a contest for high school students: Write an essay on why Night is still relevant today.
There were 50,000 entries, judged by five prestigious judges, including the director of the US Holocaust Museum in Washington and a Pan-African Studies professor at the University of California, Sacramento, who was himself a survivor of the Rwandan genocide. Somehow these judges culled 50 "bests" from the entries, and Oprah brought the teens to her show to meet Wiesel, tell their own stories, read a bit from their essays. Two of the winners were survivors of genocide, one girl from the Congo, another from Rwanda.
These girls asked why, when post-Holocaust the world said "never again," it had happened again, to them and their families, who had been slaughtered in front of them like Wiesel's.
Oprah also had some Holocaust survivors in attendance, and relayed the story of one teenager who has befriended a survivor and promised to always stand against discrimination, and on the 100th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, to retell the woman's story.
There were video clips from recent genocides: Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur. Wiesel noted, "It's too late for the dead. It's not too late for the living."
On May 26, a somber George Bush stood in a press conference with Tony Blair. Two disgraced and reviled world leaders, still standing for a war that will forever be a blight on US and British history. Bush gave a sort of apology, voicing regret for some of the language of provocation he had used throughout the war's early days.
It was a somber moment, but a repugnant one. Because although Bush said he had learned things from these mistakes, he never acknowledged that the war itself was his mistake. And that the bodies continue to pile up because of it.
For some reason, Oprah is better able to explain to America what creating "otherness" does to society, what eviscerating one group's humanity does to all of humanity.
Now if we can just get Bush to watch Oprah, perhaps we can say "never again" and mean it. Stay tuned.