Prime Time
The column this month is especially mean-spirited, even vicious—partly because it’s being written in the middle of another hot, muggy summer, partly because I’m still p.o.’ed from watching the political conventions, and partly because, after a little humid soul-searching, I realize that I only write this stuff for the money and because I have an ax to grind, in that order.
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Prime Time
I Don’t Like Anything
Richard C. Walls
The column this month is especially mean-spirited, even vicious—partly because it’s being written in the middle of another hot, muggy summer, partly because I’m still p.o.’ed from watching the political conventions, and partly because, after a little humid soul-searching, I realize that I only write this stuff for the money and because I have an ax to grind, in that order. So why pretend otherwise? In other words, the column this month is more of the same, only more so.
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BEAT TH E CLOWN: TV shows in the morning are notoriously trashy in the boring, slightly offensive sense of the word .The two mqst noxious mainstays of morning TV are a) the cheaply produced, instantly disposable game ‘ show which is hosted by the cartoon-slick Wink Martindale clone and panders to a 50’s'Good Housekeeping version of greed and b) the ludicrously serious-minded talk show, often of local origin, which explores mqronic non-trends (the new chastity, any number of candy-assed t self-help programs) and recklessly exposes disgruntled housewives to middle class playwords like “parenting” and “birthing” (it should be said that there are a few exceptions, thata few interesting guests and representatives of important ideas show up, but the format is tainted by the need to condense subject matter and to employ the clownish host.).
Given this milieu, it was fully pre-determined that The David Letterman Show was doomed, since altho Letterman isn’t the hippest comic since Lenny Bruce, he isn’t a mindless joke machine either. Letterman favors a kind of gentle; affable sarcasm that must have either puzzled the average morning watcher or offended their dulled sensibilities. Whichever, in the flashy, mindless context of morning television he came across as a combination of Voltaire and Johnny Carson, which he ain’t, and,just a shade too subtle to deal with the competition. Was anyone surprised when he bombed?
Here in Detroit, Letterman’s show got popped pretty early in its run and was replaced by The John Davidson Show. Making snide comments about Davidson, tho tempting, is pointless—wjiat’s the point in embellishing the obvious? The guy’s a fool. On one particularly overcast morning he had the legendary Ringo on as a guest and the show was, alas, doubly dumb. Davidson eagerly asked excruciating questions and Ringo played the same old “far out” 60’s pop star who’s too hip'to give a straight answer but too burnt-out to ad lib with any wit. Pretty quaint stuff and more than a little depressing—just think of all those millions of people watching Davidson every morning and waiting for Ronald Reagan to be elected president. And meanwhile, the radical thing to do, if you can get away with it, is to sleep in late—an apt metaphor for the state of the art of protest in 1980.
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SCREAMIES: John Davidson saying “that’s interesting” to some congeTiitally inane guest for the fifth time is an example. Casey Kasim’s benediction at the end of America’s Top 10—“And remember, keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars”—is another. It’s that moment when, given the ,
.sudden unexpected alternatives of kicking in your TV set or screaming, you choose to scream. It’s slightly embarrassing to admit that something seemingly so trivial can affect you so strongly, but after mentioning this phenomenon to various friends, I’ve found that a surprisingly large number o(them seem to know immediately what I’m talking about. Almost everyone has, at one point or another, felt as tho their TV had suddenly assaulted them. My brother-in-law claims to have actually known someone who opted for the swift kick to the s |feen and went thru about three sets a year before they took him away (to where, presumably, he sits in a crowded' mental ward and watches soaps and game shows all day on TV—with his legs bound together).
Some more Screamies (commercials don’t count. I think most veteran TV watchers have built up some pretty good defenses against them. There are ways of watching without seeing). Mike Douglas doing a,take after tasting some food that • one of his guests has prepared; Dick Cavett trying to lighten the mood of his talk show (I don’t know if it’s Cavett himself or just the steady exposure, but the man’s lost ap incredible amount of charm during the last few years— his insistence on making a little play on words and accompanying it with a self-effacing chuckle and a knowing wince has become maddening); the theme from Eight Is Enough, any part of it; the mere mention of The Fonz and/or Henry Winkler on a talk show explaining how he’s kept himself humble; Barbara Walters interviewing someone you like (one long scream); Rob Reiner in reruns of All In The Family (ditto).
There’s more, of course, dozens of ’em—onde you start thinking about it it’s hard to stop. I didn’t mention the white guy married to the black lady on The Jeffersons (it’s not the premise, it’s him), or Vera on Alice (does anyone think she’s funny?), or that little bozo on The PTL Club (serves me right for watching it) or...
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DON’T TAKE THIS PERSONALLY: You may mot believe this, but dumping on Canada is not an “official” part of CREEM’s editorial policy—there are no urgent memos to writers reminding them of their obligation to smear the sleeping behemoth or special bonuses to writers who manage to work in an irrelevant but stinging beaver crack into whatever it is they’re writing. It just seems that way. The reason, possibly, is that a lot of people involved with CREEM live near the border and, inevitably, a certain amount of second-rate power culture is gonna slop over.
See? Already I’m hostile and I haven’t even gotten to the point yet...
Which is, that it isn’t all in our imaginations. It isn’t just xenophobia or a vitamin deficiency or, as ' Irwin Shaw once put it, “the riotqus juices of our yputh” (whatta schmuck, that Irwin). No, there are some genuine signals coming thru on border television sets that indicate that Canada is, in reality, a slightly buffoonish coilntry. And, for the special delectation of Adam Gladue, who, in the September CREEM, suggested, in verse no less, that I commit an acrobatic act of self abuse, I’m going to run down a few more examples.
On second thought, the hell with it. i ^
