Sunday, March 28, 2004

Dick Cavett

One of the more insensitive moments I've ever seen on a TV interview show occurred on the old Tom Snyder Tomorrow program when he was chatting with Dick Cavett. I thought they were the two best interviewers of their day but all broadcasters occasionally phrase things wrong and that night, Snyder did. Cavett's late-night show had gone off the air and Tom, trying to ask how Dick felt about that, actually asked him, "How does it feel to be a flop?" Cavett's various programs were on ABC for almost five years, won numerous awards, and often finished a strong second in its time slot to Mr. Carson.

Cavett answered the question about as you'd expect, but I wish he'd asked Snyder, "Do you really think five years on the air to great critical acclaim constitutes a flop?" I'm sorry anyone remembers that show in a negative light because it was a wonderful program, crammed full of interesting guests. I can't think of anyone prominent at the time who didn't sit with Cavett, sometimes for the full 90 minutes, and he was good at jarring them off the same old anecdotes they told on every show and getting them to be candid and fresh.

His show was cancelled in increments. Top execs at ABC were unhappy to not be winning the timeslot so someone there came up with a lame idea called ABC's Wide World of Entertainment, which was a series of rotating elements, nicknamed within the industry, "ABC's Wide World of Indecision." One week out of four, Cavett did his show but the smell of death was in the air and it was no longer the same. Another week out of the four, a disappointing talk show was hosted by Jack Paar, who came out of retirement but not out of the sixties, and the other two weeks were a jumble of pilots and low-budget specials that also failed to lure viewers away from Johnny Carson. After less than a year, it all went off...and the buzz around ABC reportedly was that they'd have been much better off to leave Cavett in place since they had nothing there until years later when the hostage crisis begat Ted Koppel and Nightline. I wish they had kept Cavett on longer...and I wish someone would re-air those old programs.

• Posted at 8:02 PM · LINK

On C-Span

I'm currently watching C-Span 1 where they're running a 1971 Dick Cavett Show on which John Kerry, then a Vietnam activist, debated a fellow Navy veteran, John O'Neill. The thrust of it is that Kerry charges that a vast amount of war crimes were committed in that conflict by American forces, while O'Neill is there to charge that Kerry is wrong. It reruns (I think) later tonight at 12:30 Eastern and 9:30 Pacific. And if you miss it there, there's a RealVideo file on the C-Span website.

It's kind of an interesting reminder of the tensions of that time. I think history has not been kind to the claim that the war protesters were generally in the wrong but it also has not supported a lot of their specific charges, and Kerry's charges of extensive war crimes seem to be among those. One of the things that made the protests so ugly and unconstructive was the gross exaggeration and the unwillingness of both sides to acknowledge the slightest nugget of merit to the other faction's position. I was, at different times, on both sides of that debate. And in both cases when I marched, I marched among people to whom "the enemy" meant not the Viet Cong but other Americans who saw the war differently. In both cases, I was among people who got hysterical if you suggested that the other side was, say, only 99% wrong.

I presume this old program is not being resurrected because someone thinks America now wishes to revisit that debate. I presume it's on now because someone thinks it tells us something about John Kerry. I don't know that this is true or that it has any more to do with the guy currently running for president than revisiting George Bush's days of cheerleading and drunk driving tells us about the guy running for a second term. But it's fascinating to see this program and I wish some channel would buy and rerun all those old Dick Cavett Shows.

On the other hand, I've just seen a great example of the problem of discussing important issues on network television: In his opening statement, O'Neill called Kerry a liar and every other insult just short of traitor. But then before they could get to Kerry's response, Cavett had to stop for a commercial from Calgon Bath Oil Beads.

• Posted at 7:17 PM · LINK

Recommmended Reading

Why was U.S. pre-war intelligence on Iraq, particularly about Weapons of Mass Destruction, so stunningly wrong? This article in the L.A. Times tells why. Assuming this report is true, it's amazing how our top officials put so much trust in a third-hand account by someone they didn't even know.

• Posted at 10:57 AM · LINK