The Huntley-Geraldo Report: Music to your eyes

By Eli S. Chesen

I have waxed frustrated with the news of the passing of Walter Cronkite. Actually, I was never a major Cronkite fan, but he was a master of his craft and, most of all, losing “Uncle Walter” marks the passing of an era when TV journalist’s desks were populated by aging war correspondents.

We still have Andy Rooney, who is amongst the best electronic journalists ever, and Ted Koppel, a still-serious journalist from another generation and another war: Vietnam. Otherwise, today we have a mostly motley crew of attractive albeit predominantly mindless anchor-correspondent-performer types, who regularly assault us and insult us as they simultaneously embarrass themselves with presentations of superficial persiflage and meaningless banter.

And there is the aging John McLaughlin with an encyclopedic knowledge of everything … may he live forever!

My all-time favorite was David Brinkley, and I well remember the opening credits of the original half-hour NBC “Huntley-Brinkley Report” accompanied by the scherzo movement from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with its driving rhythms and the syncopated heartbeat of the tympani. The musical interlude told you that something of substance was forthcoming. Oh, God, do I miss that stuff!

While it was 40-plus years ago, I still fondly recall David Brinkley’s coverage of a Republican National Convention and his describing of the voice of Everett Dirksen (the then senior senator from Illinois) as “Sounding like a bank of Wurlitzers when he spoke.”

Now the musical lead-ins for video news are for the most part elevator disco and computerized techno crap designed to make you want to do aerobics between news segments. The musical interludes here are low-grade trash designed to capitalize on the attention span of an impatient generation impatiently waiting to view more non-newsworthy flotsam.

There was, I think, a correlation between the quality of the opening credits lead in music of some of those early TV news productions on one hand and the integrity and relative neutrality of the likes of Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Howard K. Smith, Edward R. Murrow and Eric Severied on the other. (I never really felt that Brokaw and Rather quite made the cut to greatness.)

And there were the partisan pundits of the past, such as William F. Buckley Jr., who was a syntactical genius (who happened to play the harpsichord) and who used the last movement of Bach’s Second Brandenburg Concerto as a lead into the long-running, debate-formatted “Firing Line.” Buckley, then, could skewer a guest with his wily perspicacity and cunning while the Bill O’Reillys and Rush Limbaughs of today insult any vestige of residual respectability of conservatism.

Gore Vidal, Buckley’s arch antagonist, was likewise brilliant with articulations beyond anything seen today.

Dick Cavett, while not a newsman per se, introduced most of us to Leonard Bernstein’s Overture to “Candide” many, many years ago. If he were back on the air today, I am confident that his directors would demand sanitized hip-hop.

Don’t get me wrong, TV has always been tethered to a substantial amount of bad taste and superficiality. Some of my generation can still recall Eleanor Roosevelt’s “Good Luck Margarine” (“That’s what I have spread on my toast.”) commercials… Yes, she actually did margarine commercials in 1959.

The point is, there was indeed a “Golden Age” of TV, something which has been gradually dismantled by a truly good-taste-challenged industry.

For those who remember “The Huntley-Brinkley Report,” David Brinkley cautiously and deliberately used irony, sarcasm and dry wit as his medium, while Huntley was more announcer-like. Neither of them could ever have anticipated the nature and quality of their nightmarish successors Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, who regularly translate the news through an ad hominem telescope while doing mocking impressions of various persons in the news.

The credo of news and comment broadcasting today is that all subjects, serious or otherwise, are relegated to the format of sideshow.

Then we have the overly rehearsed sycophancy of Sean Hannity and the condescending, chest-pounding tones of a pedantic Bill O’Reilly.

Hannity’s favorite guest is Dick Morris, who will enthusiastically voice any position on any issue depending upon the political wind direction on the day of the broadcast multiplied by his need for cash and attention at any given time. In the meantime, Steven Colbert has been able to completely relaunch his career (“The Colbert Report”) doing a caricature of the “O’Reilly Factor’s” malignant narcissism.

The Hannity-O’Reilly cancer has metastasized to network TV, CNN, Fox and even National Public Broadcasting, where we are, for example, subjected to a story about someone in Arkansas who collects string separated from other stories of similar profundity punctuated by a few measures of classical warhorse music, elevator rock or a mere swirl of New Age computerized Muzak.

So what is a viewer to do? Well, we have Rush Limbaugh, the master of the ad hominem attack. We have Bill O’Reilly, who constantly reminds us that Harvard is not what it used to be, and we have Sean Hannity, a Limbaugh clone wearing a velvet glove.

A little bit to the left we have Anderson Cooper, who is affable enough but vacuous. We can opt for a more potent spokesman for the left, Chris Matthews, who is at least well informed, though his Type A personality and electric-drill-like delivery make me a little peeved and nervous.

Then we have sportscaster-turned-comedian-impressionist Keith Olbermann and his little friend Rachal Maddow, whose imitations of famous figures seem to be improving all the time even as the quality and integrity of their newscasts have descended into the journalistic equivalent of roiling swill.

With public television we still have a credible Jim Lehrer and Lyndon Johnson’s old press secretary, an obsequious Bill Moyers. Moyers at least goes through the motions of being a journalist, though he is heavy on the pandering and gets a little too nonspecifically metaphysical for my taste. Charlie Rose, another bright journalist, shares the sycophancy gene with Moyers, and they both do well throwing mostly soft balls. Rose also tends to upstage his guests with his own powerfully narcissistic persona, though deferring obsequiously to guests of superstar status.

If you have had a really heavy day and are looking for very light fare, I strongly recommend “Geraldo.” Just as he only has a first name, no further elaboration on his style is necessary here, except to say that like another one-namer, “Cher,” he is purely an entertainer.

I fear that I have been forced to get my daily TV news fix watching “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” these days. The silver lining to all of this is an increase in my appetite for newspapers, even as that medium is descending into attrition.

And it is not merely the quality of the newscaster that has regressed over the years. News editors, who retain ultimate control over content, have mostly retreated to entertainment-news formats, which trump real stories and real events. This appears to offer editors an antidote to their otherwise having to deal with an increasingly complex, crowded and angry world. News editors have paradoxically acquiesced to the lowest common denominator of viewership. Robin Leach, where are you when we need you?

Most recently, TV news editors have posed and discussed a number of heady and thorny questions, to wit:

*Did Michael Jackson have vitiligo, a dermatologic disease, or did he bathe in *Was he Elizabeth Taylor’s eunuch? She’s been pretty quiet lately.

*Is it true that “No good turn by Michael goes unpunished”? Did the poor guy simply want to provide his own kind of “Make a Wish” opportunity for the little boys or was this claimed self-serving notion of generosity a transparent denial of kink?

*Was anti-Semitism just one of many commonalities that “The Michael” shared with the almost greatest entertainer of all time, opera composer Richard Wagner? Oh, excuse me, this was my own question.

Stay tuned for answers to these and other crucial issues of the day and, in the meantime, as Uncle Walter would have closed: “And that’s the way it is, Sunday, August first, two thousand and nine.”

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