University of Virginia Library

Tuesday TV: From Leadbelly To Agnew

By Jeffrey Ruggles
Cavalier Daily Staff Writer

It isn't often the vibrating gray
screen has anything on it worth
watching, but occasionally there is
good television programming. This
past Tuesday night on CBS there
were three shows of more than
passing note.

The first was "And Beautiful
II," an hour-long history of black
music out of WTOP in Washington.
It featured songs by performers
such as Sly and the Family Stone.
Nina Simone, B.B.King, and
Cannonball Adderly, mixed with
old film clips, recordings, and prints
and photographs scanned by the
camera, on blacks and their music.

The first half of the show was
more interesting; by the second
half, the producers seemed to have
run out of energy and lost its
quick-paced flow. Film clips of
Louis Armstrong in Ghana, playing
Dixieland for the rocking Africans;
of Bessie Smith singing in an old
movie; and of Billie Holliday,
Count Basic, Duke Ellington, and
other were highlights; but they
were all too short. It was the old
story of trying to cover too much
in too little time.

Subtle "Humor"

The second show was "All in the
Family." CBS's attempt to bring
the situation comedy up-to-date.
The show, which is supposedly shot
before live audiences, is little more
than detergent opera, every once in
a while using a word like "Pinko"
or "hell." The humor is strained,
plots ritualized, characters bland.
Most of the scenes take place
around the kitchen table.

This week's most daring joke:
we see Mother and Father
downstairs; daughter and son-in-law
are upstairs.

Pa: How long has he been up there
showing her his grades?

Ma: An hour and ten minutes.

Pa: (Pause, eyebrows go up) And in
the middle of the day.

They are trying to bring the
situation comedy up-to-date, by
adding the slight air of naughtiness;
when they should realize it is the
entire vehicle of situation comedy
which is out-of-date and beyond all
hope of rescue.

Pentagon Propaganda

The third show of the evening
was a rebroadcast of "The Selling
of the Pentagon," a CBS News
production with Roger Mudd
which, since its initial televising a
month ago, has earned criticism
from Vice President Agnew,
Defense Secretary Laird, and House
Armed Forces Committee
Chairman Hebert, among others.
Following the rebroadcast, film
clips of their criticisms were shown,
and then the President of CBS
News replied to their charges.

The documentary covers the
efforts of the Pentagon and the
armed forces to create a good image
in the public eye. It told of the
military's news services to small
local papers, tours and
demonstrations for well-placed
civilians, exhibits of weapons and
tactics in shopping centers, and the
way the Pentagon only tells
reporters what it wants to.
According to the report, while the
budget for public relations for the
Defense Department is
$30,000,000, actual expenditures
have been estimated by observers at
$190,000,000; which they
compared to the total expenditures
on the news departments of the
three major networks:
$146,000,000.

Perhaps the most revealing area
of Pentagon information — or
propaganda, as CBS News called it
— were the films produced by the
military. Scenes were shown,
including John Wayne rapping
about our boys in Vietnam, and
Robert Stack talking about his love
for guns. Many of the films are
focused on the threat of
monolithic communism.

American Paranoia

The best one was "Red
Nightmare," narrated by Jack Webb
of Dragnet. (It is the classic film of
American paranoia.) A man, Mr.
Donovan, dreams that Communists,
dressed in uniform, take over his
town, and he is the only one to
resist. There is a scene as his
daughter goes off to a commune to
get away from her "bourgeoisie
family life". Finally, for his
resistance, Mr. Donovan is tried and
a Communist shoots at pistol at the
back of his head. Just then mists
swirl up. Jack Webb steps out and
says, "Don't worry, Mr. Donovan,
that bullet will never reach your
head..."

In their criticism aired
afterward. Mr. Agnew and the
others criticized the report for
shabby journalism: for
misinterpreting facts,
mis-representing themselves when
they gathered the material, editing
for false effect, etc. Many of their
criticisms were properly aimed, for
the report was not nearly as well
assembled as it could have been.
Nevertheless, none of their
comments touched the content of
the report. The Defense
Department does expend
considerable amounts of the
taxpayers money on questionably
materials for questionable ends,
under questionable authority but,
then, so what? So what? What can
be done?