posted on June 20, 2004 01:36:05 PM new
Interesting column by Frank Rich today:
What O. J. Passed to the Gipper
June 20, 2004
NOT a single jelly bean remained unturned in the weeklong
interment of Ronald Reagan, but a week later there's one
question that still hasn't been laid to rest: what in
heaven's name was going on?
Was this runaway marathon of mourning prompted by actual
grief? A vast right-wing conspiracy? A vast reservoir of
displaced sorrow about the war in Iraq? Global warming?
Whatever it was about, it was not always about Ronald
Reagan. His average approval rating in office was lower
than that of many modern presidents, including each George
Bush. His death at 93, after a full life and a long
terminal illness, was neither tragic nor shocking. And in
2004, his presidency was far from the center of American
consciousness. The cold war that he "won" (with no help
from the Poles, the Czechs, Mikhail Gorbachev, the first
President Bush or anyone else, mind you) had dropped into
the great American memory hole in our age of terrorism,
along with his administration's support of incipient bin
Laden-style Islamic militants in Afghanistan.
Of course, Reagan's funeral was must-see TV. But then there
was all the rest of it. You knew things had gotten out of
hand when CNN's Anderson Cooper invited an expert from the
"Grief Recovery Institute" to instruct the nation: "Today
I'm saying we need to feel sad." Or when C-Span broadcast
uninterrupted late-night video of Americans trooping past
Reagan's coffin in the Capitol's rotunda. (Though those
mourners were often touted as representative of the entire
nation, you could nod off counting the white visitors
before a black person appeared.) Even those voting at the
Web site of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, that
permanent shrine to all things Reagan, decided by a
slightly larger than the Gore-Bush margin by the week's end
that the coverage was "too much" (36 percent to 34, when I
checked).
To liberals, the circus was a political plot to cover up
Reagan's failures and obscure fresh headlines about the
paper trail linking the Bush administration to the practice
of torture. To conservatives, anyone who opted for even
modest restraint in Reagan coverage (like The New York
Times, with its three-column headline announcing his death)
was guilty of insufficient sentimentality; anyone who
criticized the man was a traitor. "Thoughtless, mean,
hateful" were just some of the epithets heaped by Fox's
Sean Hannity on a rare Reagan dissenter who showed his face
on TV, the political cartoonist Ted Rall.
By the time the final rites reached their finale, however,
you could see that other, more powerful cultural forces had
shaped the week's excess, not mere partisanship. The
crucial influence may have been an apolitical event whose
10th anniversary all too aptly coincided with Reagan's
farewell - the murders of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman.
That crime sped the profound transformation of American
television in the ensuing decade, when news was remade into
a 24/7 "news" reality show. (Which in turn begat the
equally fictionalized genre of reality television, the
bastard child of the original bastard.) The impact of O. J.
Simpson on America's infotainment media culture was as
pronounced in its way as the Gipper's touchdown for
conservatism in American politics.
During the Reagan show the Simpson impact was sometimes
literally acted out: the gratuitously attenuated aerial
shots of the hearse streaking on California freeways to
Simi Valley carried an eerie visual echo of the Bronco
chase. But the greater symmetry was in the overall dramatic
format of the seven-day extravaganza. Like every other
story in the post-O. J. era involving some admixture of
death, scandal or celebrities, from presidents to punks,
Reagan's farewell was automatically supersized to satisfy
our bottomless appetite for the mediathon, an epic form of
TV news that has become as rigid and familiar as a game
show or a sitcom.
There has been blanket coverage of news events since TV's
infancy - this spring marks the 50th anniversary of the
first story to receive it, the Army-McCarthy hearings - and
of presidential funerals since the Kennedy assassination.
But it was not until the O. J. trial, all 251 days of it,
that the powerful and relatively new tool of the all-news
TV channel collided with a news story of big emotions and
little actual news to become an addictive brand of marathon
diversion. Though Reagan, the first true TV president, was
a master of showbiz manipulation, he would hardly recognize
the bizarre brew of fact and fiction that so thoroughly
redefined televised reality in the decade since his
withdrawal from the public stage. (His letter announcing
the diagnosis of his Alzheimer's followed O. J.'s
arraignment by some four months.) It was during the O. J.
soap opera that we first learned we could spend not just
hours and days but weeks watching a drama even when it was
unfolding in slo-mo (under Lance Ito's Warholesque
direction) and even when nothing was happening beyond the
idle, frequently erroneous speculation of camera-hogging
"experts" (most of them looking for fame or book deals).
So went the seven days of Reagan. As we now know, the
former president's aides and family had devised some of the
settings years in advance through a secret plan they
code-named Operation Serenade: the camera angles and sunset
timing of the California service, the distribution of
50,000 small American flags to extras organized along the
route. Such Old Hollywood cinematic touches no doubt seemed
clever when the Reaganauts first hatched them, but by the
time of Reagan's death they were as dated as "Bedtime for
Bonzo." The post-O. J. arsenal of media weapons all but
upstaged the prissy soundstage pageantry. Unchanging,
lachrymose platitudes were repeated histrionically again
and again day after day, padded out with faux controversies
(will Reagan wipe Andrew Jackson off the $20 bill,
Alexander Hamilton off the $10 bill, or J.F.K. off the
half-dollar?) and the musings of third-tier experts like
Gahl Burt, "former Reagan social secretary." When all else
failed, non-celebrated victims of Alzheimer's were rolled
on to CNN to supply some collateral tragedy. Network
anchors interviewed former colleagues like Cokie and Sam,
who were happy to airbrush the history of the presidency
they covered as payoff for reliving their own salad days as
TV stars.
But there was one encouraging sign in the flood of blather
about optimism. America's infatuation with these exercises
in overkill shows signs of waning. More viewers realize
that the excessive length and grave tone of a mediathon are
not necessarily an indication of either the importance of
the events getting the air time or of the accuracy of the
flowery storytelling. Experts kept saying how "surprised"
everyone was about "the outpouring" for Reagan, but saying
didn't make it so. The dirty little secret of the week: the
outpouring didn't live up to its hype. "There was this kind
of extraordinary outpouring not by the public but by
reporters who should know better," as Morley Safer told
Larry King after it was over.
A total of some 200,000 Americans passed by the coffin in
California and Washington. The crowds watching the funeral
procession in Washington numbered in the "tens of
thousands," reported The Washington Post. By comparison,
three million Americans greeted the cross-country journey
of Warren Harding's funeral train from San Francisco to
Washington when he died in office in the steamy August of
1923, according to Mark Sullivan's history, "Our Times." It
took 3,500 soldiers to direct the crowd in his hometown of
Marion, Ohio, alone. The grief for Harding was so
pronounced in New York, a city that hardly knew him, that
The Times reported how theaters canceled their shows to
hold impromptu memorial gatherings for those citizens
unable to jam into the packed services held in Trinity
Church at Wall Street and Temple Emanu-El uptown and most
houses of worship in between. Next to that, the Reagan
outpouring, much of it carried out by bubbly
TV-camera-seeking citizens in halter tops and shorts, was
grief lite.
Harding's huge turnout didn't alter his hapless historical
fate, but at least it was a genuine event. When every
tragic news story, from Columbine to the Columbia shuttle
to JonBenet Ramsey and Chandra Levy, is supersized in our
national theater of TV, all of them are downsized.
Incessant hyperbole becomes as numbing as Muzak. No matter
how many TV recyclings, the close-ups of Nancy Reagan's
three trips to her husband's coffin may never trump the
single long shot of John John saluting his father. No
matter how many pundits proclaim Reagan a great president,
a realistic assessment remains on hold - especially since,
as The Los Angeles Times reported, 90 percent of the 55
million pages of his papers is still off-limits to scholars
at the presidential library where he was entombed. (A 2001
George W. Bush executive order could restrict access to
every modern president's historical record indefinitely.)
When that entombment finally arrived, national mourning was
giving way to national boredom. Except at Fox News Channel,
ratings did not spike on either network or cable. "It was
not a massively watched event," one CNN producer said to
The Times's Bill Carter. "It was a largely watched event."
Translation: Is it too late to grab a piece of the new J.
Lo nuptials? Eventually, even Fox was elbowing Reagan into
the wings for its O. J. retrospectives. On the Friday
morning of Reagan's National Cathedral funeral, Matt Lauer
tried to hold the "Today" show audience by promising a
medley of mediathon standards: "A lot of news coming out of
Washington, Katie, but there's other news to talk about as
well, including major developments in the Kobe Bryant,
Martha Stewart and Scott Peterson cases."
Only three days later, Bill Clinton, the star of the
longest-running news miniseries of them all, "Impeachment
of the President," was back in the White House, as a
preview of coming attractions for the televised book tour
he kicks off tonight on "60 Minutes." Even President Bush
was glad to see him. Once people line up to buy the book,
there will be no shortage of talking heads remarking on
"the surprise outpouring" for the man they declared dead
just a few years ago. At least Ronald Reagan, who
understood nothing if not the cruel and fickle vagaries of
show business, might find it funny. You can almost hear him
saying, "There you go again."
___________________________________
As I've matured, I've learned . .
#2. . . that the people you care most about in life are taken from you too soon and all the less important ones just never go away. And the real pains in the butt are permanent.
posted on June 20, 2004 03:32:55 PM new
I thought so Crowfarm. I'm surprised that the Reagan's would go to such an extravagance knowing that the American people are fighting to keep their jobs and feed their families. It was obviously planned to rival the JFK funeral, which imo, was self-centered.
posted on June 20, 2004 03:42:34 PM new
Kraft, there's no way Reagan could rival JFK in anything! The Kennedy funeral was appropriate for a great man and an assassinated president.
posted on June 20, 2004 04:15:31 PM new
Every President plans their Funeral / One day after leaving office!
kraftdinner:
I thought so Crowfarm. I'm surprised that the Reagan's would go to such an extravagance knowing that the American people are fighting to keep their jobs and feed their families.
When Reagen Died:
He didn't know who he was much less your problems!
I hope the Queen, Keeps you in mind when she Dies!!
posted on June 20, 2004 04:47:13 PM new
Every President can plan their own funeral as dadofstickboy said. LBJ had one but not on such as large scale. JFK had a large one planned by Jackie, Nixon family chose the small funeral at the Library.
The TV stations didn't have to broadcast that Funeral but with every station fighting for ratings that was the thing to do. I can tell you I didn't watch it, but I did watch the one in California. There was always the off switch you could have used if you didn't want to see it.
Now Clinton is on TV and trying to tell HIS story and promoting his "book". Oh well that's life.
posted on June 20, 2004 04:57:08 PM new
June 15, 2004 -- Reagan and Bush, "Panderers to the Religious Right"
Frank Rich, who's never made a secret of his distaste for the Reagan administration, revels in the former president's "performance chops," if only to make Bush look callow by comparison.
The rest of the story is in the NYT and I don't subscribe to it.
I think this statement reeks of a liberal view so I searched and found the above statement....
posted on June 20, 2004 05:56:15 PM new
I agree Crowfarm. When JFK died, everyone was in mourning. With Reagan's funeral, like Roadsmith's article says, it was supposed to look like everyone was in mourning the same way but they weren't.
Dadof, Canada won't pay for the Queen's funeral so I'm not sure what you mean.
