Barry Farber
Tuesday, June 28, 2005

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"Would you please tell your daddy that Mr. Brown called," he said.

The toddler asked, "How do you spell 'Brown'?"

"B-R-O-W-N," replied the caller.

After a few seconds the toddler piped up again and asked, "How do you make a 'B'?"

I thought that was funny when I heard it many years ago, when America was an intelligent if not an intellectual nation. I now fear that dialogue is only a slight exaggeration of the level to which our national mentality has descended.

Writer-columnist Thomas Friedman doesn't hit us hard enough when he suggests in his latest book, "The Earth Is Flat," that the mothers of America update their old kitchen kvetch of "Finish your dinner. The children in Asia are starving." over to "Finish your homework. The children of Asia are hungry for your future job!"

I think it's worse than that. Ignorance is the sperm of apathy. If you don't know, you can't care. And at the rate our Essential American Awareness is eroding I wonder if the American on the street within five years could answer your most elementary questions about democracy, history as far back as World War II, the challenges this nation confronts today, or any key aspect of the American achievement.

And my concern goes beyond the American on the street. How about the American in the TV or radio studio locked in debate with an Islamic fundamentalist who's railing out against America's trashing of Islamic societies with our policies of support for Israel, etc.? How many of our talk hosts are capable of lashing back with energetic broadsides detailing American sacrifice of blood and treasure to achieve the rescue of endangered Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo and Kuwait and Iraq and elsewhere? And, by the way, the only truly free Moslems in the Middle East are the ones living in Israel.

How many of our best-and-brightest, when engaged against a Michael Moore think-alike portraying America as the new Nazi Germany, would challenge him to name any other country that ever amassed as much power as America and abused it less? Or, if the charge happens to be the "grotesque" gap between our poor and our rich, dare him to name any other country that amassed more wealth than America and distributed it more fairly.

Or, if the charge is "We invaded Iraq for oil!" why didn't we just hang on to Kuwait when we liberated it in 1991? Or, for that matter, if we're that imperialistic a nation, why didn't we simply fold up the world like a roadmap and tuck it into our glove compartment during the FOUR YEARS (1945-1949) when America alone had the atomic bomb?

And while the America-bashers are in good voice, perhaps they'd be willing to try to come up with any other country in history that ever cured a problem as bad as our racial injustice at the point of its own conscience and not the point of foreign bayonets.

Or maybe they could try to name any other country that was ever attacked by two powerful foes, defeated them both, and instead of rape and plunder gave them both democracy and prosperity, and by the way wound up with LESS TERRITORY THAN WHEN THEY WERE ATTACKED! (America gave the Phillippines their independence after victory in 1945.)

Our young people know all the hateful lies about America, but they don't know they're lies! And the redeeming truths about America come across as songs they've never heard before and don't particularly like.

There was a hilarious Op-Ed piece in the New York Times years ago about a guy born into a family of hard Yankee fans. It seemed whenever he was upstairs in his room, in the basement, out in the yard, or washing his car, the Yankees did great. When he ambled into the TV room with his father and brothers, however, everything came apart for the Yankees. Not just once! Over and over and over. It ended with all the other males in his family rising from their sofa and shoving him out of the room when he ambled back in at a crucial moment of a crucial game. Really!

I feel that way about news. Are you old enough to remember NEWS? "Pusan, Inchon, Lebanon, Budapest, Prague, Cuban missiles, Bay of Pigs, the Central Highlands, Mekong Delta, the Berlin Wall, Eisenhower, Sputnik, Sit-Ins, Mississippi,‘The Eagle Has Landed?'"

We used to shush each other up and watch and listen; like many of you do today about Michael Jackson, Scott Peterson, Paris Hilton, Johnny Cochran, queer-guys-and-lean-thighs (or something), Martha Stewart, evangelists theologizing and senators apologizing, teenagers missing in Aruba and found alive in Utah. (Don't hit me with a cynicism rap. I literally pray for the missing and thank God for the found-alive!)

I feel keen kinship with that innocent brother who seemed to jinx the Yankees whenever he walked into the room. Whenever I get attached to good, newsy, easy-to-take "info-pinion" shows on TV; that show is jinxed. (Except for Fox's "Hannity and Colmes!) I mean it's realer than real. Those on CNN who want to keep their jobs should pay me to quit watching or, at least, quit liking.

For an avowed conservative I admit I confuse my teammates. I read the New York Times assiduously, watch CNN, I listen to every liberal I can find on radio, and I scan liberal websites. Why not? I could pre-script what OUR side is saying. I want to know what THEIR side is saying. CNN's been slipping well behind our beloved Fox News in the ratings. So what does CNN do? They cancel "Crossfire!"

THEY CANCELED "CROSSFIRE!"

If I may borrow and readapt a Bill Buckley riff from the 1950's; what CNN did in surveying the competition and canceling "Crossfire" was like "the Bishop of Rome breaking the apostolic succession at the sight of a new YMCA in Canton, Ohio." (Subtitle: The Bishop of Rome is the Pope.)

"Crossfire" was a crown jewel, forget CNN; it was a crown jewel for AMERICA. The best show in the world, said my first boss in broadcasting Tex McCrary, is two scorpions in a brandy glass. Get a leftist and a rightist and one or two informed and opinionated guests in between and start the action and let the next half hour be like a student riot in Ecuador.

Great! And now GONE!

Okay, I was recovering and while lollygagging on my bed sentencing scraps of paper to incineration prior to gearing up for my Saturday evening's festivities on June 25, 2005 and I was watching a characteristically informative and provocative episode of "The Capital Gang" on CNN.

Toward the end of the program they showed a lot of old stuff indicating there was some reason for nostalgia. Indeed there was! Just before the final segment - my favorite - which was usually the Outrages Of The Week as seen by the liberals and conservatives on the panel, at the end of the hour on June 25, Moderator Al Hunt announced that after the oncoming commercial break the stars of "The Capital Gang" would have their final say; which turned out to be a touching tribute to the behind-the-scenes personnel who had performed so well over the many years of the program.

I finally got it. This was also the end of "The Capital Gang!"

Why? We "Real-News-and-Opinion-Lovers" don't have enough artillery on our side. It would take five enslaved countries breaking free at the same time to command the same amount of air time as Paris Hilton baring her ankle.

I occasionally meet the makers and shapers of popular culture at dinner parties. I would love to meet the one or ones at CNN who ordered, "No more 'Crossfire.' No more 'Capital Gang.'" I'm pretty sure I could sell them on my grand concepts of the importance of our population's Essential American Awareness. I'm sure they would cluck agreement to my contention that "Those who don't know, can't care." But I'm equally sure my entreaties would not resuscitate "Crossfire" or "The Capital Gang" or any of the other efforts that gave us a lot more fiber than fun.

I actually would expect those executives to be like the habituated smoker who, while agreeing with me and nonetheless canceling "Crossfire" and "The Capital Gang" would say, as the vast majority of smokers do, "I know it's killing me but, do you have a match?"

As a hardscrabble newsie from the 1930s and 1940s I try to look kindly upon today's vastly less aware Americans. I tell myself, "Shake it off. The reason we knew the map of the world in the the early 1940s was because our fathers and uncles and older brothers were fighting over there!" But that doesn't do it. It doesn't convince me the world-view OR the math scores of our young can compete with what they're doing in Tokyo, Beijing, or even the Mekong Delta.

Forget the toddler who didn't know how to make a "B." I fear America is fairly represented now by the wife of the affluent dentist in Long Island who just got back from Europe and was having lunch with one of her girl friends and telling her all about her trip.

At about the time the dessert course arrived the friend asked, "Did you get to Holland?

After two or three pensive moments, the woman said, "How should I know? Harold bought the tickets!"