Word: vietnamize
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...just as much entertainment as Jackie Gleason. Television regards social outrage-even in the euphemistic form of protest, irony, or bitterness-as intolerable betrayal of the public trust. It has profoundly affected us all, even as we move to criticize it, and reduced our spirits to onerous waste. Vietnam, the implicit subject of Arlen's book, has been turned, despite unprecedented "coverage," into a cause (somehow worthy) of America's fetid evangelical toil. The only thing that TV brings to us with immediacy is its own senescent code of ethics...
...HEART of The Living Room War deals with the farce of television news coverage in general and Vietnam in particular. Whether news broadcasts are viewed as welcome interruptions of family entertainment or as rude incursions of the real world, the fact is that television stands or falls according to its news. The insurmountable obstacles which vitiate TV news are the physical nature ofthe screen, the commercial basis of the industry, its time structure, and the vague consecrated code of democratic mediocrity usually referred to as impartiality. Television is commonly given considerable credit for generating national discontent over...
When we watch the typical war-coverage episode, we see, as Arlen says, "a picture of men three inches tall shooting at other men three inches tall." This episode is filmed and discussed by reporters man-handled by the military in Vietnam and edited at home by men consumed by the desire for "balance." Unfortunately, balance and accuracy are severely antagonistic. Instead of the balance of 365 five-minute bits, we would probably prefer an accurate, expansive evaluation of all these facts which have been presented as if they were equally important and commanding. The American desire for visible accomplishment...
People look at Vietnam... the figures shadowy, mostly out of sight; the voices indistinct, isolated threats without meaning; isolated glimpses, part of an elbow, a man's jacket (who is the man?), part of a face, a woman's face. Ah, she is crying. One sees the tears. Two tears. One counts the tears. Two bombing raids... I wonder what it is that the people who run TV think about the war, because they have given us this keyhole view; we have given them the airwaves, and now, at this crucial time, they have given us back this keyhole view...
Still, perhaps one a year it inadvertently reveals what we need to see and hear. One example which Arlen describes was the irony of a Vietnam special by CBS newsman Morley Safer. As Westmoreland asks about basic training and remarks about the high morale, a soldier tells Safer that he dislikes riding down people's gardens. Safer then routinely asks him about the war. The soldier looks melancholy (did we see it?) and then, in one of those moments when everything comes alive in a gesture, tells Safer passionately: "The country's so beautiful, fertile, and everything...