Have You Looked at Your Set?

Barry Goldwater is many things to many people: a bugaboo to the liberals, a savior to the conservatives, and a man of parts to the compilers of biographies. But no one ever thought of him as a TV critic --until last week. Aware that Newton Minow got a lot of acreage simply by calling TV a "vast wasteland," Goldwater rared back his onager at a Greek-American dinner in Chicago and let the rocks fly at U.S. television. "Have you looked at your TV set lately?" he asked the audience. "What wallowing in self-pity! What vast and contorted expressions of emotion over trifling problems! What meaningless violence and meaningless sex!"

Like any good politician, Goldwater aimed not only at polishing off TV but at polishing the Greek apple. "Your ancestors would look upon us with pity," he said, praising the serenity and balance of Greek art. "To them, we would be truly barbarians. In the midst of even the wildest and most whimsical [Greek] comedy, there remained that breath of greatness and of freedom. Comedy has become wisecracks. Very clever, sometimes even witty. But the background of greatness is not there, so the savor, the depth of contrast, is gone. The surprise, the fast switch, the shock, have taken its place. Unless there is a belief in the potential greatness of man, there can no longer be tragedy; there can only be melodrama."

Senator Goldwater had something there, but what was wrong with U.S. TV? Bad producers? Meddling sponsors? Too many commercials? Well, maybe. But Goldwater had a sweeping political-sociological explanation. "I do not believe," said he, "in our present social state, dominated as it is by a trivial conception of man--dominated as it is by superficial reformers who expect to save and to protect and to remake man through government action--I do not believe that either great tragedy or great comedy is possible in such an environment."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.