TV Eye
A Sad Day for Baby Boomers
By Belinda Acosta, Fri., July 24, 2009
It's hard to make nonboomers understand what the big deal is about Walter Cronkite. Perhaps there is no way for those who did not grow up with him to understand what it means to lose him. On the other hand, I always thought the loss came before Cronkite's death. His retirement seemed to coincide with the turn of news into infotainment and the further devolution of punditry into a bunch of kaffee klatschers on one end and a horde of screaming zealots on the other.
To begin to understand the significance of Cronkite, you have to understand the times in which he was working. Television news was in its infancy when he came on the scene in 1950 (television itself was not so very old, either). Cronkite had the perfect mix of gravitas, integrity, and a plainspoken manner that neither pandered nor infantilized. Except for his notable commentaries (always clearly editorials), he diligently walked that line between preaching and witnessing. He never talked down to viewers but laid out the facts as concretely as possible. It was always up to viewers to make up their own minds.
At the risk of making Cronkite sound saintly, you need to understand what it meant to have that one measured voice shepherding viewers through some of the darkest days in U.S. history. For those for whom the attack on 9/11 is the single most horrendous thing to happen in your lifetime, think of that happening three times over: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., not to mention the Vietnam War and Watergate. I know it sounds terribly corny, but watching Cronkite on the evening news was stabilizing, no matter how bad the news.
There was only one time I almost doubted Cronkite. On July 21, 1969, when U.S. astronauts landed on the moon, I was 10 years old. I was playing when my father called my brother and me inside to watch the historic moment on TV. It was like watching two big kids – my father in person, Cronkite on TV – both marveling over an event that I refused to accept. Already so jaded by tragedy, I thought if I embraced the excitement, something even more horrifying was sure to come squash it. To be honest, I'm still ambivalent about space travel. Colonialism looks the same to me whether it occurs on Earth or in a galaxy far, far away. But watching the thrill in Cronkite's eyes, and how it awakened the child in my father, gave me hope that things might be all right after all.
I've chatted with a few contemporaries about who is the heir apparent to Cronkite. We came up with no one. Because the current media climate is highly prismatic, there is no one person who serves as that guiding voice the way Cronkite did in his time. And we are enormously lucky that Cronkite was that person, in the time when he lived and worked. I'm convinced that anyone less would have begot a much different media world. But anyone greater – well, there was no one greater than Cronkite. That's just the way it was.
New and Different
It's rare that I call something "brilliant," but Michael & Michael Have Issues, the new comedy starring Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter, is exactly that. Starring as hosts of a fictitious sketch comedy show, the series seamlessly follows the two Michaels through their backstage rivalries, afterwork antics, and onstage performances, all peppered with sketches from the fictitious series. Formerly of The State and Stella, Black and Showalter work together like reflections in a mirror. But what makes this new series soar is that the Michaels each take on their roles with abandon. Black's hilariously bloated ego is often undercut by Showalter's doltish but no less egotistical persona, in what turns out to be a delicious mix of childish narcissism. A refreshing alternative to the glut of summer reality fare. (Why, no, I don't think it's even a little bit interesting that Austinite and former The Bachelorette meat puppet Wes Hayden is trying to "clear his name" following his disastrous appearance on the dating show.)
Michael & Michael Have Issues airs Wednesdays at 9:30pm on Comedy Central.
As always, stay tuned.
