Brian Williams got me watching evening news again. For years he had struck me as just one of a number of interchangeable news readers, but then I saw him on Saturday Night Live and discovered that he was funny, and an excellent mimic.
So I started watching him on weekday evenings. I didn't expect him to be the king of comedy, but neither did I expect him to be the prophet of doom.
When Ebola appeared in the U.S., Williams had me fearing for my life. His dire, urgent tone made it seem as if it were only a matter of time before the virus spread to every corner of the country. Soon after, severe winter storms pounded New England and Williams’ harrowing reports on them had me scared to go outside – and I live in Florida. Every week there seemed to be some new threat that he couldn’t wait to dangle over our heads.
So I was not at all surprised when the news broke that he had embellished stories of his personal escapades. He had shamelessly sensationalized the news; why shouldn’t he shamelessly sensationalize his life? As he steps down as anchor, but stays on at NBC, one wonders if he brought this point up in talks with his bosses, who had surely encouraged him in the first offense.
Instead of mouthing cliches ("He went out on top," Charlie Rose), the morning talk shows could have noted the large number of people who will no longer be watching late night talk shows.
I'm going to miss David Letterman, but not because, as TV critic David Bianculli said recently on NPR, "His sense of humor and his sense of anarchy provided a new blueprint for the TV talk show."
No, I'm going to miss him because his anarchic sense of humor returned the talk show to the blueprint created by Steve Allen.
Usually I listen to the radio (WLRN) while eating my lunch but yesterday I turned on the TV and found Charlie Rose interviewing Leon Wieseltier about his departure from The New Republic after 33 years and the pernicious effect on society of a media in constant pursuit of more views. He was followed by Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, who talked about the film he made with Wim Wenders about his father, the great Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado.
Watching Anderson Cooper learn to meditate on 60 Minutes last night, I thought - as I did while watching him swim with crocodiles on the same show and, more recently on CNN, search for his roots in the American South - of his explanation as to why it took him so long to come out as gay. It was because, as a reporter, he never thought the story should be about him.
(I'm off to Nazareth, Pennsylvania, for a few days.)
The death of Peter O'Toole made me think of Jeffrey Bernard, whom he played on the London stage in the early '90s. The play's title, Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell, was taken from the line that appeared after the High Life column in the London Spectator whenever Bernard failed to produce his Low Life column. "Unwell" became a code word for "hungover." Bernard pretty much divided his time between the track and his pub, The Coach & Horses, but the two milieus provided him with enough material for his minimalist art. As expected, he had bad luck with women; one of his great lines, which I hope was in the play (I never got to London to see it, and of course it never made it to Broadway) was: "I wish the police would block off memory lane."