Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 2, 1992 TAG: 9201010095
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TOM SHALES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
SEAMY AND UNSEEMLY NEWS TOOK OVER TV IN 1991
There are words for years like 1991. "Embarrassing" is one of them.It was hard to sit before one's TV set and watch the year pass by without experiencing apoplexy, stupefaction and mortification. And this was from the news.
All those proliferating tabloid and talk shows began to look quaintly tame compared to continuing sagas that unfolded in Congress and in a West Palm Beach courtroom.
The year started out on a high with victory in the Persian Gulf War. It was a victory as well for CNN, which saw its profile swell as viewers turned increasingly to the cable channel for coverage - not because its coverage was better, but because one knew it would be there.
Eventually, even war euphoria soured, however. The welcoming home of the troops, a gesture not only of appreciation but of guilt for the way Vietnam veterans had been treated, began to seem disproportionate to the accomplishment. ABC Entertainment produced a trivializing movie, "The Heroes of Desert Storm," with a White House-approved script that was more of a tribute to George Bush than to those who fought the war.
And then in March, American viewers were jolted by what would become one of the most indelible and oft-repeated images of the year: motorist Rodney King, a black man, being beaten and kicked by a gang of Los Angeles cops. A home-video buff testing a new camera caught the harrowing and incriminating scene on tape. A new era in video vigilantism had begun.
Soon seamy and unseemly news took over the tube - the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearings on charges of sexual harassment against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, brought by University of Oklahoma law professor Anita Hill. It was the most lurid and dispiriting proceeding in the long history of TV and radio coverage of congressional business, and everybody watched.
Somehow, through it all, Hill kept her dignity. She was one of the few who did. Thomas did not. The senators on the committee did not. The one possible positive outcome: The nation got a crash course on the issue of sexual harassment.
Later in the year came another video peepshow, the Florida trial of William Kennedy Smith on charges of rape filed by Patricia Bowman, whose face and voice were, until the trial was over, kept from the public by all major news organizations except NBC's. Or is NBC's still a "major news organization"?
Televised virtually in its entirety by CNN and by the fledgling Courtroom Television Network, the trial included excruciating detail on the incident and its aftermath, and such spectacles as members of the jury inspecting the victim's - correction, "alleged victim's" - underwear.
The fabricated fantasies of Hollywood could not compete with a riveting and appalling non-fiction miniseries like this.
Relatively little attention, meanwhile, was paid to one of the biggest news stories of century, the continuing splintering of the Soviet Union and the collapse of communism. It got less air time and attention than the scandals.
The entertainment world had its own embarrassments. Michael Jackson and Madonna released smutty videos: Madonna selling hers in stores when stations banned it; Jackson hurriedly editing his to take out bizarre scenes of car destruction and self-appreciation. In Florida, kid-vid star Pee-wee Herman (Paul Reubens) was arrested in an X-rated theater for overly enjoying the movie.
CBS, in a fit of nervousness, immediately canceled his innovative Saturday-morning series "Pee-wee's Playhouse."
Now close your eyes, try to think of a TV moment that evokes the year, and what do you see? For many people, the image will be of one man standing before a microphone and revealing to the world that he has tested positive for the HIV virus that leads to AIDS and that he is leaving professional basketball.
Magic Johnson of the Los Angeles Lakers did that, and his live press conference was one of the most moving and disturbing signs of the times to be seen on TV all year.
For all that it is maligned, often justifiably, television can still unite us in a sudden blinding instant - sometimes in embarrassment, yes, but sometimes, as in this case, in grief and compassion.
Tom Shales is TV editor and chief TV critic for The Washington Post.
Keywords:
YEAR 1991