ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, June 9, 1996 TAG: 9606070002
SECTION: BOOK PAGE PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
Reporter looks behind scenes of TV talk shows
Reviewed by ROBERT ALOTTA
HOT AIR: All Talk, All the Time. By Howard Kurtz. Time Books. $25.
To many people, Rush Limbaugh gave CPR to a dying industry - AM radio. With his bombast and his intellect "on loan from God," Limbaugh spawned a new generation of in-your-face talk show hosts. Once upon a time, talk show hosts, on radio and television, interviewed guests who had something to say. Nowadays, if you're not espousing some conspiracy theory, you're not going to make it on talk radio. And, it seems, unless you're a transsexual individual who stole your daughter's boyfriend away, you can't get on one of the major TV shows.
Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post's media reporter, takes on this aberration of discourse in a lively and insightful manner. Kurtz, no stranger to talk shows - both radio and television - looks behind the scenes and what he finds is not pretty. Many journalists are happy to gain exposure on television because it increases their visibility and makes them more important to their readers - or viewers. Talk shows give them notoriety that a simple byline does not. At the same time, the exposure on talk shows, Kurtz asserts, puts journalists in the unenviable spot of being forced to respond to questions about which they have little or no knowledge. As Margaret Carlson, a regular on the Capital Gang and a columnist for ``Time'' magazine, told Kurtz, "They're looking for the person who can sound learned without confusing the matter with too much knowledge."
As a regular talk show host myself, this reviewer has seen talk radio change from two-way communication to toe-to-toe brawling. Listeners love to hear, or see, someone beaten up verbally. They gain vicarious pleasure from knowing that people with a different point of view can be trounced by someone who outshouts them. It is a sad state of affairs.
Kurtz is a master at observation and communication. He sees the talk shows as "part of a larger media phenomenon in which unconfirmed speculation crowds out verifiable truth." Talk shows, he adds, "feed off this type of sensationalism, legitimatize it, and carry it to a mass audience." Listeners and viewers, because of ignorance or a desire to have their beliefs codified, accept the shouting voices, the diatribes and the demigods. These talk shows which once would have been ridiculed as absurd are having a major impact on American culture and the way we view things. And that impact is primarily negative.
"Hot Air" makes many solid points. Kurtz scores more often than not in his observations and the book is sadly on-target - sadly, because this nation has allowed itself to become prey to the hypocrites and purveyors of hot air. This book should be read by any individual who has the strength to turn on a radio or a television.
Robert Alotta is retired from a career in journalism and public relations.
DiMaggio looked good on field
Reviewed by BOB WILLIS
DIMAGGIO: An Illustrated Life. By Dick Johnson and Glenn Stout. Walker and Co. $29.95.
He is 81 years old now, half a century has lapsed since his glory days, and he lives - as always - a quiet life. Yet the name of Joe DiMaggio quickens the pulse of baseball fans everywhere. The man dubbed the Yankee Clipper is the stuff of myth.
Those who, as baseball buffs say, can do it all - run, field, hit, hit for power - are few. Joseph Paul DiMaggio was one, but what made him extraordinary was his grace on the diamond, the unflagging effort he brought to the game, and his dignity both on and off the field.
Athletes no longer enjoy the exemption from scrutiny once accorded them by deferential media, and fans get regular bellyfuls of temperament, selfishness, greed and outright scandal from people they would prefer simply to admire and cheer.
Unlike, say, the carousing Babe Ruth, DiMaggio never needed to be shielded from examination of his character. His was the pose and integrity of a man whose ability and commitment to his sport no one could question and who as a person was at one with himself.
DiMaggio's consistency as a player is exemplified in his 56-game hitting streak in 1941. He was the ballplayer's player: "I never saw Joe look bad on a ballfield," said Ted Williams. No wonder Simon and Garfunkel, invoking a bygone age as long ago as 1967, sang: "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?" There was much more to DiMaggio including his young life, his family, his ballplaying brothers, his teammates and his marriages, one to Marilyn Monroe. This book covers all of it and includes fine essays by the likes of Stephen Jay Gould and Thomas Boswell. Johnson and Stout's writing is fluid and generally jargon-free, but there are occasional lapses, such as the misspelling of players' names and the frequent use of the nonexistent past tense "errored."
Bob Willis is a retired associate editor of the editorial page.
Compelled to collect books
Reviewed by LYNN ECKMAN
A GENTLE MADNESS: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books. by Nicholas A. Basbanes. Henry Holt. $35.
This is a first for me, reviewing a book without "finishing" it. In fact, it may take another month or more to complete "A Gentle Madness," which must be enjoyed slowly in order to absorb its richness.
In 1809 the Rev. Thomas Frognall Dibdin popularized the word bibliomania, defining it as "an appetite for COLLECTING books, carefully distinguished from, wholly unconnected with, nay absolutely repugnant to all ideas of READING them."
Basbanes begins his saga of that mania with librarians in Alexandria more than 2,000 years ago and continues it to contemporaries, many of whom amass manuscripts, folios, etc. in languages they cannot understand. He makes the interesting point that no great library has been formed by a scholar.
"A Gentle Madness" is one book too good not to share, one to be relished in the way we do a box of Lady Godiva chocolates, little by little. In so doing, its 500-plus pages will prove equally delicious.
Lynn Eckman is a volunteer teacher at the Office of Refugee and Immigration Services.
BOOKMARKS
"I SWEAR BY APOLLO ... '': Laughter, Tears and Medicine.
By John M. Garvin. Beebie's Ink. $9.95.
The subtitle of "Lucky" Garvin's book "I Swear by Apollo ... '' presents his subjects in their order of priority. Laughter: Garvin's approach to his work as an emergency room doctor at Lewis-Gale is wry and humorous in a self-deprecating fashion. Tears: His concern for patients with serious problems is evident and lends warmth to his tales while his justifiable impatience with others provides fodder for sarcastic asides. Medicine: His emergency room practice focuses more on setting and a general philosophy of life than medical insights.
Chapters vary in voice according to subject; Garvin shifts from flippancy and hyperbole to assertions such as, "If it is true that each person's view of life is metaphor, then each poet's work is biographical." The funny vignette of "Hugh and Ethel" is followed by the contemplative "The One" which concerns suffering and our reaction to it. In the next chapter Garvin raises pointed questions about the abortion debate: "When philosophy becomes law, does tolerance calcify?"
The philosophy and psychology lend themselves to an element of soul-searching on the part of the author. He writes about humanity in many of its guises, his profession with many of its difficulties and himself with many of his foibles. All patients, past and future, will see another side of medicine and, perhaps - as appears to be Garvin's purpose - another side of life.
- MARY ANN JOHNSON, book page editor
Author revitalizes meaning of integrity
Reviewed by BOB FISHBURN
INTEGRITY. By Stephen L. Carter. BasicBooks. $24.
When a psychic hotline advertises on television that what sets it apart from all the other psychic lines is its "integrity," it is painfully clear that the word has been publicly mugged and left for dead.
Stephen Carter is the Yale law professor whose book, "The Culture of Disbelief," a compelling discourse on the plight of religion in the "public square," created a stir all the way to the Clinton White House. In this short, clear exposition on the "virtue" of integrity that ranges through history, literature and his personal experience, Carter resuscitates the word, bringing back some of its historical heft and vitality.
His idea of integrity requires three steps: (1) discerning what is right and wrong, (2) acting on that discernment, and (3) giving clear reasons for the action. Obviously, Carter's form of integrity is both demanding and potentially costly; he makes it clear that few, including most especially the author, achieve it consistently.
It is the constant struggle to discern right and wrong that makes the ethical life.- in politics, sports, academia ... anywhere and everywhere we face moral decisions.
His prescriptions - rigorous but not full of certitude - could lead to a renewed sense of public civility as a byproduct of the struggle. And "civility" happens to be the subject of the planned sequel to this engaging book.
Bob Fishburn is former editor
of this newspaper's commentary
page. |Reviewed by JUDY KWELLER|
MOONLIGHT BECOMES YOU.
By Mary Higgins Clark. Simon & Schuster. $24.
It's another year and another surefire, runaway success for Mary Higgins Clark. "Moonlight Becomes You" adheres to the Clark write-for-success formula.
Maggie Holloway is yet another hip, attractive and successful young New York professional woman. In "Moonlight Becomes You," Holloway, like her predecessors, is right on the brink of finding true love even as she trips over a series of corpses littering her lifestyle. And like all the other central characters who've marched on to the best-seller lists with Clark, Holloway finds that her life seems to be shaped by a series of coincidences and missed opportunities.
"Moonlight Becomes You" is set in Newport, R.I., an extremely appealing setting. Although I thought this latest mystery was not as tight and seamless as some of Clark's previous novels, it's got enough of the winning ingredients to make it as easy a read as we've learned to expect from this successful author.
TRAIL OF SECRETS.
By Eileen Goudge. Viking. $23.95.
"Trail of Secrets" is one of those wonderfully "goopy" and emotional novels that would have been tagged "a woman's novel" in the past. It's a "big" story about a baby kidnapped at birth, an inappropriate but overwhelming love and a series of life-altering coincidences that shape the mysteriously interwoven lives of three women.
If you're looking for serious literature that will redefine your philosophy of life or make you a better person, don't bother. But, if you like gossipy escape fiction, head for the "Trail of Secrets."
Judy Kweller is a free-lance writer and special events coordinator.
LENGTH: Long : 204 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. (headshot) Garvin. 2. DiMaggio. 3. Cover ofby CNB"Moonlight Becomes You.