Can Body Politic Survive Boob Tube? : The Way We’ve Reacted to Hearings, the Question Is Troubling

Once again in the Iran- contra hearings, as in those of Watergate, we are witnessing the power of television to turn important current events into an enthralling immediate experience for scores of millions of Americans.

We see the medium’s power to inform in vividly impactive ways the individual minds that become, collectively, the American public mind, and to arouse strong emotions pro and con the actors in public affairs.

But surely this demonstration is also a test of the capacity of individual American minds, hence of the general public mind, to deal in rationally judgmental ways with information obtained in this way--obtained, that is, through dramatic audio-visual experience. And in my opinion, confirmed for me by the current popular adulation of Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, this test is not being met in ways auspicious for our democracy.

Indeed, the popular response to these hearings in general thus far seems to me further evidence that today’s average American woefully lacks the factual information needed for thinking in context about public affairs--is woefully ignorant of history, geography, economics, elementary science, ethical theory, the Constitution and the operations of our government.

Truly, to understand these Iran-contra hearings one must have at least a modicum of relevant general information. How and why the Shah of Iran ascended to the throne and the circumstances of his fall; the rebellion led by Augustin Sandino against a Nicaraguan government sustained by U.S. Marines; the long, cruel, corrupt and U.S.-supported rule of dictator Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua; the U.S. support of a series of right-wing dictatorships in Cuba until the last of them, Fulgencio Batista’s, was overthrown by Fidel Castro; the spread of Marxism and Soviet influence in Central America and the nature of the threat that this poses to our national security; how the contras came to be, who they are and the kind of war they wage; the nature of the Sandinista government; the decisive role of a profit-motivated military-industrial complex in the making and implementation of foreign policy.

Of these things one must have at least some knowledge in order to judge accurately, in the interests of democracy, the patriotic deeds and lectures to Congress of Col. North.

Alas, practically none of it seems possessed by my good friends in my New England village--and they are considerably better educated than most of us.

Even about the factual information that we Americans do have in mind, most of us seem unable to think very well. We as a people seem not to recognize that truth-telling by public officials is absolutely indispensable to the functioning of free societies, for we give it a lower priority than “national security” as defined (or asserted) by North and company--a subordination of the essential to the adventitious that defies all logic.

If aware that consistency is the test of the truth of ideas (including under “idea” statements of alleged fact), we give few signs of applying the test to the hearings testimony.

Ronald Reagan is passionately committed to the contras. Is it consistent with this known fact that he manifest no curiosity about the source and amount of money going to the contras?

William J. Casey was one of Reagan’s closest friends. Is it consistent with this known fact that he never told of his contra-aiding enterprise during his frequent intimate conversations with the President?

Rear Adm. John M. Poindexter has long been famous in Washington for his “photographic memory.” Is it consistent with this known fact that he would forget key memoranda submitted to him by North for the approval of the President? Like North, Poindexter is very much a chain-of-command operator whose primary loyalty is to his commander-in-chief. Is it consistent with this known fact that he would take it upon himself to divert Iran-sale funds to the contras without informing his commander-in-chief? Is it not more likely, in view of the known facts about him and Reagan, that he conspired with the President to ensure the latter’s “deniability” in the matter?

These are the kinds of questions that must be asked, I think, in order to judge the validity of the hearings testimony. Indeed, Secretary of State George P. Shultz in his appearance before the committee has probably awakened many to the possibility that something serious was going on. But most of us will still be inclined to simply react to the “favorable” or “unfavorable” look and sound of those who sit before the TV cameras. We thus become suckers for the con men, the insubstantial image-makers who, skilled in the making of “good impressions” on TV, abound on the current political scene. Especially are we suckers for such as Ollie North, a man who by his own self-protective and glorifying testimony is a remarkably proficient liar but who, disarmingly boyish in appearance and with a husky voice that throbs with patriotic passion, looks and sounds oh so sincere.

Which brings me to a general question, long disturbing to me but given added urgency by these hearings--the question of TV’s overall effect on the quality of America’s mental life, and especially on the portion of this life that is devoted to public affairs.

Do we Americans now make better choices of public officials and wiser decisions about public affairs than we did before TV became the dominant mass-communications medium? I think the contrary is true.

The medium itself, in sharp difference from the print media, seems to me far more conducive of fast emotional reactions than it is of reflective thought or logical analysis--and in the hands of businessmen whose overriding concern is the selling of material things for their own private profit.

Of course, if this enormously powerful communications technology were exclusively in the hands of dedicated professional communicators--men and women committed to their profession as a painter is to art, a good teacher to teaching, a scientist to science--the story would be different. TV’s effect on our society might then become wholly beneficent. But at the moment there is no sign that this will ever happen.