Forecast: A Trivializing of America : Television: Henry Kissinger’s stint as a CBS weather forecaster is just the latest outrage as a tabloid mentality sweeps across the airwaves during the May ratings sweeps.

As if bolted to the floor, he stood like an inert stump before a video projection of a map of the United States. His carriage was typically stiff, his face a frozen mask of dourness, his baritone voice a droning, somber monotone. It was . . . it was. . . .

Henry Kissinger.

Doing the weather forecast.

Reporting temperatures for such familiar spots as Egypt and Palestine.

That’s Palestine, Ala.: “I’m sorry to see volatile conditions still occurring.” Yes, he did say that.

Henry Kissinger, adviser to Presidents, guru of international affairs, joining television in trivializing America.

As the story goes, it was Paula Zahn, co-anchor of “CBS This Morning,” who learned of Kissinger’s “secret desire” to be a weathercaster, leading to his appearance on Tuesday’s program as an awkward, fumbling, flubbing substitute for regular weathercaster Mark McEwen, who coached his stolid protege from off camera.

Presumably, if Kissinger has any other “secret desires,” you’ll hear about them from “Hard Copy” or “A Current Affair.” And see him act them out on “Sally Jesse Raphael” or “Geraldo.” It’s that kind of media world.

The strategy of “CBS This Morning” was surely to use its weathercasting Dr. Henry as an audience draw during the May ratings sweeps. Just as surely as the personality he projected can best be described as that of glacial warmth.

The question is just why anyone would tune in to watch Kissinger stumble through “Today’s Forecast.” Another question: Exactly what motivated him to participate in this pathetic, clownish burlesque that recalled old pictures of Calvin Coolidge in an Indian headdress and news footage of Michael Dukakis campaigning in a Army tank? Was it really that Kissinger had secretly wanted to do the weather, or did he feel he didn’t get enough TV time during the Persian Gulf War? Inquiring minds may never learn the answer.

In any event, it was a momentous occasion for McEwen. “I got a hug from Henry,” he reported to Zahn on Wednesday morning. “A real hug?” she asked. “A real hug,” he repeated. “It was worth it.”

Not to be outdone, ABC’s “Good Morning America” had comedian Bill Murray joining weathercaster Spencer Christian at the map Wednesday, cracking his own ad-libs instead of those written for him. Naturally, Murray was funnier, Kissinger weightier. But, in terms of role playing, they were twins.

Television has always been a derivative house of mirrors, splitting into infinite images of itself, reflecting itself, replicating itself, modeling itself after itself. Now, with the tabloid mentality spreading across TV like a parasitic fungus, the cloning is truly calamitous. In fact, the airwaves have become an embodiment of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” the science-fiction classic about humans being replaced by duplicates hatched from alien pods.

Take NBC’s “TrialWatch,” for example--hardly a piercing study of jurisprudence, yet a fairly credible daytime half hour capsulizing and reviewing some of the more interesting and sensational cases of our time. Until now.

Self-parodying Robin Leach hosted the series during the last two weeks of the May sweeps, presiding over a show that has turned distinctly trashy--witness Wednesday’s segment on former gangster Henry Hill, the model for the movie “GoodFellas,” and another on Sylvester Stallone’s battles with the paparazzi , interspersed with violent scenes from “Rambo.” The paparazzi pictures showed Stallone accompanying what was described as a “mystery blonde,” with his fiancee “nowhere in sight.”

And Thursday’s lead law segment: Rock Hudson.

Take “48 Hours” too. That’s the Wednesday-night CBS News series that has won awards for taking viewers behind the scenes of such major stories as Israel-Palestinian turbulence, the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, Hurricane Hugo, a crime wave in Moscow and drunken driving and rampant drug use in the United States.

No awards for May, however. The show did an hour recently on serial killers, and this week’s expanded two-hour extravaganza was titled “Love and Marriage in the ‘90s.” Or as anchor Dan Rather put it: “The old-fashioned search for love and romance.”

Two hours worth? When was the last time CBS News devoted two hours to anything, beyond coverage of the Gulf War? It’s uplifting seeing a news division given this much prime time, deflating that the only way it can earn it is to dish out “romance and reality in a changing America.”

The program came across as a sort of extended “Donahue” and, in fact, one of its participants, pricey divorce lawyer Raoul Felder, did appear on “Donahue” and other talk shows this week on behalf of his various well-known clients.

Well, what’s next on TV’s tacky agenda, “Love and Marriage in the Mafia”? No, but close. Coming to “48 Hours” next week, Rather announced, is “BadFellas,” an hour on such mobsters as the same Henry Hill so distinctively profiled by Robin Leach during “TrialWatch.”

A changing America, indeed.

All of this brings to mind the “piffle” perpetration that Norman Corwin so aptly described in his book, “Trivializing America.” “Of course, the audience contributes its share to the syndrome,” he wrote, spreading the blame. “And the contribution is reciprocal. Consumers of entertainment, if fed cultural junk food long enough, come to expect it. And they get it.”