A-Bomb Talk Gets Lost in the Crossfire

Television loves to lob talking heads at anniversaries.

Well, not just any anniversaries, only those for events judged to be epic. And not just any of those anniversaries, either. Never three-year anniversaries, seven-year anniversaries or 11-year anniversaries, but always one-year anniversaries, multiples of 10-year anniversaries and also 25-year anniversaries. Why 25? A quarter of a century somehow seems more significant than, say, 26 years.

These days we’re hearing a lot about the 50th anniversary of the U.S. dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet Union’s declaration of war against Japan, some of which or all of which--depending on which scholars and other observers you believe--forced the Japanese government’s capitulation that ended World War II.

You have to commend TV for its attention to this moment in history, one that poses some of the questions that the media should be addressing, again and again, instead of whether a gorgeous actress-model can get her life together after her handsome movie-star boyfriend was discovered paying a Hollywood hooker for sex.

Hugh Grant may have provided this summer’s explosion heard around the world, but the enduring issue of A-bombs is nothing less than cataclysmic, a topic for the ages. Examining and debating the strategic, political and moral underpinnings of President Harry S. Truman’s decision to hit the Japanese with these revolutionary megaweapons teaches us about the United States as a society and how we and our leaders respond under extreme wartime stress, to say nothing about the origins of the nuclear arms race that set the tone for the ensuing Cold War.

So let’s hear it for TV’s talking heads. Well, not quite all of them.

Take Monday, when the A-bomb issue was discussed at length on PBS’ “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour” and CNN’s “Crossfire.” Both programs featured two historians, one who endorsed Truman’s A-bomb approval, one who opposed it on grounds that the President had better options. That’s where the similarity ended. “NewsHour” was about war. “Crossfire” was war.

On “NewsHour,” Margaret Warner intruded only minimally while moderating a fascinating discussion between Norman Polmar and Gar Alperovitz that was somehow as orderly as it was contentious. Despite their substantial disagreement and forcefulness in pressing their arguments, the guests participated in a calm, reasoned give-and-take of about 18 minutes on a program whose agenda was information, not theater or conflict. You hated for it to end.

You hated for “Crossfire” to begin.

Formatted for mindless arguments driven by partisan politics, “Crossfire” is a program on which snide invectives and shouting are the prevailing forms of communication by both co-hosts and their guests. Here Gandhi would wind up sounding like Attila the Hun. It’s a program on which opposing candidates for county sheriff might feel comfortable, but one hardly tailored to discussing great issues. Or even very many small ones.

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So you shuddered when hearing conservative host John Sununu announce prior to the program: “Tonight on ‘Crossfire’: Was the right decision made on Hiroshima?”

“After 50 years, we can’t hope to settle this argument tonight,” said the tad-left-of-center co-host Michael Kinsley when the half hour got under way. “But we can give it a crack.” Sure, and why not throw in a side discussion on the meaning of life?

Inevitably, dueling historians Robert James Maddox and Ronald Takaki were reduced to being a couple of shrill harpies, arguing by satellite on a program that hit bottom almost immediately when the pro-bomb Sununu repeatedly pressed the anti-bomb Takaki to concede that if Japan had possessed an atomic bomb in World War II, it would have dropped it on the United States.

After correctly questioning the relevance of that question, Takaki finally caved and agreed. “That certainly defined the enemy of the time,” a pleased Sununu retorted, as if he had revealed the defining justification for using the A-bomb.

Yes, he was on a roll, subsequently getting Takaki to agree, after much prodding, that Japanese war atrocities “whipped up hysteria within the United States to demand unconditional surrender for Japan.”

Sensing Takaki might be wilting, Sununu made a lightning strike: “Having said those two points, how could any American President having to face the decision of whether to attempt to curtail the war quickly or to have it extend, in the light of those political realities, that Japan would have dropped the bomb if Japan had it, and that the atrocities set public opinion into which a decision had to be made, how could he possibly have made any other decision?”

Say what? At this point you could have made a case for A-bombing Sununu.

Talking heads, yes. Squawking heads, no.

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TALKING HEADS II. Barbara Walters’ “20/20” colloquy with Elizabeth Hurley on ABC Friday night was television’s latest celebrity interview to test the public’s appetite for vacuity. Reeking of pretentiousness and tabloidesque self-parody while culminating another week of media rim shots, it was an epic TV to-do about very little.

Hurley, the actress and model whose longtime boyfriend, Hugh Grant, was arrested with a Hollywood prostitute recently, thoughtfully pondered questions put to her by Walters about her so-called humiliation and victimization by paparazzi , unaware of how comical she looked by collaborating with “20/20” on this exercise in overwrought hand-wringing.

And Walters did her part by wearing her gravest interview demeanor for the occasion, as if no less than the fate of monogamy as an institution rested on Hurley’s words. Her face a mask of saintly concern and compassion, Walters summed up by asking Hurley the question that inquiring lobotomies everywhere were just dying to hear answered: “What do you do now?” You’d think that Hurley had lost a breast instead of a boyfriend.

What does she do? She has a cup of tea and gets on with her life, which is something those who hang on every nuance of this story should consider doing.

Meanwhile, why such tsk-tsking over Divine Brown’s latest career move? Brown, who got famous fast by being Grant’s Hollywood prostitute of choice, has since earned more fame in South America by taping a commercial for a Brazilian lingerie company. And now she’s taped a wickedly funny and self-mocking TV ad for KXEZ-FM (100.3).

The latter item made a slew of Los Angeles newscasts this week, accompanied by a faint tone of snickering disapproval, as if some ethical line had been crossed by the hooker and the station she now says she listens to while she works.

So Grant’s movie career can continue to flourish, but Brown--who is no more culpable than he--hasn’t an equal right to the spotlight and all the cash it brings? Don’t be silly. This is America. Order the limo for Divine and bring on Barbara.