Television Once Again Plays Its Role as Conduit of Nation’s Grief

“This is my play’s last scene.”

That line from “Wit,” a play about a college professor dying of cancer, came to mind as U.S. television went to high alert and half-mast Saturday, draping itself in black crepe for hours to report the demise of space shuttle Columbia and its crew of seven over Palestine, Texas.

The irony, of course, is that a disaster was required to make Columbia cosmic TV. The nation’s manned space program had become so routine to many that news of the Jan. 16 launch found scant room in newscasts dominated by the economy, North Korea’s nuclear threat and probable war with Iraq.

Yet speaking to the heart Saturday on CBS was footage of a white column heading earthward against a brilliant blue sky, a sight “so stunning ... the imperative is to be quiet for the moment,” said that old Texan Dan Rather gravely, thick pouches drooping like saddlebags under his puffy eyes.

Any chance of survivors? ABC’s capable Lynn Sherr was asked early Saturday. “Absolutely not,” she replied.

The calm professionalism of TV anchors and their support teams was admirable, belying a behind-the-scenes clamor for experts, eyewitnesses and amateur-shot pictures that began even before most viewers had poured their morning coffee.

Immediately preempted across the board -- with memories of 9/11 still painfully fresh -- was talk of terrorism, bound to be a topic given that Columbia’s crew included Israel’s first astronaut, Col. Ilan Ramon.

“For this to have been terrorism would require technology not known to exist,” said NBC’s veteran Pentagon reporter Jim Miklaszewski early on, citing government sources. That reassurance was echoed widely all across TV on a day when whipping up Americans would have been ruinous.

When it came to wild speculation about terrorists taking down or sabotaging Columbia, in fact, Americans caught a break because it was the weekend. That meant many of the nation’s most polluting talk-radio hosts were off the air, sparing listeners the whiplash of their shrill, inflammatory rhetoric.

If you caught a whiff of deja vu, join the crowd. Disaster and moving pictures have merged in the public consciousness since newsreel cameras captured the flaming up of the Hindenburg in 1937. And much later, our most tragic episodes began to be stamped indelibly as TV stories, from home-camera footage of President Kennedy’s assassination and Jack Ruby’s nationally televised killing of Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963 to the terrorism that destroyed New York’s Twin Towers in 2001.

In between, in 1986, came heart-wrenching TV pictures of an earlier space shuttle disaster, as Challenger veered to the right and, after less than two minutes of flight, exploded into a massive fireball that filled two-thirds of the screen. Nothing Saturday matched that sight, or close-ups of Cape Canaveral spectators anticipating a majestic spectacle, their smiles turning to bafflement, then concern, then disbelief, then terror, all seeming to blur as a single emotion.

Perhaps we’ll learn the long-range impact of all of this someday, whether we’re becoming terrified or desensitized or just mentally exhausted by the grimness confronting us daily.

TV’s least inquiring minds were otherwise occupied as the live coverage wore on. Inevitably, there was much more time to fill than information to fill it. So bring on the vacant theorizers and babblers. A typical question to guests: “Give me a sense of your thoughts now?” In other words, were they feeling good or bad about Columbia and its astronauts disintegrating? And check out this inane CNN question to someone who had witnessed the breakup in the sky: “The fact that you saw five pieces and heard five sonic booms, did you realize immediately there was trouble?”

In the spirit of eulogizing and awarding halos, some of TV’s human space helmets seemed also to feel it was their patriotic duty to express support for NASA, no matter the circumstances -- before reasons for the shuttle’s destruction were known. Meanwhile, Rather worried about Mars. Does anyone really care if he gets to see Americans land there in his lifetime?

Viewers also got the usual profiles galore detailing each molecule in the lives of the dead astronauts, even though in terms of human tragedy, what happened Saturday was hardly more calamitous than everyday passengers perishing aboard a crashing airliner.

Grandiose eulogies are clearly the stuff of contemporary TV, and perhaps even the most overcooked ones have a benefit. As Kevin Merida wrote in the Washington Post a few years ago, public death is “one of the binding American experiences, giving strangers something to talk about in a culture in which individuals are increasingly distanced.”

If so, consider yourself bound. Despite continuous talk of debris, space modules, vapor trails and sonic booms, and lots of arcane jargon in the wake of Saturday’s NASA press conference, the day was a poignant reminder that even in an age of technology, the human element still matters.

Space is one of the nation’s most popular fantasies. For this mission, though, there would be no Capt. Kirk or Mr. Spock to make things right in the end. Only TV pictures of this last scene in Columbia’s play, and the irony that its Israeli crew member died above a place called Palestine.

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Howard Rosenberg can be contacted at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com