In the midst of our grand de-hoarding effort (Everything
Must Go! preferably for cash) I came across a box full of scripts for
“Truckstop Teaparty,” a radio show I used to do on WFMU. I’ve been told that
people often didn’t realize there were
scripts for that show, probably because I always sounded so befuddled, but in
fact every word I said on-air was written out in advance. In fact, even the umm’s and uh’s
were written out, in an attempt to make myself sound more “natural.” This was
because I was so terrified of being on the radio that my mind went completely
blank every time I went on mic. If I hadn’t had something to read, no sound
would have come out of my mouth at all. So it was interesting to see what words
were coming out in 1989-90-91.
Even more interesting were the hefty piles of newspaper
clippings I’d saved with every show’s script. These were news stories I’d
reference as I talked about “News of the Dead” or “Danger!” or any of the
various other regular Truckstop Teaparty features. It’s incredible to me that
newspapers—common, everyday tabloids--were ever so informative, with long,
well-referenced articles about all sorts of actual news. There seemed to be a
lot of stories about eroding privacy rights, the plight of homeless people, the
environment, and political upheaval in other countries: Iran, Romania, Panama,
Czechoslovakia, Germany, and so on. There were “first woman” stories (the first
woman to lead U.S. troops in combat, the first woman minor-league umpire, etc.)
and weird racism stories. There were way
too many stories about accomplished, talented people dying of AIDS. There were
stories about drugs, murders, serial killers, and the successful development of
the first genetically engineered foods. There was a story about how the first President Bush had admitted falsifying intelligence
information to win approval for the first war in Iraq. These newspaper stories were literate, well-written, and
told you something, and it was kind of shocking to see how much newspapers have
changed in just … well, okay, 20 years ,,, and how much everything else is
still the same.
Anyway, I threw ‘em all out. The only clipping I kept was a
torn bit of a longer article, the final three paragraphs of what apparently was
a review of something—a book or TV show involving Nat Hentoff?—written by
someone named Vince Passaro. Here’s what he wrote:
“Censorship begins in fear: fear of contradiction, fear of
insult and injury, fear of confusion, paradox and despair. Hentoff points out
that in many cases the censoring parties have valid objections to the material
they wish to suppress. Yet he also shows that the best way to deal with ideas
you don’t like is to inform yourself about them and counter them with ideas of
your own—to debate, in other words. But where does a culture learn the language
of debate? Currently, we willingly misuse the word to refer to the meeting of
opposing political candidates in which rehearsed speeches pass as answers to
predictable questions. If that’s what we call debate, it’s highly unlikely that
we’ll last as a democracy.
“In fact, the great censorship of our times is the
self-censorship of our reporters and editors, our writers of books, our
television commentators. Why is it that the Iran-contra story had to be broken by
a Lebanese weekly, although several American journalists knew of it? Why was
the great menace of Iraq trumpeted far and wide, with fancy graphics and
musical scores, while the arming of the menace, by us, illegally, is still only
mentioned in whispers? Why is it that there is so little discussion, in an
election year, of the S&L failures and a possible collapse, of greater
magnitude, in commercial banking?
“Like vampires or cave-dwelling fish, we have lost the
ability to live in light because no one has been shedding any. Unless you have
a $40-million production budget, it’s pretty much impossible to disseminate an
upsetting idea in this country; when you do, the crowds scream as if they’ve
been hit with acid. Hentoff, for all his fervor, never takes the parties
responsible for our condition to blame. We don’t need to be introduced to
school boards in the heartland to see censorship in action; all we have to do
is open our major dailies, or watch network news.”
“Major dailies”—who’s even gonna know what that means in 5
years? And yeah, I googled him. I don’t think Vince Passaro is writing book
reviews for tabloid newspapers anymore, and I don’t think any future Vince
Passaros are, either.
Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and may God bless.
