Saturday, September 10, 2011

Senescent Anachronism Sez 9/11 Memorializing Is Easy, Comedy Is Hard

That, in a nutshell, appears to be the thinking (such as it is) of Dick Cavett.

Dick Cavett?! Is he still drawing breath?

Seems so. In fact, he's been given a bully pulpit in the New York Times to vent the following:
Have you, perchance, decided — as I have — not to spend the weekend re-wallowing in 9/11 with the media? Aside from allowing Saint Rudolph, former tenant of Gracie Mansion, to trumpet once again his self-inflated heroism on that nightmare day, the worst feature of this relentlessly repeated carnival of bitter sights and memories is that it glamorizes the terrorists.
How they must enjoy tuning into our festival of their spectacular accomplishments, cheering when the second plane hits and high-fiving when the falling towers are given full-color international showcasing for the tenth time.
Who wants this? Surveys show people want to forget it, or at least not have it thrust down their throats from all over the dial annually. It can’t have to do with that nauseating buzz-word “closure.” There is no closure to great tragedies. Ask the woman on a call-in show who said how she resents all this ballyhooing every year of the worst day of her life: “My mother died there that day. I’m forced to go through her funeral again every year.”
Is all this stuff a ratings bonanza? Who in the media could be that heartless?
Let’s turn from tragedy to a somewhat lighter subject — say, comedy...
Let's not.

1 comment:

Carlos Perera said...

I'm old enough to remember the original Dick Cavett show, titled _This Morning_, in the late 1960s. His humor was then, and has been ever since, a string of supercilious barbs launched against the great mass of rubes--his own countrymen--out there, all wrapped in a veneer of Yalie sophistication. At least he is now voicing his naked feelings toward them.