Published by

Bush and Coke; Pitching TV Shows; Krulwich; The Comic Page Editor; Animation Nation; Vows

The latest political feeding frenzy is over the question, "Did George W. Bush use cocaine?" I'm Brian Lehrer, on this week's On the Media we'll deconstruct why the press is dwelling on it and how the candidate stumbled in his media strategy. Also, Robert Krulwich on doing innovative TV news at a network that's set in its ways. And how newspapers choose comic strips.
All this week on NPR's On the Media.

1 -BLOW BY BLOW: THE PRESS GOES FOR BUSH'S JUGULAR
Is his recent attempts to answer questions about drug use, George Bush opened the Pandora's box he has thus far kept carefully sealed. He is now back on track, refusing to go any further into his "personal" past·but is a candidate's supposed drug use a personal issue? Is the press returning to its bad habits perfected during the Lewinsky scandal? Is the American public really ready for a politician who admits to past cocaine use or might past cocaine use become a new political litmus test?

Guests: David Carney, Political Consultant, Norway Hill Associates; director of political affairs, Bush-Quayle
Stuart Wilk, Managing Editor, The Dallas Morning News
John Zogby, Independent Pollster

2 - POLITICS HAS BEEN BEATTY BEATTY GOOD TO ME
What does it take for an actor to make it in politics these days? On the Media talked to actors who've played politicians, political advisors and rapped years before Senator Bulworth ever busted a rhyme.
Guests: Harris Yulin: Congressman Dies, "The Cradle Will Rock"; Senator Joseph McCarthy, "Robert Kennedy & His Times"
Charles Kimbrough: anchorman Jim Dial , "Murphy Brown"; Political Advisor, The Seduction of Joe Tynan
Dick Smothers: Senator, "Casino,"
Rodney Dangerfield, "Thornton Melon", Back to School

3 - LISA AND BRIAN
Lisa Napoli, who covers the Internet for MSNBC, joins Brian for an on-air chat about the latest Internet developments.
Guest: Lisa Napoli, Internet correspondent, MSNBC

4 - ARCHITREX: THE NEXT GENERATION
Three amateur television hosts, three bicycles and talk about architecture - sound like a hit TV show to you? Maybe that's why you're not running a network. We've all said it to ourselves at one time or another, "that would make a good TV program." But who has the time? Who has the contacts? Who has the guts to try it? On the Media's Janet Babin finds three men who do.
Reporter: Janet Babin

5- BRAVE NEW TV WORLD
The Sopranos has revolutionized dramatic television and the Simpsons stands the sitcom on its head, but where's the innovation in TV news? ABC thinks they've got an answer with Robert Krulwich's series Brave New World: Nightline in Primetime.
Guest: Robert Krulwich, Correspondent ABC NEWS, Host Brave New World: Nightline in Primetime

6 - DID WE SAY UNFUNNY?
In OTM's history few features have provoked as much listener outrage as a piece we aired last week lobbing charges of unfunniness at what we now know is a beloved institution - the comic strip Peanuts. We got to wondering about the comics. Who is holding the keys to the kingdom of ID? Who decides, For Better For Worse What's up Gasoline Alley?
Guest: Ron Patel, Sunday Editor, The Philadelphia Inquirer

7 - IS THIS NOW AN ANIMATION NATION?
The top movies and television shows...The Simpsons, Tarzan, The Cartoon Network, South Park, Rugrats...all cartoons. Why do we like our satire and old sentimental schmaltz better when it comes from an animated character?
Guest commentator: Kurt Andersen of The New Yorker

8 - VOWS
Lois Smith Brady has spent the past five years profiling weddings in her "Vows" column for The New York Times. Reporter Marianne McCune tagged along to a wedding in the Northampton, Massachusetts to watch the social chronicler at work.
Reporter: Marianne McCune

WNYC archives id: 84926

Marianne McCune - The Ultimate Gossip: The New York Times "Vows" Columnist

This week, for our fly-on-the-wall series, reporter Marianne McCune tailed the ultimate gossip: The New York Times wedding columnist. No, Lois Brady doesn't write those high society blurbs that so many readers are suspicious of (The Times says, by the way, that those are not paid for by the betrothed). Brady writes the "Vows" column: one wedding each week in all its most intimate glory. How does she choose which to cover? Take a sharp left turn from whichever she covered the week before. Last weekend, she chose the marriage of a 21 and 22 year old bride and groom in a state park near the New Age Northampton, Massachusetts.
Lois Brady eases herself onto the edge of a clearing and, with a freelance photographer, peers across the green at a small crowd. They're meandering between noontime hors d'oeuvres beneath a big white tent and a dainty chuppa encircled by plastic chairs. To Brady's left, a small lake covered over with lily pads. And surrounding the clearing, a hilly forest.

BRADY: But the crowd looks very academic. It looks like a book party in Northampton to me, a little bit.

Brady is wearing a slightly awkward sky-blue suit and horizontally striped oxford, dirty blond hair spilling over her eyes.

BRADY: I know I didn't wear the right thing. I'm like, "What am I doing?" In the beginning, I used to disguise myself more. I bought all these suits and heels, and I used to act like a wedding guest. But that was a complete disaster, because people just didn't trust that disguise. I feel like it really is like crashing the high school prom.

BRADY (at wedding): Oh where's everyone walking to?
With a hint of trepidation, she makes her way into the crowd to witness the young bride and groom signing their contract.

BRADY: God she looks so nervous, she's breathing.

GUEST: Who are you?

BRADY (at wedding): I'm from The New York Times, I'm from The New York Times. I'm just doing a little story about this wedding. How do you know the bride and groom? Can I ask you just a couple questions?

BRADY: I was thrown out of a wedding once by a bridesmaid in Utah. I went to this ski wedding. It was on a mountain. I went all the way out there, and I don't know what happened. I'll never quite figure it out, but this one bridesmaid became rabid and furious at me that I was destroying this personal moment. And she chased me down the hall. I'll never forget it. But I was allowed to sit in this little bench by the ladies' and the men's room -- which was down the hall, -- and interview people as they went to the bathroom.

Just like a prom. If you look like an outcast at the start, you'll remain one throughout the party. So the moment the signing is over, she's probing a cranial sacral therapist who's close friends with the earthy bride. No thought to client-patient confidentiality.

GUEST: My forte is working with emotional issues that manifest themselves physically, so I've been working with Rachel and her nervousness and getting married all of a sudden.

BRADY (at wedding): Oh you're perfect. So tell me you've been working with her nervousness in general, not just as a bride...

BRADY: Basic communication -- or gossip you might call it -- is so important. It's so important to know how do they meet, how much money do they make, who pays for dinner, who decides where they go on vacation, what they argue about. It's not that they're such big secrets. It's just that they're so everyday that people don't think of talking about them very much.

BRADY (at wedding): Oh they're coming, let me talk to you afterwards, OK?
With the sound of a ram's horn, the ceremony begins. Brady proceeds to scribble on her notepad , writing what she sees now more than what she hears: the bride has-half brown, half-blond eyelashes fluttering up and down below very short bangs, the bride and groom are reaching nervously for each others' hands.

BRADY: There was one wedding that I did, and there were all these quotes about how the guy drove a Porsche and never walked on the beach unless he had his Gucci loafers on. A lot of details that I thought when I was writing it were kind of hilarious. And they were absolutely hysterically furious at me, that I had covered in such detail the materialistic side of their life. And in fact, even told me they had gotten, when away on their honeymoon, all these, literally, death threats on their machine from people who hated them, as well that they felt I had just portrayed them as these horribly self-indulgent creeps.

A glass is broken, the ceremony over. Back to gossip.

BRADY (at wedding): Hi, bride. How are you?

The bride's uncle and great aunt glow adoringly at her.

UNCLE: I'm not one given to this kind of smushy talk, but I view it as a miracle.

BRADY (at wedding): What's miraculous about it? Where's the miracle in it?

BRADY: In the beginning, I used to take a lot more phone numbers and do less reporting at the wedding because I felt it was too intrusive. So I would go get numbers, and then Monday morning, I would call everyone and try to get quotes. And that was a disaster. They weren't in the mood. But they are in the mood at the wedding. Sort of like apple picking time. You just go and get it. It's easy.

BRADY (at wedding): So love unconfused her. Is that what you're saying?

UNCLE: The right love.

MOTHER: It's what human beings really need.

This is the bride's mother.

MOTHER: To be fulfilled.

BRADY (at wedding): Now, in what way is it fulfilling? What ways do you think human beings really need it?

MOTHER: She's annoying, isn't she? You're starting to annoy me.

BRADY (at wedding): Do you mind if I call you on the phone?

MOTHER: Great idea.

We'll see. Toward the end of the wedding, an Egyptian belly-dancer appears at the edge of the forest, with a candelabra on her head. Brady had expected this to be a high point, but the wedding is petering out by now, and Brady becomes distracted by the quiet arrival of her own husband and son who've come to collect her. Without actually deciding to leave, she's magnetically drawn to them.

BRADY: I never used to appreciate as a guest what was happening at a wedding. I just thought, "This is boring. I hope I get the champagne soon. Look at those dreadful bridesmaids." But when you're a reporter, and you go to a wedding every weekend, you really do learn what an enormous moment it is. Like that person you decide to spend the rest of your life with, it determines so much. It determines everything.

Maybe that's why it's so exhausting.

BRADY: I am always so happy walking out of a wedding. "Oh my God," I have to say. Especially if I have good quotes. It's just like the end of a race. It's like, "Oh God. That's over with."

For On the Media, I'm Marianne McCune, in New York.

Post a Comment