what I really am: a dedicated antianticommunist, a category far more vile to the true believer than a mere Communist. Although my encounters with Buckley Junior got ABC its highest ratings, I was seen no more at election time. Last year, Peter Jennings proposed to ABC that, for old times’ sake, it might be a good idea to have me on. “ No,” he was told, “ He’ ll just be outrageous.” IN 1972THEFUTURESU- preme Court Justice Lewis Powell wrote the U.S. Chamber of Commerce proposing that they “ buy the top academic reputations in the country to add credibility to corporate studies and give business a stronger voice on the campuses .” One wonders, Stronger than what? But the advice was taken. Also, as corollary, keep off prime-time television those who do not support corporate America. During the 1960s and early 1970s I used, once a year, to do a “ state of the union” analysis on David Susskind’s non-network, non-prime-time television program. Many people watched. In the summer before the 1976 presidential election, Susskind wanted to produce a series of one-hour interviews with the twenty or so leading candidates of the two parties. For one hour I would question each candidate about politics, history, economics—whatever came up. Since I favored no candidate and neither party, I could not be said to be partisan. PBS agreed that this sort of program was precisely why PBS had been founded and funded. All the candidates, save President Ford, affected delight. As we prepared for the first program, the head of PBS affiliate WNET, Jay Iselin, canceled the series without explanation. Then the intrepid producer, Hillard Elkins, took over. He had “ a good relationship” with Home Box Office, which was “ hungry for product.” HBO manifested delight in having its hunger so cheaply sated. Then, just before the first taping, Andrew Heiskell, the overall capo of Time-Life-HBO, canceled us. In due course, I was advised that it was not in the national (that is, corporate) interest for so many expensive presidential candidates to be questioned by me In a—what was the phrase?— “ nonstructured format.” Now, of course, with the megacorporate ownership of the media becoming more and more concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, structure is total, indeed totalitarian, and the candidates can no longer be discerned through the heavy blizzard of thirty-second spots. Currently, the p r inc ipa l d is penser of the national religion is Ted Koppel, a very smooth bishop indeed. Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting- noble, doomed enterprise—had a study made of just who appeared as Koppel’s guests during a forty-month period from 1985 to 1988. White male establishment types predominated. Henry Kissinger (Koppel’s guru and a longtime cardinal in the national security state’s curia) and Alexander Haig (by his own admission, in one of many moments of confusion at the White House, “ a vicar” ) each appeared fourteen times, the maximum for any guest. Yet the cardinal’s views on almost any subject are already known to anyone who might be interested in looking at Nightline, while Haig’s opinions have never interested anybody in the course of a long busy career climbing ladders so that he could be close to those with power in order—to be close to them. The next two champ guests, weighing in at twelve appearances each, were the mendacious Elliott Abrams (Koppel assumes that although Abrams will lie to Congress, he won’t lie to Koppel) and Jerry Falwell, a certified voice of God whose dolorous appearance suggests a deep, almost personal grief that the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution are not yet repealed. Most of the other guests are hired guns for the national security state. The Koppel explanation for this bizarre repertory company is that, well, they are the folks who are running the country and so that’s why they’re on. Well, yes, Ted, that is why they’re on, but there are other more interesting and more learned—even disinterested—voices in the land and, in theory, they should be heard, too. But theory is not practice in bravery’s home. Of semidissenters, only Jesse Jackson and Studs Terkel have been honored with solo interviews with the bishop, who insists, by the way, that the guest face not him but a camera in another room, preferably in another city, with an earphone but no mon ito r. Good te le v is io n one- upmanship. To my amazement, just before Mikhail Gorbachev spoke at the United Nations, on December 7,1988, I was asked to contribute a tiny prerecorded (and thus easily edited) cameo. I suppose that I was asked because I had attended Gorbachev’s famous antinuclear forum in Moscow two years earlier. I spoke to a camera. I predicted, accurately, that Gorbachev would say that Russia was unilaterally disarming, and that we were now dangerously close to peace. To the question What will the United States do without The Enemy?—a pretty daring question from those whose livelihood depends on the demonizing of Russia and Communism—I said that, thanks to television, a new demon can be quickly installed. Currently, the Arabs are being thoroughly demonized by the Israel lobby while the Japanese are being, somewhat more nervously, demonized by elements of the corporate state. But neither will do as a longterm devil because the Arabs are too numerous (and have too much oil) while the Japanese will simply order us to stop it; should we disobey them, they will buy the networks and show us many hours of the soothing tea ceremony. I suggested that the new devil will be the threat to our eco- sphere, and the new world god, Green. None of this was used, of course, but a man who w rites Russians-Are-Coming thrillers was shown, frow n ing w ith in tense anguish at, What, what! does it all mean? Because you godda be real careful with these guys. Fine show, Ted. ■HE UNLOVEDAMERICAN empire is now drifting into history on a sea of red ink, as I predicted in these pages on January 11,1986 [“ Requiem for the American Empire” ], to the fury of the few and the bewilderment of the many. Thanks to money wasted in support of the national religion, our quality of life is dire, and although our political institutions work smoothly for the few, the many hate them; hence the necessity of every corporate candidate for President to run against the government, which is, of course, the corporate sta te—good fun. In due course, something on the order of the ethnic rebellions in the Soviet Union or even of the people’s uprising in China will take place here. Too few have ripped off too many for too long. Opinion can no longer disguise the contradiction at the heart of conservativecorporate opinion. The corporate few are free to do what they will to customers and environment while the many are losing their freedoms at a rapid rate. The Supreme Court, the holy office of the national religion, in upholding the principle of preventive detention, got rid of due process two years ago, and now the Court is busily working its way through the Bill of Rights, producing, as it goes, a series of bright, crackling autos-da-fe, among them not only the hectic flag but children and mental defectives. Significantly, our prison population is now among the wo r ld ’s largest. Certainly, it is right up there, per capita, with the Soviet Union and the Republic of South Africa. Now the few are proposing that if the war budget is to be, tragically, reduced, the army camps—perfect symbolism —can be used to house our criminal population, particularly weak-fibered drug users. Thus do the few now declare open war on the many, as millions of citizens are now liable to mandatory blood, urine and lie- detector tests, while an electronic bracelet has been invented that will make it possible.to track its wearer wherever he goes. Theoretically, half a nation can now monitor the movements of the other half. Better we enslave ourselves, the priests chant, than they do. Lately, the language of government, always revealing, grows more and more fierce and commanding (due to so many wars lost? so much money wasted?), and military metaphors abound as czars lead all-out wars on drugs. Yet, at the risk of causing both offense and embarrassment among even the not-so-faithful, I feel obliged to say that I do not accept the authority of any state—much less one founded as was ours upon the free fulfillment of each citizen— to forbid me, or anyone, the use of drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, sex with a consenting partner or, if one is a woman, the right to an abortion. I take these rights to be absolute and should the few persist in their efforts to dominate the private lives of the many, I recommend force as a means History of any kind is a closed book to us. of changing their minds. Meanwhile, let us hope that opinion will respond to recent events. For instance, despite millions of dollars spent in the last presidential election on trying—successfully—to obscure every political issue while demonstrating—unsuccessfu lly— that there was a dramatic difference between Dukakis and Bush, 50 percent of the American electorate refused to vote. When a majority boycotts a political system, its days are numbered. The many are now ready for a change. The few are demoralized. Fortunately, the Messiah is at hand: the Green God. Everyone on earth now worships him. Soon there will be a worldwide Green movement, and the establishment of a worldwide state, which the few will take over, thus enslaving us all while forgetting to save the planet. That is the worstcase scenario. The best? Let the many create a new few. Reprinted with permission from The Nation (August 7/14,1989). Gore Vidal is a world renowned author. Frank Gaard is a co-founder of Art Police and has been active in the Twin Cities community for twenty years. Diana Boger recentlymoved to the Twin Cities from Washington, D.C. where she worked as an illustrator, designer and typographer. Clinton St. Quarterly—Winter, 1989-90 7
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