I'm going to talk a little bit about the median General tonight in the rise of a media society and a media Ayatollah and media student than a kind of high-octane high-octane foreign policy crisis. But since we are charged with talking about the quality of life, I do want to bring it to your attention that in a curious way while we live in a time of extraordinary talent in America quite wonderful writers and musicians weather what the networks bring into your home every night on the regular diet weather that this is a reflectionOf the highest quality and the highest expectations and aspirations of our society. But that's true. I seem to be as questionable that seems to me on fortunately and the historian to the Future civilization will will notice it is that it is a lowest common denominator or perhaps more gently a lower common denominator that we will have been served Charlie's Angels too often instead of Arthur Miller or Tennessee Williams or what is worse. The young Arthur Miller's or the young Tennessee Williams who looking at television and the requirements of writing for a sitcom and keeping their characters Bland and Alive through weeks after weeks will undoubtedly go to other fields vs. Nonfiction books fiction writing for the movies or whatever. I told that are most powerful medium and most influential one.Television in fact seems to me to reflect altogether too much banality that if we want to know what is wrong with our civilization. All we have to do is turn on I accept you you've given up the chance to have Howard Cosell with you tonight to come over and hear me greater loyalty to a poor print. Rich is almost Beyond imagination Howard Howard. The other night is how it is with ABC as you know, and ABC is covering I would never known in the past for its news coverage is now got a half hour on every night on the Ayatollah and the presidency and Howard the other night turned in the middle and said our coverage.of the crisis in Iran Speaks for itself as the first time in history in the history of Monday Night Football that anything has spoken for itself. That is a what it called a Monday night football. First power was really wonderful if anybody wants to know what the excesses of a media society that is believing that you the media interpreter are more important than the event itself. And how old is Xzibit a refrigeration prevent. What's the prism obliterating the event and I think that that is a wonderful line of the late Jimmy Cannon about how is it going to man wears a hairpiece and changes his name be trusted to tell it like it is Any way that the banality I think nothing under my underlines. the essential banality of of the of what we get on our Prime carrier, which is television then the decision to mr. Paley to close. What was my favorite program and his favorite program possibly. The only thing we agreed upon while I was working on my book The Paper Chase. I thought it was a rare program that connected to the tissue of daily life in the fabric of it. It had real people and doing real things and it also had what was rare for television a very great actor once a week and a great role. It was making a lot of money, but it was not making enough lot of money and so Mr. Paley orphan today and I thought that that is a particularly sad thing is kind of bankruptcy. It seems to me as if I came to you and people said how much to him why you used to and I started writing books that wouldn't instead of being the books that they are Were Somehow guaranteed to have Hollywood sales what have why are you riding the books but you are writing instead of what you used to write your television used to give us the first grade drama the silco playhouse and I said you well, I would like to write what I should write but the economics of it or not satisfactory and I am in fact greedy and I want to have a private airplane or a four-story brownstone in New York. And therefore I cannot give you what you should have nor can I reach for the stars that I should reach for? And therefore I will write books along the lines of power Robinhood use in a way. So it is what we have here the one nice thing to come. A lot of Television shortchanging us is it it means to print will endure and survive and that we will be better and that young talented men and women thinking of their careers in the Arts will be less tempted to go into television and they will take their way. They will no longer they will go and be among that Minority. I suppose it American civilization which can still type and can write its name and spell and I that seems to me to be a healthy thing. I believe the television by failing to do what if it did really what it is one might fear for the printed word the printed page, but in truth what has happened is a television has given us a flowering it seems to me of nonfiction. It is in become a platform for non-fiction writers. Someone like myself can write a book a serious book like the best and the brightest it book will be I can go on varying talk shows. Book it in another age might have sold only 40 or 50,000 copies will sell 300 to 400 thousand and hardcover comparably my new book and that therefore television has ended up serving the writer sometime people rather forlorn about the future print. I am enormously optimistic. I think we have more good writers in this country than ever before. I think they are writing more good books both in fiction and nonfiction. I think that they are crushed to an outer limit. I think the audience is better than ever. I think when you get Dick Cavett on the evening public television, you are getting a cultural Hall of a theater cultural Town Hall the likes of which your parents and grandparents never could have imagined where you can see a William styron or an Arthur Miller Norman mailer regularly and get a sense of the examination of these people and it seems to me that my books sell because of this and when I watch Eleanor and Franklin a rare Moment of high-quality television indeed. I am intrigued to go out and read more and so it seems to me that in fact television is not necessarily make television better, but it has helped to bake the printed word reach a wider audience and for that I am grateful to mr. Paley. I'm all it also has to work. And a credibility that in somehow someway television lacks and when I came out with chunks on. My book for my book on CBS in the Atlantic Monthly Atlantic not Harpers Ferry clear don't write for Harper's anymore. Harper's is a Minneapolis magazine that is written wholly-owned and written for by John Cole. Harper's magazine. Anyway, when I had these two pieces in the Atlantic, I am on going along nervous, when they were phone calls, if Prada station to the scene one of his public relations people told me later as if nothing else mattered at CVS for about a year older than somehow stopping me changing Harper. I mean Atlantic getting on with it changing those articles and some help countervailing their own apartment de pelis book Wicked to 20 years in Production was rushed to an end. There was talk of buying the Atlantic. So nothing like this would ever happen in CVS would buy the Atlantic Monthly for this would never be done. Again. This is like an ongoing nervous breakdown there at what is called Black Rock. What is astonishing about this? Is that the Atlantic Monthly maybe on a clear day has a circulation of 400,000 people and that is a lot to me and it is probably a lot to you, but it is in the world of the Great Men of television. Black Rock on NBC which is 30 Rock. It's nothing. I'm it's not even a blip on the radar. It would not get to it would not get too weak to I mean, it would be the picture they would even open. I mean they would know there would be a computer. They would run it through and it says it's the computer would say dear. Mr. Paoli. This one is only 400,000. Ali would it not show but anyone associated with it would be farmed out to some small town in Montana for 5 years in Hollywood or New York City, but the kind of nervous breakdown that the printed word caused and I think it is because somehow finally we have an enduring credibility. And then I'm pleased that and I think maybe there's a sign that we can survive as a civilization In Spite of Ourselves. The subject tonight is however in the media is a sheet of America the rise of an extraordinary social phenomena in the coming of a media society and we have had a very rich months in which to watch this not only the beginning of the 1980 sweepstakes which go further back next year. We're going to start next year going to start to not in the year of the campaign next time or the year before but they will the 1984 when was started in 1982 were going to move free push the date back further all the time or people enter is harder and harder for people to get. In my colleague Teddy White's big book because Teddy Teddy commits if he can if you open and campaign for the presidency, Teddy gives you a whole week to be with you. And so everything gets pushed back further and further is more people going to expose processes push back the ongoing 1980 sweepstakes an additional we've had the Ayatollah which is an extraordinary example of the volatility of the instrument of the high-octane. Politics that it creates and we watch a country that we knew nothing about. And a man whom we knew nothing about come off as a tiny bit of the radar right smack into a national Obsession. In fact of the return on our television now almost as one gets a fixed immediate fixed almost as in the head the heaviest days of Watergate needing a fixed and it seems to me that it reflects a number question about the general Society. We live in a number of things come clear because they are we are we obsessed. It is very high octane saying it's clear. It's almost clear that a society like ours. We're in fact people feel terribly disconnected from politics and feel so little participation when you have something like this of high drama and human being held hostage and a little wild like Nation thumbing its nose at us and us not outrage Among Us that this somehow makes us all participants. We are participants in this curious psychodrama, as we are not permitted by television to be a participant in the normal course of events. We do not televised that by and large haven't even been able to do it legally until recently the possessions of the Congress the house and the Senate therefore we have no sense of participation. They are we have had two cents only a presidential politics or media politics. For the first time we are participant in this ongoing Carter. I apologize thing and it is very very explosive thing anybody that the coming any any any conflict with a foreign power like this would be difficult any conflict with a foreign power in which the the adversary is a man upon whom none of the restraints that we normally expect the in a quid pro quo of even adversarial international relations staring down the gun at the Russians with the Russians at the Cuban Missile Crisis when Dean Rusk said, I believe they just blinked. I mean, none of that works. The Ayatollah is beyond our definitions as I am sure we are behind Beyond his and nothing can reach him and therefore it is difficult enough for the president dealing with a man from so distant Accenture. On his course of Islamic Purity, which is to us a regressive Force. We we think of the coming of nationalism in this Century to be a modernizing forest and generally a westernizing force and certainly that has been buying large true in Southeast Asia and much of Africa to see Islamic nationalism come to the floor and see it in a kind of isolationist retrogressive Movement by our definitions is quite shattering. Anyway, there is the president and he is trying to deal in this high-tension situation and he is dealing with a man under these conditions of explosive coverage every day and explosive coverage even by people who seems to me are trying to be very careful there. I think we're journalists. There are trying to be more careful than they normally are not be just because there are 50 lives or so at stake. But also something that always makes journalist very respectful the knowledge that their very own lines Maybe Always makes us rather more cautious than than most and we are we do not in the way. We do not quit people when in fact the people can't arrest us and we may not be rescued. So so I think even with drone was being by our standards of this profession which in competitive situations often extends to a kind of piping is there is none. The less is an incendiary affect the fact that the cameras are there is an incentive for the students to be there the fact that the eyelid the Ayatollah knows what he's got that every time he goes on to come to rocketing back to the president of the United States. He's aware that I'm he was aware of it when he brought out Robert McNeal because they had heard that the MacNeil Lehrer report had done something quite wondrous in Maine that works at not done which is it explained in some part why the Islamic peoples were some of the round were so angry at us and McNeil went out there and then found out that they got high. I may have been appreciate it, but he wasn't that appreciative he found out that he could have Mike Wallace and the high ratings of a 60 minutes and thus the ayatollahs Betrayed public television as all the other politicians of the world have betrayed public television. What are your ratings? I'm sure he said you're a very nice man. Mr. Mcfeely. Probably. Anyway, these questions about for us as a society for us as journalists and thrusting in judging our political leaders about events in around which are so emotional. And so compelling at this moment. Yes, we is journalist can give you a films of the students there and we can give you films the student here and we can give you a very good film of President Carter and we can give you film of the Ayatollah and the Ayatollah talkin to Japanese journalist. We can give you film hostages being led around the embassy grounds Can we do e? Explain to the American people why the Arabians and particularly the Islamic government? The Nationalist Islamic government of are and why they are so angry at us as a people. Are we willing to explain about the coup d'etat? Is that the CIA pulled against Mohammad mosaddegh in 1953 do Americans know that and knowing that do they care can't be we did that all that's a long time ago. We why would they be upset by that? Why would I be upset by are coming in and toppling a leader of theirs dually Chosen and installing one bar of our own people that the oil companies smiled upon which we can do that. I mean we would do we care that's a distant event yet. It is not adjusted to vent its would seem to me to the Iranians. It is in fact yesterday on the scorecard. I would give the better print people there the post the times time and Newsweek pretty good marks I'll bet someone deleted Mark in explaining the anger. I would give television very weak marks in explaining it. I don't think the television likes to explain things. Take time it often demands Hawking head television doesn't like Talking Heads. It demands footage of history and The television is like history obliterates history history Takes Time Mystery of history is wasteful fill me try and do around in the usual Evening News thing or Salter Angola in 2 minutes who has time for old film of the past and so television tend to obliterate the past and and in fact there for shows the anger and the result of the past without any giving you anything other forces at play and television is week at this in general and it continues in this crisis to be weak. I think you've seen very little of Kermit Roosevelt who was the architect of that coup d'etat for the CIA you seen very little discussion about it. And I think one of the foreign policy question that involves from this and everybody says Farm policy question is time. We got talking stop being pushed around until they push us around it. Problem that if some of what them or what happens if people can take a great power and are perceived to be able to do this and tweak our nose and we do not respond. I think there's a problem there. I think I don't know that there's a place called what used to be called in my childhood a a domino effect, but there certainly is a problem. But I think there is a secondary issue at stake here and it's a very important one. It is not getting covered in all that is doesn't just tell us something about what it is like when you Tinker with people's countries. Just to tell you something a little bit of dollars like anything. Wouldn't we perhaps have been better off to allow the uranians to have all of their own way. It might have been difficult then but had we and maybe the price of oil would have gone up then but we would have I mean uranians have to sell oil we have to buy it and we might have gotten the Dew line whistle on us in terms of beginning to change our energy much needs much earlier instead. We have waited much too long and we have gone on rather arrogantly squandering energy. So that maybe not only would we have been able to evolve? How much better do line whistle on us evolve? What is the danger of imposing your will can you impose your will be shot fell? not for lack of American armaments But for lack of route in that Society, I am not here to make light of the job. It would be to take a feudal society like that and bring it into a modern world and age and how difficult it was but he failed and that was a failure and it was not a failure of arms. It would probably Duran has got to be in a lot of the seventh Ray best armed countries in the world. I mean, nobody was a better customer of the defense department then the shop. I mean not all that weaponry and none of it fired in Anger at the critical moment. So the question is how we explain things to me by and large not terribly well particularly and television. The second question is in judging the present which is very difficult because it is a crisis Price is really almost unto itself. I mean, it's hard to imagine but here's Jimmy Carter who when he announced for the presidency in about 3 years ago for 4 years ago. The one thing he had never heard of something called an Ayatollah NORAD the rest of us and yet here is television which in many ways makes the president far more powerful. It is an Unwritten electronic amendment to the Constitution. The president can get on a time you want Mondale can get on it anymore. Rosalind can get in the White House can get on all those people can get on. So we just made the president infinitely more powerful on the landscape, but it's also volatile because you can make in a given situation something like an Ayatollah an equal momentarily of the president. It's a very difficult situation and Carter is a media present. He was elected out of skillful use of media instrumentality he has Show route to speak of in the Democratic party which barely exists. I mean a day when the Democratic party bosses could sit and decide who would make an orange at the very least as they could still do in part of the decade of the 60s know who they would deny that's gone. I mean that's gone. Anyone cannot imagine a bunch of bosses sitting around in dick dailies room in Chicago smoking big cigars and what I'm saying? Well, there is just terrific little one term governor of Georgia when he was elected because because he is Media terribly well in the post-watergate moment, very great skill held the center and had a nice friendly smile that was sort of a high rate of John Kennedy and Billy Graham and I needed in very well. So anyway, but he's a media person in his response. Whenever he's in trouble just to go to medium. So now he does these things which is he cuts off the Iranian oil at which I applaud and you look Laden It's a Wonderful gesture and and certainly timely because if he didn't come. They would have cut it off for three Penny freeze. Is there a such and we applaud that and he gives Stern but very carefully worded warnings and we applaud that the question seems to me. moving the letters to difficult mechanics politics They will make us less dependent upon irideon oil on a Middle Eastern Oil. Would it lead to more public transportation will be the president willing to put the price of gas up where it should be about 2 to $3 a gallon with most of the money going to taxes. So that Americans will give up their god-given right to drive to work alone to and from work every day, which is important. I mean, National Security is not the Sophie. Flow of our resources the Middle East a billion and a half a week. We are going to bankrupt this country for our children and grandchildren unless we stop how we use energy is boiled and obscene. No European nation would tolerate it the Europeans not having a Texas on an Oklahoma would the energy they always have high gas prices, you know, do everything pushed off you go into a building in Europe and in the hallway there you punch a button on a light switch goes on it goes on for about 2 and 1/2 minutes long enough to let you walk whatever number of floors it is and then it cuts off its not like America where the lights are always burning the European buying large takes the cities are built for public transportation and European uses his or her car on the weekend. And we believe that we and we believe that we can go on using energy the way we are we are kidding ourselves. We went we use it as if there would be no tomorrow. And tomorrow is he a question is kind of present follow-up the gestures with the tusks gritty work for beginning to retool this whole society in terms of energy very very important question the question for us as a people which flows from that we are all involved in Iraq. Today. We are all fixed. We are all junkies. We are all eager to do something to deport and the radiant student to fire in terranean bus driver to punch and aranea now to send in a battalion to the American Embassy I would call it in honor of its first proponent in this country is a Kissinger Battalion, which I think would be David Rockefeller Henry Kissinger. Christian members to sign up How do I video? When we see something in terms of discipline and sacrifice to begin to change energy change how we use it when we accept arbitrarily High figures of gas. Equity Equity of sacrifice nonetheless, but beginning to change the way we begin to retool ourselves. If not, then we have the problem not really finally in the long run the Ayatollah and indeed the Ayatollah brings home. Pretty how dangerous the situation is how what this is doing to our economy in our future then perhaps I mean, we will all get some terrible way. Oh him a debt of gratitude because he will somehow brought it back home to us what is happening in a way that we were unable to do ourselves because I don't think we're going to go back and drop the 82nd Airborne into around and take over there oil filter. I don't think that's the kind of world. We live in maybe you could do that at the turn-of-the-century, but I think gunboat diplomacy has passed and therefore we have to live as a nation within the realities of our possibilities and they are you know, we are incredibly Rich we can still do it. All we have to do is be a little more careful. Anyway, those are questions provoked by a media Society where it is so much easier. To momentarily 6th connected and then so much harder to follow through your expectations are so much higher than realities. And where did the Sons of duration of attention span is so brief. We do live in a media Society Carter is a media President. We are facing an enormous question. It seems to me of the media of a of an economically of an economic crisis because he was a man produced. Dubai media is instinct when in trouble is to go to Media. This is not uncommon. I mean, you can see it with every President John Kennedy goddess of the Bay of Pigs and went on television and said I was responsible you better believe he was responsible for the first week of his presidency was seen to toast English muffins by himself in his own kitchen and his poles or not to be first week of Jimmy Carter's presidency. We saw a me take him to school. We saw Rosalyn there was a lily enemy. We love in our sense of televisions theater. We love the drama with a present in the present lights in the polls get up and as we are fixed by the system and hooked on it, so does he and and media action media gesture too often becomes a substitute? For reality and brings up the question for our own front tire Society where we have sinned Carter I think was a very decent man is a reflection of it have we replaced capacity of governance with capacity to give tribal image and gesture style over substance holes. Obviously you can you have gone down you see the gestures you see the sending of Rosalind to the primary in Florida, which was not a primary against a candidate who is a candidate. I'm just sending the dispatching of Rosalind to meet the pope one of the nice things about being present as you can get your wife on anytime you want and as I said, it is a subtle reminder that Brand X in the Democratic party cannot lightly dispatch his wife out. You see the president jogging you turn on the seventh game of the World Series and look in the locker room, and there is a tall. White man clearly wearing thermal underwear that is obviously the commissioner of baseball Bowie. Kuhn wearing is arctic clothes does a large black man. And that is clearly wilver Stargell wearing a large happy smile and it's a small Freckle face man in their summer looks curiously world because someone in the white house probably wrap soon figured out that the seventh game was in Baltimore and hop over there and be there in time for the last game and we had the Delta Queen of America hold to go down and says, so Your friendly neighborhood rash incision. But we can get you on television for your vacation and President says I'll come on nobody wants to watch a presidential vacation because nothing could be more photogenic and going down the Mississippi River with images of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. And then he says Watch Me And So It Goes Jody Powell to announce that there will be a presidential vacation. It'll be aboard a highly telegenic boat by the medium and we given our pavlovian response demand full rights and access to give the American people what has been part of their Heritage the right to cover. Drive to cover the Pres United States is vacation. And of course you remember that was great. Let me not since Napoleon left Moscow has a really been quite an event. I mean, you know day after day total coverage Interruption of Regular Show day 1 the present the family the family's unit being fixed up before they arrive in interviews with the people who room next to them Third Day an interview with the captain fourth day the president jogging V Des the the boat pics comes in to st.joe, Missouri. and there for a moment is a rare Touch of genuine Americana the the young present is encountered by a very angry American citizen to Sangre citizen works the United Auto Workers. He feels there are too many cheap Imports there and he is very angry and he's booked stopping at a certain moment. He notices it his anger is being televised by ABC NBC and CBS and he begins to smile in the seduction work and he realizes the enormous truth of what Andy Warhol want said that everyone in America will be famous for 15 minutes and his moment has gone and he begins to smile and by the end of you end of the interview. He is cutting the president on the back and saying you're alright, mr. President. Television it is carnivorous. It shoes up. It's all comedians are detectives got Kojak never lost a case. And if you know, he's playing tonight who's playing on a local channel is no no longer Network even like being kicked off the New York police force and sent to some small town in Pennsylvania for Kojak it burns up. Traditional man is a hero to his valet. Can you can lose your mystique? We can see that classical in the Pope's trip, which is a great moving spiritual event of a very Humane and dramatic figure. But if the Pope I daresay came back 6 months from now or a year from now, we would be a lot less interested in him. He would have lost as Mister, you know, you seen one Pope's dramatic trip you seen them all and it seems to me there for the Temptation that goes with all that media instrumentality of being president. Which is the capacity to manage news? And to manage news at the beginning of a crisis. Isn't Carters in danger of now with depression of the nations of Comedy been caught up as Lyndon Johnson was in Vietnam and Richard Nixon was in Watergate and that is making being confused between the difference between managing news. It's very easy River of time and Newsweek difference between that and managing reality Reality is Ricky that has a rhythm of its own it's very slow and you can kind of claim it's out there far away. No one really knows I don't know what's going to happen. So you can say what you want. You pretty much know believe you. I mean. We won the war day after day in the briefings and Vietnam. I mean we manage a new tomorrow. So they're there was a thing called the five Follies and my colleagues and I would go I stopped going low supposed to wear any good stop going and they will be a briefing officer and every day he would point out how many battles we had won and how many how much tonnage we dropped and every day every day for 7 years. We won the Battle of the briefing we never lost a battle in that briefing. regrettably VidCon never got the word that you didn't send a representative the breathing. They never got the word and so their own reality which was working and whatever their rhythms of nationalism and whatever work comfortably Nixon and Watergate everyone at the beginning of the story believes president. No one believed to Felice reporters from a paper and gradually however, relentlessly reality came on there. Any way we do live in the media Society is a media process. The Machinery of the parties are the Democratic party is far weaker now than ever was the main way to get there. Shooting through primary use of media is crucial, even the conventions themselves are in fact, I think much more media celebrations. Then they are political celebrations minutes back on the eve of a convention. We know the kind of the nominees are going to be maybe not the vice president will unveil Hubert at a crucial moment in Atlantic City and leaving fly Tom. Up. There is a kind of smoke screen. I mean those are called fun and games with Linden, you know, maybe not very much fun and games for fun and games for for Linden a few game. But essentially the real the real celebration is of the medium. And the question which hovers very large is will John and David come back and beat Walter this time. Will Eric be brought back to do commentary even though technically he is retired. How did Rodger do? against Dan and the battle to succeed Walter will anyone ever succeed Walter? Will Barbara find anyone important enough to interview? Animated and it's great sort of media Shake. I've always felt very embarrassed when I go I don't go to conventions anymore. I represent mostly myself. I don't stay at fancy enough hotels. Are they out of my own pocket? And and I don't know my number and it's an enormous ego thing out of it, but it is and if you want to know what are political party system is like and what the media process is, I think and she is very much before you and who this year's candidate candidates are. And it seems to me. Probably exhibit a of the weakness of it is the fact that someone like John Anderson is Illinois a serious man of a good man, very decent man of knowledge of good governance who's never had access to Media. The lightning has never struck him as it struck Howard Baker for example, because he was on me televised Senate Watergate because it has never struck John Anderson. He cannot raise money because he cannot raise money. He's not on the media and because you cannot get on the media cannot raise money. This was once called by Joseph Heller Catch-22. Here is a man who really is a superior man who is way off on the horizon and you look at the very end candidates and you can see why how media has played a role you have a President Carter who I already mentioned you have Jerry Brown the governor of California. I think you sort of The Manchurian Candidate. He seems to me as if descended from a television station. I have no sense that he come comes alive except when the red light is on. I have I find him so bizarre in terms of what I consider to be political opinion and maybe it is just a terrible generational thing. I like his father. I thought his father a warm good earthy prototype of when a politician was and maybe I am just too old to cover politicians, but I like Humanity from them and earthiness and I like a politician always seem to be with someone who went who came into the room and wanted you when you left the room to like him more than when you win with Jerry Brown. It seems almost to reverse a trickling this that makes you wanted to sleep if you can go into. Hey, I really put him down didn't I keep putting us down. You have Senator Kennedy. Who is classic media theater the legacy of our first television President a kind of media industry unto himself where he goes the media goes there must be five. Micon call. He's already or riding a contract for books on him and who and because the Kennedys are our first romantic theater of politics T pendulum swing wider for them and we are damned if we do and damned if we don't in terms of them week, we cover them be accused of amplifying them. If we do not cover them. We are accused of ignoring their lesser quality. And and this is classically to now, how do you how do you draw the line between coverage of Kennedy when in fact there is too much coverage of him and to the knowledge that right now is a Democratic party. He almost more than President Carter is the issue where the Challenger Becomes more of an issue virtually than the incumbent particularly in terms of card search for the Democrats on the Republican side for simply Ronald Reagan a former actor John Connolly. So recent in his roots in his part of the fact, he was a Lyndon Johnson Democrat up until five years ago and a Richard Johnson sound alike even now and as I said Howard Baker who came to us out of it seems to me to televise border gate experience and I'm going to try and make this a little bit brief because I've been talking a little long. I'm going to be a lot of the best stuff in here all all Seventeen hundred pages of it which way you can buy for $38 at your local bookstore. My my colleague Russell Baker who I thought until yesterday was a friend as a Yesterday the New York Times magazine about the dangers of being hit with either my book or Henry Kissinger is boba tea. Vegan Apple AR Rayner. He would look at the weapon drop it on you that's the end of our friendship. Hey right couple probably who won. This is a technological passing. It is something that has happened it is I mean it is to understand why this happened in the last 20 years. The best way to three is to imagine a huge map of the United States and instead of imagining what they used to have in the old days, which was a electric power grid to Envision a technological electronic to every everyone else all being able to given moment if possible. To watch at the same moment. Tell if the president of the United States or a convention or a debate in the moment that possibility existed the moment it could be done. It was a Temptation seduction. So total to the average politician that it ended 1 hour the error daily, whatever and it began another the era of a Garth there a raccoon or napolitan or whoever else for 11 of the media think it was there. It was the national political Hall no more with Democratic candidates open your cat kind of the Sea by going to you know, Cadillac Square in Detroit on Labor Day because it was an even bigger audience, you know, a hundred million people intentionally there. So there is the coming of an electronic remedia grid and it's their of itself but I mean to no one is going to unplug those television sets. The second part of it seems to me in the struggle media is is the coming of a national press prism through which events are perceived which also has access to that grid. Directly and indirectly, how was the politicians at the highest level have access to that grid the media does to that's why both of these forces have gotten so much bigger in the last 20 years and 5 Min directly. I mean ABC NBC CBS News team can get on that grid once a night. But Daniel schorr wants called a national evening sounds Indirectly it is because the print people the New York Times Los Angeles Times, Washington Post Wall Street Journal time, Newsweek. Are much bigger much richer much more powerful and they Define events and television Amplified halberstam's law is printify defines television amplizon when the when the people who come in every day to put together the Cronkite show or the chancellor show when they come in the morning what they pick up the times and the Washington Post Mount themselves in a fact television goes ahead of of a principal in general in day-to-day life. Handprint holds to print has texture. You don't have to see print at 7 p.m. Every night and it doesn't evaporate the way television does it is there you can read it on the train into work. You can read it when you get to work. You can read it at home print is there and if they come in and they were coughing and it becomes ineffective the menu for the day the budget the men because it means that the Network's in effect virtually take that front page and turn it was a couple noticed in the book sections is much less foreign news, they believe because the papers are lead and they are mass and they believe that Their audience is not serious. Therefore they don't give you nearly enough national news. They turn that into a film version of front-page. That's one reason that indirect access. The second thing that has done is done to print which is terribly important. Is it is taking cities? I won't vouch with Minneapolis cuz I don't know enough about it but cities where there were four five six seven papers and television in competition for advertising dollars killed paper after paper after paper. I'm suddenly what was left in Los Angeles Boston Chicago Washington to a large degree in New York would be one dominant Rich Morning newspaper unto itself no longer competing with other newspapers, but virtually arrival of garment. And which could be powerfully Define new and which was virtually arrival to commit itself in terms of what the agenda would be and what the issues were extraordinary no longer me. Look at the Washington Post. We was up until some 20-25 years ago a dinky little paper number for 5 in that City lost a million dollars a year for some 20 years and then emerge took over the morning slot television Weekend afternoon papers and if he came unto itself, I mean Watergate is a classic example, no more does the report For the Washington Post or the New York Times the Diplomatic correspondent knock nervously on the door of mr. Hodding Carter and say, you know pray tell sir. What happened in Iran or Saudi Arabia Type R A telesur correspondence of their own there who are quite good at getting their own competing versions in so that is the norm is quantum increase in power. It seems to me if you reflect upon the last two traumatic crises that we have had in America both Vietnam and Watergate, but it is not by chance that it was not their president versus the opposition party in Vietnam was not you know, you know the Republicans against Lyndon Johnson and Watergate was not in any wasn't or was it the present versus the Congress those were not the issues divided in both those it wasn't any large cents. It seems to me real definition to vishu president against the medium time between here that I would like to make one or two small points because I think there is often a conspiratorial sense of what the media is and I don't think it is just Eastern liberal conspiracy that some people think it is for one thing. It's not all that liberal. All those institutions are on the Fortune 500 and they are very establishment by no means out of liberal. They are seems to me I mean Kay Graham pick up the phone and call punch salzburger and say there is not a conspiracy where they all to get together. I think if there is a distortion and I think there is a distortion Distortion not ideological probably in terms of media particularly television a distortion of the camera of what the camera chooses to see through the camera likes the camera. Has a bias towards John Kennedy, but doesn't much like you would Humphrey it likes Ronald Reagan, but not much packed Brown the camera likes action movement. The camera has a little tapeworm in their mouths to feed it. And it feeds it in the Caper missed call film in the film needs action. And so it likes volatile think it likes people in the street. It likes action and movement rather than static situation. So in that sense, I suppose some conservatives have a right to be annoyed because it does not like the static situation and it's much more appreciates movement and and change. Anyway, there were a lot of other things I say and in enough these questions and answers. I was going to give you a brief history of it how it happened beginning with John Kennedy running outside the party bosses when they would not nominate him because he was a Catholic it seems to me that they just went outside the system, and he would show them and he went into the party primaries. He did this by media and by so doing he won the nomination E17 primary to show that he was a winner and with that it seems to me politics changed part of the party bosses have been weaker ever since I was going to give you our stamps view of History Through the Ages. I think I've been talkin really long time to answer your question. So I will be delighted to end my remarks and respond to whatever is on your mind. Thank you.