ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, February 6, 1996 TAG: 9602060040
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Russell Baker
SOURCE: RUSSELL BAKER
Thousands turned out the other day for the burial of Lesotho's King Moshoeshoe II on top of Night Mountain. The king, who had ruled for 36 years, was known for tolerance, persuasiveness and learning.
Such is the news from Donald G. McNeil Jr., who covered the funeral for The New York Times. The huge crowd which climbed that muddy mountain in drenching rain testifies to the king's popularity.
The depth of American isolationism may be judged from the lack of media coverage of this burial. The passing of any politician known for tolerance, persuasiveness and learning these days is a sad event, like the death of a member of an endangered species. Surely it deserves a minute or two on the networks. Well, 20 seconds anyhow.
Tolerance, persuasiveness and learning are three things glaringly absent right now from our own assortment of politicians competing for the American kingship. Instead of tolerance, persuasiveness and learning, these gentlemen specialize in swinishness.
Shouldn't we all be embarrassed about this? They are, after all, presumably giving us, the people, what we want. Or are they? Perhaps it is the media appetite for debased conduct that makes them behave so badly.
The stories that dominated American media the day of King Moshoeshoe's funeral showed an intense concentration on the trivia of American politics.
Mrs. Clinton had appeared before a grand jury and had nothing of consequence to say about it afterward. This didn't prevent TV, both network and local, from rerunning the story of her courthouse visit until even the cats begged for mercy.
Senator Dole, the Republicans' likeliest presidential nominee, was being savaged by agents of various other Republican candidates for cutting a poor figure on television.
President Clinton, having performed well in a television event before Congress, was being hailed as the shrewdest politician since Franklin Pierce. Why? He had put on a good show without committing himself in the slightest to what President Bush called ``the vision thing.''
(No letters, please, arguing that Franklin Pierce was no political wizard. Anybody who could parlay Pierce's qualifications into four years as president must have had pure political genius.)
Most of this stuff must have seemed minimally interesting if not downright boring to the vast audience beyond Washington. What's striking is what a tiny, enclosed, isolated world America must seem to the majority who say they get most of their news from television.
Washington has become the navel of an American news industry dominated by television. When the news deals extensively with a president's television skills and the lack of same in an important politician like Bob Dole, what we have is a navel contemplating itself.
Why this bondage to Washington news? It is probably because television's cost cutters have done away with many of the networks' old news bureaus.
As a result when a story breaks that's too big to be ignored, TV reaches into its Washington bureau for a top-drawer reporter, like James Wooten of ABC, who can handle more than the daily Washington humdrum.
Someone will say, as some tiresome someone always says: ``This is the future, Buster. You might as well get used to it.''
To which I reply with the closing line of a poem by e.e. cummings:
``listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go.''
This universe includes people and countries we have never heard of, like King Moshoeshoe II of Lesotho. What a clever man he must have been.
In Lesotho's high green mountains (quoting McNeil again), it rains and rains, and the mountains are full of water for which South African farmers on parched lands below are desperate. Lesotho stays independent and earns millions selling its water to the bottom of the mountains.
Bet you didn't know that. It's just one of the things, believe it or not, going on in the wonderfully wide rest of the world. Lot more interesting than the same old malarkey about some Washington politician's television style, isn't it?
LENGTH: Medium: 77 linesby CNB