Making things happen -  with integrity.    encouraging a new generation of business, academic and social leaders A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday November 6, 2000 Volume II Number 45

FOCUS - Breaking News

The TV screen said BREAKING NEWS.

I thought, oh no, another 747 took off on the wrong runway in a blinding rain.  How many lives this time?  Or, perhaps the Middle East broke into a wider conflict… an assassination, or an explosive act of terror.  The anchorman’s serious tone made me suspect that perhaps our nation was under siege.  Prepare for the announcement of some ominous crisis or fiery accident.  A refinery in flames.  Hurricane devastation.  A sinking ferry on the high seas.  Floods overwhelming residential communities.  Tornadoes tearing through mobile home parks.  BREAKING NEWS.

That banner across the bottom of the screen could be anything.  But certainly, in this era of media saturation, where everything is captured on videotape, it signals something shattering.  Something momentous.  Something worthy of interrupting whatever else has my attention.

But sometimes, in spite of all the high tech animated color graphics, BREAKING NEWS is not really breaking news.

In this case it was a 1976 DUI citation.  A misdemeanor.  In Maine.  Pulled out of a filing cabinet, which has been, since that date, open to the public.

It appears that one of the two candidates for President of the United States, just days before the nation enters the voting booth (one person at a time), has been exposed.  For all we know about the two candidates, details that fill volumes of books, newspapers, newsmagazines and web sites.  All we know about hometowns, and the testimony of grade school teachers, and childhood friends and neighborhoods, and church affiliation or lack thereof, for all we know about college transcripts, and comparative placement in the graduate school achievement roster, medical history, military records, business failures and accomplishments, voting record in the political arena; texts of speeches and on-camera flubs, tax returns and credit reports and the success or failure of their parents’ marriages and the family financial track record, sibling testimonials and quirky embarrassments… all that we know about each candidate (far too much, in my view)… we did not know that late one night at the age of twenty eight, one candidate was pulled over for driving under the influence of alcohol.  And cited.

We did not know.  Until this week.

BREAKING NEWS.  For several days now, it’s been a major headline.  Big print.  Bold type.  Talking heads filling hours of broadcast time, loading up the airwaves with speculation.  Point-counterpoint.  Spin.  Spin.  Spin.  How will the American people, particularly that critical mass of “undecideds…” how will they process this political bombshell? 

And all that carefully orchestrated momentum, building to a crescendo, timing events, the photo-ops, the designer political ads on radio and television and in the print media, the screaming supportive crowds up and down Main Street America, controlling the message, peaking support for the candidate just as voters’ pens are poised and ready to mark the ballot, all of it, derailed by BREAKING NEWS.  A pin-prick leak in the hot-air balloon of presidential politics.  And public opinion swayed once more.  Not so much by the message. 

But by the medium.

* * * * * * *

In another lead story, this week the world was stunned at the sudden passing of a television icon – Steve Allen.

Steve Allen was one of those rare entertainers who was truly talented.  Not just in a narrow nitch.  He was a comedian, a singer, dancer, pianist, composer, artist, conversationalist, author, philosopher… a Renaissance man. 

Turns out, he was also a crusader.  His vociferous and steady commitment to his crusade accelerated as Steve Allen grew older.

Jay Leno and Johnny Carson can thank Steve Allen for launching the Tonight Show.  He was the first to do a nightly late program on NBC.  In the mid-fifties.  America was just beginning to understand the power of the little box in the living room, flickering black and gray and white images on tiny screens.  It was quickly replacing the radio as evening family entertainment.

Allen was a pioneer.  He introduced the nation to Mort Sahl, Milton Berle, Sid Ceasar, and Bob Hope among many others.  His crazy late night skits and antics won him a wide audience. 

Then he wrote books.  Fifty-two of them.  And songs.  Nearly eight thousand.  He never stopped creating.

He believed that television should be used as a tool for education.  In association with PBS, he created a Peabody and Emmy Award winning program called “Meeting of the Minds” in which he and his show-biz pals (including his wife, Jayne Meadows) portrayed historic personalities enjoying table talk.  In period costumes, Allen introduced people like Galileo, Plato, Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Cleopatra, Charles Darwin and Attila the Hun to name a few.

Noel Coward achieved great success as an actor, vocalist, pianist, author, composer, lyricist, and director in the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s.  By the decade of the ‘50s when all the networks converted from radio to television, Sir Noel Coward described Steve Allen as “The Most Talented Man in America.”  Singer Andy Williams, a close personal friend of Allen’s said, “Steve Allen does so many things, he's the only man I know who's listed on every one of the Yellow Pages.”

So what was Allen’s crusade?

This week, the same day Allen’s sudden death was announced, our county paper ran a full-page advertisement.  The ad ran in newspapers all across America.  It was a scathing critique of television programming, exposing the rather widely known fact.  Afternoon and prime time programs are saturated with immoral, profane and mindless trash, the article trumpeted in no uncertain terms.  It’s author – none other than Steve Allen.

Coincidence?  I wondered.

There was a time in America, Allen remembers, when executives deliberately considered the heady responsibility of program directors to provide wholesome and healthy programming that promoted the common good.  There were committees making judgment calls about the worthiness of program themes and scripts and dialogue.  No one considered the exercise censorship.  Rather, it was a duty.  An obligation.  Access to the power of the airwaves was an awesome opportunity.  But it brought with it an equally awesome sense of responsibility.  For too many programmers today, according to Allen, access only means ratings and profits.  The sense of public duty and civic responsibility has gone the way of Howdy Dowdy.  Today, amoral producers and directors have unleashed untold, irreparable damage on society, according to Allen who spoke straight on and posthumously from the pages of my morning newspaper.

Isn’t it curious that this pricey protest appeared the same day as the news of a sudden heart attack took the life of this popular entertainment personality?

So I did some research.  Turns out, this is no new involvement for Allen.  He’s devoted a considerable portion of his life and wealth to the crusade.

He’s been the honorary chairman of an organization called The Parents Television Council.  He’s been turning up the heat on Hollywood and the Networks for a long time now.

Did Steve Allen simply become a crotchety old curmudgeon in his declining years?  Or did he, perhaps, have a point?

I ran across some lines written by this comedian, author, entertainer, philosopher… some lines that frankly surprised me.  They were published in of all places the Wall Street Journal.

An ancient theological concept is the occasion of sin. It refers to social contexts that individuals attempting to reform themselves would be well advised to stay away from. Examples are obvious enough: A recovering alcoholic ought not to spend time in a saloon. Someone trying to kick the curse of addiction ought not go to parties where drugs are freely passed around. A man wrestling with a sexual compulsion should avoid his local singles bar.

In today's Anything Goes culture it sometimes seems that our entire society has become one massive occasion of sin. We live in an environment bombarded morning, noon and night with messages from films, television, radio, recordings and other modes of mass communication. It is almost impossible to escape encouragement to act in ways that have traditionally been the province of the libertine, thuggish, coarse and depraved. (WSJ 11/3/98)

Remarkable conclusions from a thinking man who for his entire career occupied the secular city.

For some, aging brings along with the decline of physical strength and function, an inclination to retreat, to find isolation, to live inside a buffer zone, protected from the harsh realities that once provided exhilarating challenge and energy and focus. 

For others, aging brings wisdom.  Perspective.  A burning desire to be sure that the world is left a better place.  There is a profound awareness of values that matter.  For the children, and their children.  And theirs after them.

I put Steve Allen in the second category.

* * * * * * *

My friend C.W. Perry took, the story was told, a group of guys to a Los Angeles Lakers game a while back.  Thanks to C.W.’s connections, they sat mid-court, just a few rows from the floor.

You cannot exaggerate the awesome power of these giants as you watch them do battle on the hardwood from close range, they said.  It’s incredible.

But just behind C.W. and his friends, right there in the high priced seats, were four big guys tossin’ back brew after brew and talkin’ trash.  Bad trash.  The kind that once would have been banned from public places.  One particular vulgarity, a word all too commonly employed in contemporary movie scripts, largely to insure an “R” rating at the box office, was repeated over and over again, like a punctuation mark, adding no particular meaning to a phrase other than to color it profane.

It was annoying.  Irritating.  Distracting.  Noise pollution.  Out of place.  Even at a Laker game.

Just after the start of the second period C.W. had enough.  By this time, the guys behind were pretty well greased up and the “f” word, especially for one of them, was popping up in just about every phrase… in the subject as an adjective for each noun, before the verb as an adverb, then spicing up the object of the sentence, and then you’d hear it in just about every prepositional phrase.  This is not to suggest that there were any complete sentences in his slurry speech.

So C.W., disgusted, rose slowly to his feet, all broad shouldered six feet four of him, and turned to face the beer soaked Laker fan with the trashy big mouth.  Once they established eye contact, with rare sarcasm in his bass voice, C.W. spoke, “Is that the only word you know?”

The drunken bad boy turned into a whipped puppy.  Tail between his legs.  “Uh… oh… sorry.”  He seemed instantly sober.  And miraculously, the “f” word disappeared like a vapor.

Steve Allen would have been proud.

* * * * * * *

It’s Monday morning.  You are a leader.  Tomorrow, you and I will cast our ballot.

Sometimes it feels like while we may be casting a ballot, we are casting our fate to the wind.   Vote anyway.

If you are like me, you’ll be thankful simply to be done with it.  After all the breezy promises of “positive campaigning,” and “I’m going to avoid personal attacks” and “this will be a campaign about issues” most of us will just feel like we need a shower when it’s all over.

Not all “breaking news” is.

Let’s not diminish the serious nature of DUI.  If it’s in your past, and someone uncovers it, I’d recommend confession, remorse and apologies.  And a genuine commitment to behavior modification.

Steve Allen was right.  We need to clean it up.  We need leaders committed to that which is wholesome, honest, good and right.  And we need more men and women like C.W. Perry who are willing to stand up and look profanity right in the eye, and ask “is it necessary?”

Today, in the exercise of leadership, you will set the tone.  You no doubt will be exposed to the strident voice of “the thug, the coarse and the depraved.”  You can turn the tide.

May the tribes of Perry and Allen increase. 

Let it begin with you and me.

  

 © Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2000

Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram 

LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates

Forward LeaderFOCUS to a friend Send FEEDBACK Welcome to LeaderFOCUS LeaderFOCUS Archives Click here to SUBSCRIBE Click here to UNSUBSCRIBE LeaderFOCUS Home Page What People Are Saying.