Proof Through The Night

Life During Wartime

I watched Charlie Rose last night. One of his guests was Henry Kissinger, a person I am assuming needs no introduction. I'll say one thing about Kissinger, though; he doesn't look any older or seem any less sharp than he did/was back in his glory days in the 1970's and 1980's. Pretty remarkable.

Anyway, amidst a longer discussion about current and possible future American foreign policy, Rose asked Kissinger if the Iraq war hadn't by now grown to be "the worst foreign policy disaster in American history." Kissinger replied that it was too early to say, that it was too strong a statement to make at this point, that 30 years of American and Middle Eastern history would have to play out before we would really know.

These were predictable and I think sensible responses. What struck me was that when Rose put the question to him, I expected a swift negative reply from Kissinger. Instead, there was a long hesitation before he began his response. That was four or five seconds of silence that spoke volumes, to my thinking.

Once one begins to question everything the news media reports, it becomes more difficult to recognize a fairly definitive truth, even if it slaps one in the face, day after day. I have for some time been getting the feeling that the whole situation in Iraq is really careening out of control, but the strongest advocates of that view up to now have been twerps like Anderson Cooper and Keith Olberman, who are compelling personalities and good reporters, I am sure, but do not really come off as founts of balanced, empirical information. When reportage from equally uneven sources like FOX went completely the other way, I often felt like they were really, really trying to convince me that something was untrue (impending disaster in Iraq), making me think that maybe it was true, at least to some degree.

Sometimes it is input from an obtuse source - Republican Senator Gordon Smith coming out and saying our continuing participation in an Iraqi "civil war" is absurd and may even be criminal, Henry Kissinger hesitating to codemn an assertion that the war may be the worst U.S. foreign policy disaster in history - that sheds real light on things.

Sometimes when you shine a flashlight in a dark corner, you end up wishing maybe you wouldn't have; because you end up seeing what you could not before, and it can sometimes be very ugly and really disgusting.

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I have more ambivalent feelings for Charlie Rose than I do any other reporter/personality I can think of.

On one hand, I generally like his show (it airs at 11:00 p.m. or thereabouts weeknights on PBS in this market.) Rose has consistently terrific guests. If he wants to talk about science, he'll have a Nobel Prize winner or three at his table that night. If it is literature, a Pulitzer Prize winner or National Book Award winner or someone similarly noted. I find more interesting discussion on Charlie Rose's show than on any other since Brian Lamb retired his weekly Booknotes program on C-SPAN a few years back (I should note that I often find Tavis Smiley's show similarly informative and interesting, but usually I am too tired to stay up for it - it airs after Charlie Rose.)

The reason Brian Lamb is the Interview God (seriously, the best one-on-one interviewer I have ever seen) and Charlie Rose is not is that for one thing, Lamb is always absolutely prepared. I heard once that he read each author/guest's book in its entirety prior to filming that person's interview, which means he read at least 50 often lengthy and technical books a year, while also hosting several other shows and running three or four C-SPAN networks. Charlie Rose often appears to have walked onto the set without having done any prior research at all.

Also, the most singular characteristic of Brian Lamb the interviewer is that he asks his question and then shuts the hell up for one minute or ten while his guest forms and presents a thoughtful response. Rose on the other hand cannot stop himself from talking over his guests. He will ask a question and then as soon as his guest gets into an answer, he will be butting in, talking over, finishing the interviewee's sentences, etc. It is irritating as hell to watch, and I would think his guests feel similarly. In fact, I have wondered if the interviews are less than they could be simply because the guest is too conscious of Rose's inevitable interruption of it to take the time to come up with a better response.

My question is, why invite maybe the foremost expert on the planet in a particular subject area to be a guest on your show, and then instead of listening and learning from that person, spend the whole time interrupting the expert's responses and talking over him/her, as if trying to prove one's own expertise in a subject as compared to that of the expert's? Normally I would say it was insecurity. Maybe it is some North Carolina thing (I believe that is where Rose grew up.) Actually, I don't really care; I just wish Charlie Rose would stop it.

There. That should do it. :exhale: