Tubular trip preps campaign season

JOSEPH N. BELL

It’s been a tough six weeks on the tube. Two political conventions,

the Olympics and the Angels in a pennant race. Now, the football

season is underway, and three presidential debates are coming up.

There have been times -- the Zell Miller keynote speech at the

Republican National Convention, for example -- when I actually

considered embracing the Steve Smith Syndrome, which, as I understand

it, is to turn the TV off permanently.

Whenever that draconian impulse struck me, it would pass quickly,

usually when the Angels mounted a rally on the radio, and I wanted to

watch it happen. But if the intent of the Smith Syndrome is to avoid

wasting time on TV trash that might be better used reading a book or

playing soccer or listening to the planes from John Wayne Airport,

then I see some merit in it. There was plenty of trash, baby,

especially coming out of those conventions.

We hit the low point two weeks ago Wednesday when the

compassionate conservatives in Madison Square Garden skinned and

broiled John Kerry in a stew of personal vitriol at the same time the

Red Sox were trashing the Angels in Boston. I almost gave up

politics, baseball and television before that night was over. But I

was saved to fight another day by my stepson, Erik, who chose this

critical moment to introduce his mother and me to the Daily Show.

This nightly TV deflation of political hot air might even make it

possible for me to consider life after the upcoming election --

providing, of course, that John Ashcroft, if he survives, doesn’t

shut down the Daily Show for what he sees as treasonable irreverence.

The program is run by an elf named Jon Stewart, who is an

equal-opportunity satirist. He and his corps of subordinate elves

take on hypocrisy wherever they find it. And no ground is more

fertile than a presidential campaign. In their wrap-up of the

Republican convention, for example, they showed protesters strewn

about the streets of New York in a “die-in,” accompanied by Stewart’s

comment that this charade caught rather precisely the Democratic

campaign, “which has people playing dead while the opposition walks

all over them.” Stewart didn’t have to comment on the Zell Miller

performance; just show him turning his Kerry vitriol on a reporter

who asked him a legitimate question Miller didn’t like.

The Daily Show reminds me of a lesson I first learned in World War

II: that our greatest national asset -- caught so well by cartoonist

Bill Mauldin -- is the remarkable therapeutic power of American

humor. Right now, it hits me that it’s the only way this angry,

fractured country is going to survive the next six weeks.

The Olympic Games helped some. If nothing else, they proved that

international cooperation -- even in the often intense national

competition of the games -- can produce harmonious and satisfying

results. The glitches -- and there were many -- were overwhelmed by

stellar individual performances and the satisfaction of seeing

thousands of young people from virtually every nation in the world

enjoying one another regardless of race, creed, color or the

different routes they take to God -- if at all.

I wasn’t into the Olympics this year as much as I have been in the

past. My level of interest seemed to be roughly in line with all

those empty spectator seats the TV cameras picked up in almost every

competition. I watched the American professional basketball stars get

hammered by smaller and less talented opponents who had learned to

play as a team, our swimmers and sprinters sweep their fields, a bevy

of lissome women batting a volleyball on the beach, and rouged little

girls who defied gravity as gymnasts but probably had never enjoyed

10 minutes of free play in their lives. And the last three or four

days, I didn’t watch much at all. I missed the closing ceremony

because I forgot about it.

I never got to that point with the conventions, partly, I suppose,

out of habits formed many years ago by conventions that weren’t

scripted beforehand and offered up like one overlong, ghost-written

speech.

For those of you too young to know firsthand, there were once

political conventions in which the nominee was selected rather than

crowned. In which the delegate voting went far into the night and

compromises were hammered out in fabled, smoke-filled rooms. In which

the vice president was also selected by the delegates. In which the

party platform was fought over in open-floor debate and sometimes

ended with splinter groups peeling off on principle. In which high

drama rather than low blows were the order of the day -- and I had to

stay up half the night to find out who won.

But like American dominance of Olympic basketball, that’s all

history, and we must go with what we have -- which, right now, is six

more weeks of fractious electioneering and a billion or so dollars

spent on inundating us with political advertising of dubious honesty.

Hopefully, somewhere in this mix, there might be some light thrown on

legitimate issues.

As a public service, I offer here three cardinal rules I intend to

observe in making it through the rest of this campaign:

* Don’t arrange or accept dinner parties with people you know are

on the opposite side. This is the only election I can remember in

which good will, civility and a long history of friendship aren’t

enough to allow temperate political dialogue around a dining table,

so don’t risk it.

* Concentrate on contests less divisive than the presidential

race. City councils or school boards, for example, or a protest vote

against Rep. Chris Cox for blindsiding the El Toro airport. The lower

the public office being filled, the higher the likelihood that issues

will be discussed. I just made that up; hopefully, it will become

known as Bell’s Law.

* Spend more time with your hobby. If you don’t have one, get one.

The Angels could perform a considerable public service for

Newport-Mesa by getting into the playoffs and thus providing a

welcome diversion from the election. And if you find baseball boring,

the new football season offers another option. Check it out.

But, best of all, watch the Daily Show -- 11 p.m. weeknights on

Comedy Central.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.