Another “Netflix” moment.

I am watching a rented DVD of the Dick Cavett Show and it can only be described as surreal. This one has Raquel Welch, Chet Huntley (David Brinkley’s old partner), Douglass Fairbanks, and Janis Joplin debating the role of media and whether or not television journalism can be unbiased. The conversation is peppered with then-contemporary examples from Spiro Agnew (he’s still in office) to the just-happened shootings at Kent State. As the title of this posting said, the scene could only be described as surreal especially given the clothes, the boom microphone that kept coming into the picture and the fact that guests were smoking.

Here is one abbreviated exchange:

Dick Cavett “Do you think enough conservative opinion gets expressed in broadcast media?”
Chet Huntley: “Yes. It’s all here….”
Janis Joplin: “When 4 friends of yours just got shot down in Ohio, you ain’t got time to read 20 papers, you want to know what’s happening.”
Huntley: “That would be ideal…”
Raquel Welch: “…people have polarized themselves so desperately that there’s no medium..”
Joplin: “the medium does not demand compromise, the medium demands understanding…”
Welch: “I do believe that they have to compromise because I don’t believe in this world we are today in the kind of technology that we are living in it’s possible to live apart, you have to live together or not at all.”
Applause.
Welch: “You can’t stop technology or science either and that’s what’s throwing the whole thing into a perpetual state of chaos.”

While this is going on Fairbanks is sitting back watching this realizing that history is being made. Janis Joplin and Raquel Welch arguing politics and bias in broadcast journalism. Like I said, “surreal.”

For the record, there are other reasons to rent this. For example, at one point Janis Joplin mentions Tina Turner and Dick Cavett says “who’s that?” Janis explains it’s a new singer who sings with someone named Ike.

technorati: dick cavett television

This entry was posted on Friday, October 28th, 2005 at 12:11 am by Insider and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.