If You Can’t Read, George, Try Television

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If You Can’t Read, George, Try Television
Jerry Tenuto

George W. Bush needs to watch television a little more often.

I don’t mean the old Warner Bros. Western series such as "Maverick," "Bronco," "Sugarfoot" and "Cheyenne" that American Life Network runs every week; nor the creaky old movies endlessly served up on the Encore-Westerns channels.

After all, the shows on ALN are fun to watch in their own way. Despite Newton Minnow’s assessment of television as a "vast wasteland" (speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, May 9, 1961), these tales depicting life in Old Texas and Arizona often wrapped messages of social inequities – knee-jerk reactions leading to wrongful hangings; injustices heaped upon Native Americans as metaphors for cruelty shown toward Blacks at the infancy of the Civil Rights movement; women as second-class citizens; the military commander turned martinet when allocated unquestioned authority at a far-flung outpost – within a framework of rousing adventure.

Li’l Georgie obviously grew up watching all these shows and old movies, getting the wrong impression that the guy storming the jailhouse with a noose or hiding up in the rocks "at the pass," Winchester at the ready to bushwhack the unsuspecting pacifist sheepmen, were the true heroes.

One thing’s painfully apparent – the guy sitting in our Oval Office never paid much attention to how real persons of honor and depth went about the business of leadership.

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