Moyers in 2003
BILL MOYERS IS BACK AND SO IS MY POLITICAL SANITY
By Bob Vickrey
Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, March 2, 2012
Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly is busy cutting off another guest in mid-sentence, while over on MSNBC, the bright, but strident Rachael Maddow is speaking in definitive proclamations about the ulterior motives of her opposition.
Help us please! We need shelter from this constant bombardment of bluster, and yearn for a rational sanctuary from the shrill voices who spell only doom for our country’s future. Where have the champions of moderation gone? Most of us desperately seek some lucid insight into restoring a sense of optimism and sanity to our daily lives.
In recent months I’ve found a quiet and reflective refuge from the insidious political noise and chatter that define today’s media.
Amidst the taunting and accusatory tone of the Republican debates and the caustic Democratic responses, a gentle voice of reason has once again emerged, as the veteran Texas journalist and television icon, Bill Moyers, returned last year to host his PBS weekly show, Bill Moyers & Company.
As in his past shows, you will not hear politically polarized guests screaming over one another on his set. Moyers has traditionally stayed above the fray, and once again has focused less on party affiliation by placing more emphasis on seeking solutions to our ongoing national issues. His show features guests that lend new dimension and thoughtful commentary, and he foregoes the easy and accessible ‘sound-bite’ culture we’ve now come to expect in news programming.
Moyers first emerged on the national stage in the 1960s when he became Press Secretary to President Lyndon B. Johnson. He later turned a political background into a television career in the 1970s, and has been employed by just about every national network as either host or commentator in the last four decades.
He was born in Oklahoma, but spent his formative years in East Texas in the town of Marshall and worked as a cub reporter for the local newspaper. He received his bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Texas and completed a Master of Divinity degree from Southwestern Seminary before becoming pastor of the First Baptist Church in Weir, Texas.
Moyers has returned to the medium and format that has allowed his considerable interviewing skills to shine as it has in years past. Perhaps the ministerial background is what has given him the calm and measured demeanor which has invoked an almost reverential tone into the tenor of his shows.
The format of having only two guests during the hour-long show is so jarringly opposite the typical in-your-face confrontations we’ve become accustomed on MSNBC and Fox News that it involves an adjustment on the viewers’ part to become an actively engaged listener. The in-depth treatment of subject matter is such a novelty here that we feel we need to alter our senses to fully participate in this television experience.
Moyers new show reminds us that we’ve played it safe as media onlookers and have searched out the programs that reinforce our own views. We’ve become a nation experiencing a culture of educational laziness of epidemic proportions. Entertainment and lifestyle reports water down the real news and now regularly blend seamlessly into most broadcasts. The traditional network ‘nightly news’ is still on the endangered species list.
Recent surveys have shown that a younger generation gets its news from the Comedy Channel’s Jon Stewart Show and The Colbert Report, or from the online Borowitz News blog. You’ll have to look long and hard to find anyone under 40 reading a newspaper these days. Breaking news is first and foremost, and seeking any ‘perspective’ is not terribly high on most people’s priority reading or viewing lists.
Where else would you find a half-hour given to award-winning poet Rita Dove who articulates and expands upon a theme of defining “who we are as a people?” Moyers is the only commentator around who would take on such a delicate subject as: “Freedom of Religion versus Freedom from Religion” – a not-so-subtle distinction in terms.
What Bill Moyers has always done is search for common ground that binds us as a nation--what makes us human, and ultimately, a more united people. That understanding gives us some restoration of hope for civil dialogue and the potential for elimination of the ingrained gridlock in our system of governing.
Moyers’ show may only represent the beginnings of a civil discourse addressing the roadblocks in maintaining a working democracy, but perhaps this new effort might symbolize a modest, but yet significant first step in the right direction.
Bob Vickrey is a freelance writer whose columns have appeared in several Southwestern newspapers including the Houston Chronicle and the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram. He is a member of the Board of Contributors for the Waco Tribune-Herald. He lives in Pacific Palisades, California.
Copyright 2022 Bob Vickrey - Editorial Columnist. All rights reserved.