NBC shows viewers the Democratic convention's tear-stained face
By DAVE EGGERS
The NBC tear-making machine has struck again. Yes, the people who brought us the Emote-O-lympics have set up their doomsday machine of mass melodrama again, this time at the Democratic convention in Chicago.
Not since Atlanta (which was about one month ago) has America's viewing public been treated to such a display of raw sentimentality. Although NBC was in large part aided in last night's coverage by the heartwrenching slate of speakers scheduled by the Democratic National Committee, the network dutifully took their cue, trained their cameras and delivered the goods -- tears. As seen on TV, the convention seemed much less the candidate-choosing and platform-writing process of a major American political party and more like an evangelical miracle-healing sideshow, with the Democratic party as the savior and NBC as willing accomplice. Emotions ran high, and if there was a dry eye in the house, NBC didn't find it.
The heart-wringing started even before the prime time speakers took the podium. In the booth, Tom Brokaw was recounting some of the day's pre-prime-time events. Wrapping the report up, he referred to a video tribute honoring the late Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown that the DNC had shown to delegates earlier in the convention. NBC cut to a bit of the tribute -- what looked like the back end of it, with Clinton doing his best scratchy-throated encomium -- and as the homage wound down, we met up with Tom in the studio, who had next to him none other than Alma Brown, Ron Brown's widow.
She was fighting back tears. Tom mentioned that he knew her husband very well, and they talked briefly about how hard her life must be. Then they talked a bit about the party, and about Ron Brown's role in organizing the Democrat's 1992 convention, and about how hard it must be for her being here without him. Then they discussed her dead husband's legacy and his status as a role model for young black Americans. Then he wished her well, under her difficult circumstances. They both were relatively composed and eloquent, but it was eerie nonetheless. Her value as a source of news relevant to the convention was not apparent, and the end of the segment was a relief. It was too much. But it was only the beginning.
The prime time speakers were devastating, and NBC did everything possible to heighten the emotional impact of each. First came James and Sarah Brady -- he being the former Reagan Press Secretary wounded in the assassination attempt on that president, she being his wife and chairman of the lobbying group Handgun Control. Together for 7 years they lobbied for the passage of the Brady Bill, which Clinton signed. They were there to say thanks.
But before they took the stage, the violins had started. A NBC floor correspondent snagged a wheelchair-bound delegate from Rhode Island, first asking that he detail the circumstances of his paralysis -- an accidental handgun discharge when he was 16 -- then pressing him about how he felt about James Brady's presence at the convention. He was touched. We were touched. And we were primed for the main event.
Sarah and James Brady took the stage amidst thunderous applause. Sarah spoke while James sat in his wheelchair behind her and to her left. As Sarah Brady spoke about handgun control and the terrible toll of handguns in America, NBC did what it does best, and what it does without shame: finding delegates exhibiting the correct emotional response -- especially if they're crying.
The practice is not alien to the other networks, and is familiar to anyone who has watched any of the coverage of this convention or of the GOP's gathering. Each time a speaker makes a particularly powerful point, when the crowd cheers and the speaker pauses in acknowledgment, the producers go to a shot of an appropriate conventioneer acting appropriately. If there is indignation -- we must control these deadly weapons! -- the camera will find a delegate looking indignant. If there is happiness and hope -- we passed the Brady bill! -- the cameras will find someone looking happy or hopeful. Best of all, though, are the weepy shots. When the speaker talks about struggle, about sacrifice or pain or misery or suffering, one can count on one, two, three shots of properly emotive delegates, eyes glassy, fighting back tears, upper lips stiff in defiance of the outburst that seems almost inevitable. The networks do this unerringly.
By the end of the Brady episode, the emotional pitch was dizzyingly high. But the next speaker would send it over the rainbow.
The anticipation was tangible. Murmurs spread through the United Center. Then Christopher Reeve, the actor who was paralyzed when thrown from a horse, took the stage, and the crowd went wild. The cheers lasted a good minute. And then he spoke.
He is without a doubt a powerful speaker, possibly the most perfect TV spokesperson for compassion the world has ever known. Impossibly handsome and tragically disabled, he puts a familiar human face on disability. And what a face it is.
During his excellent speech, which praised the Americans with Disabilities Act and advocated more funding for medical research, NBC took their coverage to a new level. Not only were viewers given the ever-appropriate shots of emoting delegates, we were given those emotions expressed by the appropriate sort of person. Within the perhaps 10 minute timespan of Reeve's speech, NBC found nearly two dozen disfigured, crippled, blind or wheelchair-bound delegates in the crowd, assuming that their reactions to the speech were somehow more valid -- and at the very least more emotional -- than the regular, un-physically-challenged Democratic representatives. Most often, that reaction included tears, mixed with what looked like the sheer awe of watching that beautiful, well-spoken man on the podium, the beloved actor who through paralysis became a hero, and through the magic of Riefenstahl-esque political television, became a poster-man for the Democratic party, the party of compassion.
Almost without exception, the conventioneers picked out by NBC's cameras exhibited the necessary response to whatever Reeve was saying, and after their cameras had exhausted every available physically challenged Clinton delegate, they found their trump card. Near the end of Reeve's speech, as he spoke about how more research could lead to a cure for spinal cord injuries like his, how more funding could bring about a time when thousands like him could get out of their wheelchairs and walk again, NBC cut to the person who they were no doubt saving for this climactic moment. A man in a wheelchair was clapping. His arms were twisted, his neck kinked to one side, his legs helplessly dangling. He was disabled. And he was a dwarf. While those in the control room of NBC probably whooped it up, while the convention coordinators patted themselves on the back for having the savvy to invite him, the small man clapped for Reeve. But he did so half-heartedly. I could have sworn he rolled his eyes.