I have little love for Kathleen Parker, author of Save the Males and the latest in a long line of conservative female pundits to sell books by suggesting that feminism has gone too far. But it would seem that there would be little to which to object in her piece yesterday paying tribute to the late Walter Cronkite. Clearly, what ended up in the Post was over or under-edited, as the piece jumps from a meditation on Cronkite’s comforting image to a discussion of whether or not his reporting on Vietnam ushered in an era of overt media bias. It’s a bit incoherent as printed, and was probably better as written.
But I don’t write much about the media. (As for Cronkite, I liked him, but ours was an ABC household; the favorite anchor of my childhood was Peter Reynolds, and I was always a big David Brinkley fan.) What I’m interested in is Parker’s reflection on Cronkite as a particular kind of male icon:
Our nostalgia for his passing isn’t only for the death of a familiar and mostly admired individual, but also for a certain kind of man — an iconic reminder of a time when fathers knew best and the media were on the home team.
He had the looks and voice of the sort of man one could trust for good directions. Nonthreatening and, it seemed, untempted by vanity, his prevailing affect was of seriousness and humility.
It is doubtless difficult in these post-metrosexual, celebrity-driven times to grasp the preference that Americans once held for people who weren’t “all that.” Male figures, also known nearly ubiquitously as “fathers,” were especially admired in those days for substance over style.
What’s so exasperating about Parker’s analysis is that she correlates Cronkite’s absence of vanity and consummate gravitas with his status as an icon of an era in which women were seen as frivolous and incapable of similar seriousness. Cronkite’s greatness lay in his professionalism, a quality entirely unrelated to his sex or to his absence of an intense curiosity about fashion. (Taking a wild guess, I’d say Kathleen Parker probably has an unhealthy and bizarre animus towards dear Anderson Cooper.) Cronkite, who mentored his successor Katie Couric (and was apparently far better disposed towards her than to Dan Rather) was by all accounts committed to greater inclusion for women in broadcast journalism; some have suggested that Cronkite’s behind-the-scenes influence led to Rather’s hasty departure and to the elevation of Couric to be the network’s first female anchor.
Cronkite’s bravest reporting, as Parker herself notes, came in his courageous willingness to expose our policy in Vietnam as disastrous; he had the guts to question the decisions that the “fathers” — presidents like Eisenhower and LBJ — had made in Southeast Asia. Rather than reinforcing the worshipful acquiescence to patriarchal authority that characterized so much of 1950s culture, Cronkite played a vital role in undermining that blind and unthinking trust that far too many Americans put in their national “father figures.” Vietnam showed Americans that fathers didn’t know best; Cronkite showed millions of Americans the truth about Vietnam, and in doing so, helped us to adopt a healthier skepticism towards paternal authority. For that, he deserves our gratitude.
Parker seems to suggest that substance and style are mutually exclusive, as if flair and grace are evidence of a reduced IQ. Of course, she casts “substance” as masculine, with the unwritten but unavoidable implication that “style” is feminine, lightweight, and unserious. Shorter Parker: “I miss my Daddy and my Mommy spent too much time shopping, so I wish I could find more men like my Papa, except that they’re now all shopping too. I feel unsafe.” But there was nothing particularly safe or virtuous about the rigid straitjacket of 1950s gender roles. Men were robbed of the chance not only to wear color, but of the chance to be vulnerable and open, complex and complete. Women were robbed of the chance to be ambitious, intellectually curious, and economically independent. We were half-people
What Parker and her ilk celebrate as a world of certainty, comfort, predictability and roles in harmony with “nature” was, for far more people than we realize, a world of spirit-crushing conformity and cruel repression. The end of the so-called “happy days” is to be celebrated rather than lamented, and to the extent that avuncular Walter Cronkite played a part in bringing those days to an end, he is to be honored as well.
Interesting read especially since I just happened to see the film Revolutionary Road the other day (sadly, never read the book). It’s all about the conformity in those “good old days” and I found that world to be seriously depressing. I’m glad we don’t live in such times anymore.
Hugo,
“The end of the so-called “happy days” is to be celebrated rather than lamented,”
I certainly agree with this, yet I still think that there should be a recognition of the fact that roles do not just constrain people but also offer a sense of stability. I think there is compelling evidence that the uncertainties that go with lesser role rigidity / lack of roles is an opportunity for some and a source of fear for others. Both are legitimate feelings and deserve to be seen as such. It may be a moral and legal obligation to give people choice, but at the same time there should be consideration, and possibly help for those who are having trouble adjusting. There’s not much point, in my opinion, in telling them. You’re wrong for being afraid when that fear is apparently very real and tangible for them.
Well, I think we can bend over too far in accomodating fear. The end of Jim Crow meant fear for white Southerners whose children would now be educated alongside black kids, but that doesn’t mean it was worth spending a lot of time cosseting bigots struggling to adjust.
Parker’s columns have often frustrated me as well. I read in one of her most recent columns that her mother died when she was quite young, and she was raised, along with her brothers, by her father. My first reaction was, “Well, that explains a lot.”
“Well, I think we can bend over too far in accomodating fear.”
Sure. But there’s a difference between accomodating fear and helping to get over it because the past is, well, in the past. And I think it’s possible to disagree on what exactly bending over *too far* means. Sometimes I have the impression it’s even considered “too far” to stop the moral condescension and the gloating. It was possible to exploit Obama’s comments about anxious white people clinging to their guns early last year because his remarks weren’t seen as compassionate, but as condescending (which I really think they weren’t). And there’s a reason why it was possible for the spin doctors to frame it that way…
Maybe what Parker really misses is not masculinity but adult maturity. Fatherly, unglamorous TV personalities signal a healthy acceptance of the different roles we move into as we get older. (At least for men - you probably won’t see a newscaster in “mom jeans” anytime soon.)
TV and movie actors now look even less like normal people than they did 20 years ago. We get this false impression that success means never aging or changing, never being less “hot” than we were at 20 (assuming we were hot then, LOL), even if we’d actually like to focus on other priorities. I think often about that poem you posted, about men at 40 closing the doors to rooms they won’t revisit. It’s good to give one’s self permission to do that, which is hard in a youth- and glamour-obsessed culture.
roles do not just constrain people but also offer a sense of stability
That’s true of rigid socioeconomic classes too, and was one of the criticisms leveled at the new American nation, if I am not misremembering.
Parker simply doesn’t like women much and adores men, period.