Speak It, Brother

Since I seem to be having a hard time getting my own words down on the ol' blog, I thought I'd offer someone else's.

This popped up over on Snopes.com. It's a bit over 20 years old, so I'm not sure why it's only coming up now, but I think it's pretty fantastic. It's chunk of a commencement speech Ted Koppel gave at Duke University, generally on the subject of how inane, banal, and frankly dangerously inaccurate the media had become back in 1987. (Ah, quaint old 1987, when someone as innocuous as Vanna White was a sex symbol—in fact, the speech is about the "Vannatizing" of the media.) I was shocked to find out this actually was accurately attributed to him, and though he was never my favorite news anchor (give me that sterling, dreamy Peter Jennings any day...), I have a much greater respect for him now.

Some of the best bits:

Look at MTV or Good Morning America and watch the images and ideas flash past in a blur of impressionistic appetizers. No, there is not much room on TV for complexity. You can partake of our daily banquet without drawing on any intellectual resources; without either physical or moral discipline. We require nothing of you; only that you watch; or say that you were watching if Mr. Nielsen's representative should call. And gradually, it must be said, we are beginning to make our mark on the American psyche. We have actually convinced ourselves that slogans will save us. "Shoot up if you must; but use a clean needle." "Enjoy sex whenever with whomever you wish; but wear a condom."

No. The answer is no. Not no because it isn't cool or smart or because you might end up in jail or dying in an AIDS ward—but no, because it's wrong. Because we have spent 5,000 years as a race of rational human being trying to drag ourselves out of the primeval slime by searching for truth and moral absolutes. In the place of Truth we have discovered facts; for moral absolutes we have substituted moral ambiguity. We now communicate with everyone and say absolutely nothing. We have reconstructed the Tower of Babel and it is a television antenna. A thousand voices producing a daily parody of democracy; in which everyone's opinion is afforded equal weight, regardless of substance or merit. Indeed, it can even be argued that opinions of real weight tend to sink with barely a trace of television's ocean banalities.

Our society finds Truth too strong a medicine to digest undiluted. In its purest form Truth is not a polite tap on the shoulder; it is a hallowing reproach.

What Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai were not the Ten Suggestions, they are Commandments. Are, not were.

The sheer brilliance of the Ten Commandments is that they codify, in a handful of words, acceptable human behavior. Not just for then or now but for all time. Language evolves, power shifts from nation to nation, messages are transmitted with the speed of light, man erases one frontier after another; and yet we and our behavior, and the Commandments which govern that behavior, remain the same. The tension between those Commandments and our baser instincts provide the grist for journalism's daily mill. What a huge, gaping void there would be in our informational flow and in our entertainment without routine violation of the Sixth Commandment. Thou shalt not murder...

When you think about it, it's curious, isn't it. We've changed in almost all things—where we live, how we eat, communicate, travel; and yet, in our moral and immoral behavior we are fundamentally unchanged.

Jesus summed it up: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. So much for our obligations towards our fellow man. That's what the last five Commandments are all about.

The first five are more complex in that they deal with figures of moral authority. The Fifth Commandment requires us to honor our father and mother. Religious scholars through the years have concluded that it was inscribed on the first tablet among the laws and piety toward God because, as far as their children are concerned, parents stand in the place of God. What a strange conclusion! Us in the place of God. We, who set such flawed examples for you. And yet, in our efforts to love you, to provide for you, in our efforts to forgive you when you make mistakes, we do our feeble best to personify that perfect image of love and forgiveness and Providence which some of us find in God.

Which brings me to the First and, in this day and age probably the most controversial of the Commandments, since it requires that we believe in the existence of a single and supreme God. And then, in the Second, Third, and Fourth Commandments, prohibits the worship of any other gods, forbids that his name be taken in vain, requires that we set aside one day in seven to rest and worship Him. What a bizarre journey; from a sweet, undemanding Vanna White to that all-demanding jealous Old Testament God.

There have always been imperfect role models; false gods of material success and shallow fame; but now their influence is magnified by television. I caution you, as one who performs daily on that flickering altar, to set your sights beyond what you can see. There is true majesty in the concept of an unseen power which can neither be measured nor weighed. There is harmony and inner peace to be found in following a moral compass that points in the same direction, regardless of fashion or trend.

Amen. My guess is that Mr. Koppel isn't of the mind that things have radically improved since then...