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Driver's Seat
A late look at ‘60 Minutes’
By BOB DRIVER, columnist
Article published on Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2008 |
The CBS program 60 Minutes used to be a fixture in my life. During the ’80s and ’90s I seldom missed one of their shows. The lineup of Mike Wallace, Ed Bradley and Co. almost always guaranteed three news features of interest and consequence each Sunday night. The “60 Minutes” team kicked over many a can of worms that needed upturning. I don’t know how many national awards the program won, but I’m sure they were well-deserved.
As a new century dawned I drifted away from “60 Minutes,” for reasons I’m not sure of. Matter of fact, the last few years have brought me an increasing disenchantment with TV in general. The dominant personalities tend toward the vacuous and vulgar; many of the shows are repetitive and imitative; the commercial breaks go on for four, five and six minutes at a time. The “off” switch on my remote has become one of my best friends.
Despite my kvetching, I still surf. On Sunday, Feb. 17, I happened to click onto a segment of “60 Minutes.” It was like old home week, and I settled back to watch Morley Safer trot out a look at modern Denmark. The news angle was that in an era when everyone seems to be chasing happiness, the Danes keep getting ranked as among the most contented people on earth.
The reasons are several. Health care and education are free. Child care and elder care are subsidized. The average work week is 37 hours; workers get six weeks of paid vacation a year. Taxes are sky-high, but there are no major differences in levels of wealth. People feel secure. Their expectations from life are modest, so the likelihood of disappointment is much reduced compared to the USA, where the big dream is to have it all.
As this litany of blessings rolled on, I kept waiting for Safer to mention the big fly in the Danish ointment: the Muslim problem. Since 1990 Denmark has experienced a large influx of Muslim immigrants. Many, if not most of them, show no desire to become assimilated into Danish society and customs. Two years ago a Danish newspaper published a cartoon showing the prophet Mohammed wearing a turban on which a sizzling bomb was ready to explode. Muslims around the world – and in Denmark – went ballistic. Death threats abounded. The turmoil has continued up to this month, when a radical Muslim group staged an 800-person protest march in Copenhagen, after a number of Danish outlets again published the Mohammed cartoon as a defiant gesture defending freedom of the press.
But Safer said not a word about all this controversy. I can’t imagine why “60 Minutes” chose to slide on past this story angle. I’m writing this column four days after the program aired, and I have yet to see any media comment on Safer’s oversight. It’s not a big deal, perhaps, but it warrants some questioning. At the very least, it makes me nostalgic for the old days when “60 Minutes” was more like an attack dog than a grumbly old uncle.
Speaking of which: that jowly antique Andy Rooney continues to do a wrap-up essay at the conclusion of each “60 Minutes” segment. I’ve caught a couple of his pieces recently, and I sense that Andy is sort of running out of gas. Maybe he has exhausted his list of things to gripe about. Even so, he continues to be my favorite curmudgeon. And he does it without using four-letter words or foaming at the mouth.
Send Bob Driver an e-mail at tralee71@comcast.net.
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Article published on Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2008
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