born live love die

When I was a young man, I fancied myself an actor. I worked in a community theater, had some small parts, one large one, and enjoyed the work, the camaraderie. While building sets, painting flats and hanging lights, the topic of conversation would often turn to past performances and experiences. A staple of those sessions were tales of the ‘missed cue’. Sometimes, one actor would get lost in elliptical or repetitive dialog, say the wrong line and then a cue would get missed. Or, one actor would repeat a cue in hopes that the missed cue would get picked up and the performance could continue. There were also countless stories about cues that were inappropriately repeated by someone trying to reset the performance and get it back on track.

During the post-primary coverage last night, one of Anderson Cooper’s panelist repeated a cue that is getting missed. Anderson Cooper asked the panelist if Senator Obama needed to address the ‘bitter issue and Rev. Wright’. The panelist answered in suitably grave tones to the affirmative and expounded on it. It was such a blatantly missed cue and the political actor in question is deaf to it.

The nature of television dictates that drama, not exposition, be pursued. The medium of motion pictures, moving images, tends toward drama. Text and still pictures are great mediums for exposition. There is time to study, to see the composition of them. The thing that is pertinent to motion pictures is the motion. Conflict is the heart of drama. Motion implies conflict; drama implies narrative. News shows on television are not trying to do exposition, they are trying to do narrative. They often use the expression “story lines” (borrowed from sports coverage) as a way to clue the audience in to the script they are following. Television pushes a narrative thread as a way to retain viewers; viewers mean ratings; ratings mean advertising revenue.

Television will supply and manufacture narrative when there is none apparent. To get manufactured narrative, they must manufacture drama and conflict. The missed cue of Anderson Cooper is one example of such a manufactured conflict. There is nothing new to be learned from Senator Obama’s use of the word ‘bitter’. There is nothing much new that can be learned from the episode of Rev. Wright, except perhaps the fuller story that the Rev. Wright was inspired by President Kennedy’s famous exhortation to leave college and join the Marines. He returned to college following his term of service. Facts take a back seat to narrative and drama; conflict always drives the bus. But absent true narrative, the news business will manufacture one.

The cue is being missed by Senator Clinton. This endless rehash of pass manufactured conflict is not a cue to continue, it is a cue to leave. She is missing her blocking cue to exit this political stage. There is a role for her still to play, but standing down stage center in the spot light is not it.