The Glass Teat - essays of opinion on the subject of television

by Harlan Ellison

  But that’s hardly an isolated dichotomy. Reagan finally gets around to having an ecological conference, to discuss how much longer we’ll be polluting the state (not to mention the entire planet), and for two days we are bombarded with much high-flown political-sounding rhetoric intended to convince us that The Gipper is finally hip to the peril. He’ll do things, he says. He’ll take steps. And the very next day my TV set shows me the resumption of oil drilling in the Santa Barbara channel. Those poor slobs living out there dash out in fishing boats to prevent the oil company from hauling in their platform, and Reagan is still mulching about saying he’s going to save the land. Because oil leases mean heavy sugar to the state and federal governments, and you know the oil lobby isn’t going to let death and destruction get in the way of their showing a profit on their ledgers.

  And the bill to double the income tax deduction for individuals is defeated soundly, but the oil men get another oil depletion allowance.

  And TV news is primarily Establishment-oriented, but Spiro attacks them for being in any way fair to the dissent movement. To the resounding support of the Great American Masses.

  And a soldier goes AWOL and finds sanctuary in a Unitarian church, and the Army brands the guy a traitor because he puked on the bayonet range when one of his buddies was told to “Kill Kill Kill” and he said he didn’t believe in killing, and they beat the shit out of him.

  Oh, lemme tell ya. Crazy stuff.

  The interesting thing about all this, of course, is that—among other serendipitous side-effects—almost every deep-rooted belief of Americana is being exploded into lies and confusion. So with everything they’ve ever accepted as rockbed fact being proved a fraud, television viewers are flocking in ever greater numbers to situation comedies, where the ideals and beliefs of their youths thirty and forty years ago are still maintained. They can watch Lucy and Petticoat and Green Acres and continue to believe that that life still exists. In some mythical terra incognita, they know not where.

  But how do they react to the massacre, the good folk who have always believed that Our Fighting Men are good and decent and honorable? How do they shiver and quake to the explosion of the Jack Armstrong myth? Do they rationalize it as the act of an isolated kill-crazy Lieutenant? If so, what about all the other guys in that outfit who joined in, dragging people to the edge of the ravine as their victims pleaded to be left alive, as they turned their weapons on them? Do they think about the conditioning that permits a man to murder children and hold his tongue about it for twenty months?

  If ever there was an apocalyptic incident that speaks to the death of the past in this country, this week we have it. We can ignore the pollution, we can permit the political corruption, we can deny the paranoia and racism of our culture, we can substitute personal experiences with shitty Jews or blacks or Catholics or young people or old people for a careful, reasoned understanding of the human condition—but we cannot ignore this massacre.

  In discussing this matter with friends, I’ve been reminded of the Viet Cong Massacre during the Tet Offensive, in which four thousand men, women and children were dumped into shallow graves and then clubbed or shot to death. Understand something: I do not carry VC flags. I am no lover of killers, be they Oriental or Caucasoid or Negroid. Hell, yes, they are vermin for the act. And not even saying they were murdering their own people is an excuse. What makes you think I have an answer? Love thy neighbor? That doesn’t work either. History certainly gives us enough proof of it. But these are our guys. These are the direct lineal descendants of Robert Taylor and John Garfield and Victor McLaglin and Humphrey Bogart on Bataan and Corregidor and Iwo Jima and Kiska and Attu. These are our guys, godammit! Not those evil little yellow men with the sibilant hisses and the bamboo shoots under the fingernails. These are Johnny and Billy and Gus from Trenton and Denver and Cleveland. They aren’t supposed to be infanticides.

  So now we learn the truth we always knew. We are as rotten as them. Violence knows no color barrier. Those who ball their fists keep going until they slaughter children. Now America has to face it.

  No, Spiro, we can’t let you silence the news media. We need to know the truth. Unpleasant as it may be, we have to have the truth now.

  There isn’t enough blood or time left in the world to permit your kind of dissembling, Spiro.

  Hey ... Spiro ... you know what you are, man? You’re the guy who greased that Lieutenant’s trigger-finger.

  * * * *

  50: 2 JANUARY 70

  POISONED BY THE FANGS OF SPIRO: PART I

  Ugly, baby. Just righteously ugly. Dayton, Ohio, I mean. (Yeah, that’s why my column’s been absent for the last few weeks. I went to Dayton to deliver a lecture, and what happened there was such a bummer, such a downer, such a shitter, that I didn’t even have the stuff to write a column. I’ll tell you all about it. Might take three columns, but I’ll lay it all on you, because it has to do with the power of fear generated by one of the great TV stars of our times, Spiro T. Agnew.)

  I come to you, bloody and slightly bowed. To be perfectly honest, friends, I feel like Peter Fonda, AKA Captain America, living a real-life version of Easy Rider.

  The hero of Easy Rider comes up against the violent fear and insanity of midcentury America, and gets his head blown off for his trouble. I didn’t get my head blown off, merely got my mouth closed, but the background is much the same, and from the encounter I’ve drawn some inescapable conclusions, the first of which is:

  AMERICA IS ENTERING A PERIOD OF REPRESSION AND WITCH-HUNTING THAT WILL MAKE THE TERROR TIMES OF THE MCCARTHY ERA SEEM LIKE THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT.

  I will now proceed, through the fascinating relating of my travails, to document my thesis. Pax.

  Early in September, I was contacted by the Dayton Living Arts Center, in the person of Barbara Benham, its Creative Writing Director. She wanted me to come to Ohio in the capacity of a “Guest Artist” to both work with the students in the science fiction writing course, and to deliver an evening lecture to adults and college level students. We started negotiations.

  (The Living Arts Center itself is a groove. It is a Federally-funded operational Project to Advance Creativity in Education—PACE—financed under Title in of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Its purposes are to “identify, nurture, and evaluate the creative potential of youngsters whose interests lie in the Fine Arts—creative writing, dance, drama, music and the visual arts.” The participating students number from eight to twelve hundred, in grades 5 to 12, who show up at the Center after school and on weekends. The programs are varied and the faculty is top level. I lay all of this in, in front, in an effort to establish that the Center itself, and the faculty, are dynamite. Whatever horrors came down, they were by no means the fault of the Center and its instructors. Administration is another matter, and we’ll get to that shortly. But if you see parallels between the Center and what has happened at colleges all across America, you will understand that it is not necessarily the faculty or the institution itself that is repressive, it is almost always the politicians, the “educators” in their little suits and ties, the Administration that takes its stand for censorship, control, rules®s, guidelines, and a brutal maintaining of the no-waves status quo ... usually at the expense of the very kids they prattle about “serving”)

  Through Barbara Benham, negotiations for my three days attendance (December 15, 16 and 17) were completed on the 22nd of October, and contracts were signed by myself and the Administrative Director, Jack A. DeVelbiss. His is not the name most properly to bear in mind. The name with which we will deal is Glenn Ray, a dude I will not soon forget. Nor, if I have my way, will he soon forget me.

  Now understand something: Dayton was my 152nd speaking appearance in the last five years. I’ve spoken to all levels of audience, from junior high school crowds through college level groups to adult audiences. With the exception of a horrendous situation that arose last Labor Day at the World Science Fiction Convention in St. Louis, I’
ve never had any trouble. In fact, I’ve been asked back to speak second and even third times at some of the universities. I did not anticipate any trouble in Dayton, though my encounters in the Great American Heartland these last two years have hipped me to the growing tensions and tendencies to shy away from anyone bearing news of unrest from the outside world.

  In a letter dated September 25th, Miss Benham tried—in a delicate way—to forewarn me of the tenor of Dayton thinking. She wrote, in part:

  “As the Center depends on public support for its continuation, deliberate provocation is dangerous for us. I hope that, without being untrue to yourself, you can focus mainly on literature (from any angle, including its role in revolution) as opposed to politics.”

  I replied, on September 29th, “It is my intention to win them, not alienate them. I will not, repeat NOT provoke anyone. If you want a rabble-rouser, get someone else. I try to tell some truth in the course of my discussions of writing and the place of the committed writer in our society, and that occasionally upsets a few people who are locked into socio-economic or religious boxes, but in the main it is my intention to bring light, not darkness.

  “As to my subject matter—you seem concerned I’ll deliver a Julian Bond/Rap Brown diatribe—being literature rather than politics, yes, of course. I’m a writer. That’s what I do, and it’s what I know. But since I conceive of the role of the creator in our Times as inextricably involved with the world through which he moves, it is inevitable that my discourses will slop over into human behavior, the state of the world, the effect of committed writing on the tenor of the Times, honesty and ethic in writing, et cetera.

  “If any or all of these unnerve you, or lead you to believe I’ll be doing your program more harm than good, I suggest again that you reconsider hiring me. The only guarantees I can offer are predicated on my past experiences with groups similar to the one for which I presume I’ll be speaking (straight, middle-class, white mid-America folk who seem disturbed at the changes happening around them): they seem to relate to me, seem to appreciate someone telling them things straight out, and the leavening of humor I include inclines them to hang in there for the entire set. I’ve never had a riot or an insurrection.”

  Not till Dayton, that is.

  We pause at this point to refresh your memories about the philosophical line all this history is taking: Spiro Agnew, the first vice-president of the United States to suffer from terminal foot-in-mouth disease; the power of TV in mass communicating instantly to an entire nation a gagging fear and horror of change; the use of the mass media to convince a middle-class white population that too much knowledge in the hands of longhaired freaks and natural-haired niggers is a deadly thing; the reassurances of dangerous slayers like Spiro that the final grasp for repressive power by the old order is, in reality, a rallying around the flag by a mythical “silent majority” of God-Fearing Good Solid Americans. And outside, peace on earth ...

  That’s what we’re talking about here, not a minor incident in Dayton, Ohio ... good will to men ...

  Meanwhile, back at the story ...

  My duties during the three days at the Living Arts Center were as follows: four meetings with the science fiction workshop, under the direction of John Baskin, who turned out to be a hero in more ways than one; an adult lecture; three lectures for specially-selected students of local high schools, brought to the Center for that purpose. The tab for the three days was fourteen hundred dollars, including expenses.

  I arrived by TWA on the evening of Sunday, December 14th. Dayton looked like all the rest of Ohio ... a state in which I’d been born ... a state I’d left many years before, perhaps with that sense of premonition known only to the young who sense this land in which they stand will never change, will never yield up treasures great enough for them. I had left and gone other places and found now, upon returning, that my heart and mind retained images of mid-America that were part childhood pains and joys, part cultural myth, part sadness at seeing smog and pollution and Big Boy hamburger stands ... and part triumph at returning to execute AN EVENING WITH HARLAN ELLISON.

  It was a dream. If you basket-case a dream, it flops over as nightmare. Peace on earth ...

  John Baskin and Barbara Benham picked me up at the airport and took me to the apartment she had vacated for my use while in town. She was staying elsewhere. It was a gesture of considerable hospitality, intended to save me the cost and loneliness of a hotel room. It was to be used later, against her, by the Administration, to whose eyes propriety is easily set awry.

  The next morning they came for me, and I was taken to the Center. It was a converted warehouse, the facility having been handsomely renovated to accommodate work shops and a large theater and a dance studio and talk areas and God knows what all else. It was very impressive, very real, and held within its walls (even early in the day, childless) the sense and scent of life. Young minds came here to find direction, came here to taste joy and beauty. It looked lived in. I wanted very much to do for them.

  What I did not know was that the following had occurred in Dayton:

  1) There was a concerted program afoot to quash “freaks” in the city.

  2) The school finance levy had been soundly defeated a few days before I’d arrived. This forced the Center to have to scramble for a quarter of a million dollars to keep running. So the Center could not afford to offend anyone. (Why Mr. DeVelbiss had not used the three years gravy time, during which the Center had been running on Federal funds, to make provisions for such an eventuality, was a question I heard asked many times during my brief stay in Dayton.)

  3) A black educator named Art Thomas was in the process of losing his job because, in the course of averting a riot, he had used the word “pig” when speaking to a cop. It was a railroad kangaroo court scene, with every “liberal” in Dayton up-in-arms because his hearing was being held before the very people who had relieved him of his position—and everyone knew he was going to be set down. The case was big news and promised to go to the Supreme Court.

  4) The Center had had mild troubles with other “Guest Artists” in the recent past. Pianist Lorin Hollander (who had charmed everyone during his first appearance at the Center) upset the Administration by returning with long hair and sideburns, hip clothing, and a program that was divided between music and political opinion. Square, suited and silent his first time there, Hollander had become “involved” in the world in the interim, and his frankly expressed concern for America and the world unsettled the Program Director, Glenn Ray. I was given to believe, in no uncertain terms, that Mr. Hollander would not be invited to return.

  5) An appearance of a puppet theater at the Center had brought—for some inexplicable reason—shrieks of protest from parents who had attended an evening performance. Something about, “What are you liberals teaching our kids down there at that freak palace?”

  6) Fear of “making waves” was high in the Administration of the Center, in the school board, in the city.

  And here came I.

  Innocent, starry-eyed, dew-bedazzled little me. Set to be cast in the role of insurgent dissident revolutionary. Ready to be typed outside agitator, corrupter of the young, agent provocateur, trouble-making wave-creator.

  This has been the background. The cast of characters, the action, the incredible denouement—all of this in the next two week’s blistering, scathing, uncompromising installments.

  Can you bear to wait!?! The suspense is killing! You know, sometimes my life flashes before my eyes ... and frankly, it ain’t worth living a second time.

  * * * *

  51: 9 JANUARY 70

  POISONED BY THE FANGS OF SPIRO: PART II

  If you think the hope for tomorrow lies solely in the young—as did I—be advised the poison has seeped down through the veins of the society to them as well. If you keep reassuring yourself that as soon as the present generation of bigots, morons, haters and blue star mothers (who take open pride in having sent their sons off to die) kick off thin
gs will be better ... start worrying again. Because they’ve already gotten to the mass of kids, out there in the Great American Heartland. Even as they’ve been planted, those good mommies and daddies have reached skeletal hands out of the graves to clutch their children and intone, “If you want to honor my memory, if you don’t want me to have died in vain, remember: niggers are evil, they all want to rape your women; Jews secretly run the world and they’ll steal everything you have; Communists roam everywhere; sex is dirty; don’t let them Ivory Tower liberals corrupt you; trust in hate!” And then the dirt is shoveled in on them and they go to that big Klavern in the sky, leaving behind them the butchered minds and closed-off potentialities of the next generation.

  I went to Dayton to talk writing, to talk science fiction, to talk about what I felt should be the role of the committed writer in Our Times, what he could do to reshape the world through his writing. My first encounter was with a class of seniors from Wilbur Wright High School. I’d been briefed that they were “white Appalachian kids.” Whatever that was supposed to mean, or to tell me. I figured they were like San Fernando Valley kids, middle-class, somewhat sleepy but wake-able if you prodded them and started them questioning. I was wrong. Lord, I was wrong. They were touched by the grave-bone hands of their parents. And they had been poisoned by the fangs of Spiro.