Drygulched at Channel 13

It’s been a long day and the Channel 13 special on the Radio Comedians of the Forties—Bob Hope, Jack Benny and Mary Livingston, George Burns—might be fun. Tune in. It’s a couple of minutes early and something called 51 st State, Patrick Watson, moderator, is on. It’s about Vietnam. Sigh. Still all things pass . . . but not on the night of May 11, 1972, on New York’s Channel 13, they don’t. Channel 13 is having itself an orgy, a good newfangled hate-America, love-thy-enemy-type orgy.

8:30 comes and goes, and where are Hope and Benny? Channel 13 won’t tell. What it does tell is that this is a World In Agony and this is one station that Is Plugged In to that Agony. It’s devoting the evening to the war. And it is plugged in to the pulse of New York. Those telephones you see in the background, banks of them, are to record people’s sentiment on the war. Are you pro-Nixon, or against? Phone (212) 554-9000, our operators are waiting for your calls. Meanwhile here are the congressmen who represent you —you New Yorkers—with their area codes, telephone numbers and the SANE rating on how they’ve voted on the war (twenty chances to be right or wrong). Get to it. Tell them what you think and, meanwhile, keep listening to . . .

PL

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Priscilla L. Buckley

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It’s been a long day and the Channel 13 special on the Radio Comedians of the Forties—Bob Hope, Jack Benny and Mary Livingston, George Burns—might be fun. Tune in. It’s a couple of minutes early and something called 51 st State, Patrick Watson, moderator, is on. It’s about Vietnam. Sigh. Still all things pass . . . but not on the night of May 11, 1972, on New York’s Channel 13, they don’t. Channel 13 is having itself an orgy, a good newfangled hate-America, love-thy-enemy-type orgy.

8:30 comes and goes, and where are Hope and Benny? Channel 13 won’t tell. What it does tell is that this is a World In Agony and this is one station that Is Plugged In to that Agony. It’s devoting the evening to the war. And it is plugged in to the pulse of New York. Those telephones you see in the background, banks of them, are to record people’s sentiment on the war. Are you pro-Nixon, or against? Phone (212) 554-9000, our operators are waiting for your calls. Meanwhile here are the congressmen who represent you —you New Yorkers—with their area codes, telephone numbers and the SANE rating on how they’ve voted on the war (twenty chances to be right or wrong). Get to it. Tell them what you think and, meanwhile, keep listening to . . .