CBS DUMPS THE “impeachment” hearings to go back to it’s regularly scheduled programming—soap operas

Now, what can we learn from this? It’s simple: people like a story. We’ll line up to read a good one or watch one. You don’t need to force a good story down our throats. And if one flops, you can scream racism and sexism all you want, but it won’t sell tickets to the turkey.

Here’s a story for you: Watergate. It kept an entire country riveted in their seats, reading and watching while it unfolded. The reason, aside from all the necessary elements any freshman learns in a Good Plotting-101 writing class: it got the audience thinking, “Gosh, I wonder what’s gonna happen next.” Get them thinking that, they’ll keep watching or reading to find out. But beware: once they conclude, “Not much,” you’ll lose them and they ain’t coming back. Watergate never let its audience down.

Richard Nixon, the perennial odd-duck of American politics, spent 20 years clawing his way to the presidency, he scored a crushing, landslide victory in 1972 that, had he not blown it, could have buried the liberal wing (yes, we called them that back then) of the Democratic Party for decades. And yet, by 1973, most people knew he was toast; what wasn’t known was what was gonna happen next. We wanted to see, and the story delivered. By August of 1974, he was chased out of town in disgrace.

It had everything: a classic flawed king brought low by his own fears, a crime (yes! A real crime), midnight arrests, mysterious connections, a cover up, a burglar breaking ranks and sending a letter to the judge—Lies! Hush money! Higher ups! Gasp!—two intrepid young journalists struggling to get the story out in the face of indifference; more cover up, lies to congress in the service of the cover up, a slush fund, a CIA agent with a dark and murky past, a looming constitutional clash between the President and Congress and a Supreme Court deciding the contest. And then the long, slow disintegration as the most powerful man in the world was reduced to a drunken bumbler, talking to portraits of his predecessors in lone walks after midnight. And we watched; we sucked up every second of it. It was the mainstream media’s high water mark; not only did they get to dispose of a politician they loathed, they got to play the good guys while doing it.

What this story had above all else, was a clearly defined narrative arc. Only the most jaded lackey could fail to discern it’s trajectory, from ripe back story and an inciting incident all the way to the inevitable conclusion. It also had sharply crafted characters, both good guys and bad guys. And, at the center, the perfect McGuffin: a break-in that had no significance to the broader plot, but which was the loose thread that started the whole process unraveling.

Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum couldn’t have done a better job.

Clinton skated because while he too had a clearly defined story swirling around him, it added up to a very different narrative: an intern, blowjobs, a history of sexual harassment, a stain on a dress, what the meaning of “is” is—none of it turned Clinton into the bad guy. A blowjob? Come on! It was just a decent idea with lousy development.

So what’s the story here, the one CBS abandoned in favor of soaps? Clearly, the media wants it to be another Watergate, and they dust off Carl Bernstein once a week to assure us it’s actually worse than Watergate. But where’s the story? I’ll tell you where: it’s out jumping the shark, again and again and again.

And where is the rich cast of characters that embody the issues under discussion? Watergate had Sam Ervin (There’s two ways to represent a horse. One way is to draw a picture of a horse and label it This is a horse. The other way is to just draw the picture and let people figure out what it is. We’ve drawn a picture.) G. Gordon Liddy (Just tell me what street corner you need me to stand on, and I’ll be there for you to shoot me.) Barry Goldwater trekking up to the White Hose to let the President know he’d be voting for impeachment.

Who does this story have? Pelosi? Schiff? Farticus himself, Swalwell? The original plot failure, Mueller? And a host of supporting actors too numerous to keep straight, too boring and insignificant to care about. There has never been a clean narrative arc, only a succession of failed efforts that prove that whatever is going to happen next won’t be much.

Meanwhile, a much different story is beginning to take shape, out there where the people who make this country work ultimately decide the fate of those who would lead us. This story is about fairness, about the traditions that define the country, and about the fragile contract that we all share with each other that makes the country even possible.

This story has become about efforts to break that contract, to turn a quest for political power into an effort to split the country and leave it to die, and, ultimately, replace it with a philosophy that is pure evil. That’s the story CBS realized it’s been pushing, and they checked out, for probably the most reliable reason in a free-market economy: the public isn’t buying it.