TELEVISION
The optimist
Patrick SKENE CAT1ANG
Crosby's present columns, now written for the Observer, are mostly about Crosby. He is one of the people who disseminated the !lotion that London in the '4ixties was swing- ing, thus causing workers in the provinces to down tools and destroy several formerly successful heavy industries. John Crosby now lacks the statesmanlike profundity of Art Buchwald, the liberal intellectuality of Al Capp and the lissome gaiety of Russell Raker, but Crosby's a stayer, all right, and there are Sundays when his essays have the Ftrrimy bite of some Carnaby Street Jonathan Swift. He's running so hard to avoid squareness that he is in grave danger of doing his prose a grievous injury. Sorry, John, baby. I know you've still got the old stuff there, but the packaging's wrong.
John Crosby, himself, forced these per- sonal remarks out of me with his programme called Doomsday Never Conies, in the series One Pair of Eyes (Bec2). He propounded the original idea that the world is in great shape, better than ever, and that there's nothing to worry about, not really, because today's fashionable pessimists don't know from nothing. 'The experts are always wrong,' he said, with a teasing smile, and no wonder. The statement was a teasing statement, sug- gesting as it did that (a) Crosby was wrong or (b) Crosby was not an expert or (c)--oh, to hell with (c), as Crosby would write when tired of trying to think something out to its dismal conclusion.
There's nothing wrong with a bit of opti- mism. In fact, it seems quite appropriate with the daffodils blooming. Crosby's quite right that there have been more gloomy prophecies than absolutely necessary. But preferring the light to the dark won't auto- matically make the dark go away. Doing the resurrection shuffle in a pink ind mauve shroud by Mr Fish is unlikely to postpone personal oblivion for ever.
World wars? Forget them. The atom bomb? Nothing. (Shot of a bird in a palm tree on Bikini atoll.) Slum housing? It used to be worse. The world's worst slums (in Crosby's opinion) are the shacks on the hills above Rio—and there's 'a lovely view of the sea.' (Shot of a Rolls-Royce in a London mews : 'Yesterday's slum is today's chic resi- dence.') In the twelfth century not even the king had a bathroom. Nash terraces are just as uniform as new housing developments. Over-population? Nonsense. (Shot of lem- mings fleeing to the sea : 'God in His wisdom put them on earth for documentaries on over-population.') Crosby said he thought demographers never got out of the cities, or out of the house. Wars? Riots? 'We suffer today not so much from carnage as commu- nication.' Crosby actually said that, and there was no way of being sure he was kidding. 'Actually.' he went on (shot of supermarket shelves) 'the world's food picture has never been better.' Girls are prettier. Who needs whooping cranes? The dinosaur died because he deserved to die. Anyway, nature doesn't know what it's doing, so ignore 'the ecology nuts.' A volcano pollutes the atmosphere more than you do, so stop feeling guilty. 'Life,' Crosby said, 'is very simple really.' The programme was an ego trip, and the trip was a bummer.
Previous page
