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The Spectacle of television today is, more than ever, always advertising its own extreme and vivid urban realism. TV would have us see it as a window, not merely on “the world,” but on the world’s tawdiest precincts, its nastiest relationships, its most unwholesome practices.

On November 3, 1983, Dan Rather, having introduced the CBS Evening News and himself with a semi-cordial smile, suddenly tensed up, and made the following grim announcment:

“Syria tonight appears to be making a major new move in Lebanon–a potentially ominous situation–with possible far reaching ramifications for U.S. forces in the area, for Isreal, and for peace in the Middle East and beyond.”