590
ROBERT BRUSTEIN
his
belief in liberalism and progress.
1
Ibsen demonstrated long
ago that there is no restriction on the human capacity for self–
delusion when fame, money, and power are at stake; and these
pseudo-altruistic affirmations cannot disguise the fact that, like
the Madison Avenue villain, the media intellectual is, in actual–
ity, the volunteer of a system where there is no room for high
standards.
As
such, he is more to be pitied than censured, for he
has achieved his popularity by suppressing his true identity. One
thinks of Mitchell Miller, once a gifted oboist with a promising
future as an interpreter of Cimarosa and Vaughan Williams,
who now-replete with an arty beard, a grotesque smile, and a
fatuous media personality-cavorts in front of the home screen,
enjoining the spectator to "Sing Along With Mitch" in a bland
rendering of "When You Were Sweet Sixteen"; or of Groucho
Marx, blunting his barbs on a quiz show (his brother Harpo
is selling motor oil on TV) ; or of Alistair Cooke and William
Saroyan, on
Omnibus,
patronizing the avant-garde drama; or
of Leonard Bernstein, who might have been more than a music
teacher or a fancy showman, posturing like a marionette for
the admiration of Jewish housewives; or of David Susskind pas–
sionately gesticulating against Madison Avenue before unctuous–
ly introducing a commercial. These men help to dignify the
media's debauching of culture, but only through a corresponding
loss in their own dignity, exchanging their talent or humanity
for a well-tailored grey flannel suit.
The second group of intellectual middlemen includes many
highbrows, for some of our most distinguished intellectuals are
now purchasing grey flannel cloth for their wardrobes
which
they wear during occasional excursions into the world of Madison
7. This rationalization was unintentionally parodied by the quiz show
producers who affirmed, in testimony, that they were developing a new
respect for the intellect, and by the producers of TV Westerns who
contended that their programs gave Americans an educational glimpse
into their historic past. Parodied or not, the name for this is middle–
class hypocrisy.
