Dick Cavett is a very smart guy. Witty. Urbane. And as an interviewer, affable to the point of being disarming. Cavett does not display the intellectual heft (or chooses to surpress it) to be Bill Buckley’s true doppleganger, but he’s a reasonable facsimile, and is a vast improvement over the infantile ravings of Frank Rich or Maureen Dowd. Although I may disagree with him frequently, I have always enjoyed his stuff.
So what, then, am I to make of this recent effort by Cavettt? It masquerades as a skewering of General Petraus and Abassador Crocker, or at least their manner of speaking, and for that part Cavett plays it well. He racks the pins: “Never in this breathing world have I seen a person clog up and erode his speaking -as distinct from his reading- with more ‘uhs,’ ‘ers’ and ‘ums’ than poor Crocker.” - and knocks them down: “If Crocker’s collection of these broken shards of verbal crockery were eliminated from his testimony, everyone there would get home at least an hour earlier.” Cavett even trots out the tired old horse about cop-speak, doing a riff on their use of ”the perpatrator” when a simpler term would suffice. Not new material, perhaps, but delivered smiling.
What disappoints me about this piece though, is despite all of Cavett’s smart-ass banter about language, the piece is nothing more than an unbridled display of contempt. “I guess a guy bearing up under such a chestload of hardware – and pretty ribbons in a variety of decorator colors – can’t be expected to speak like ordinary mortals, for example you and me.” I suppose not, Dick. Perhaps because Petraeus is not just some ordinary guy, or someone who makes his living talking on TV about cocktail parties. His “pretty ribbons” aren’t some trendy lapel adornment, and when he must give orders something more vital happens than a servant appearing with another round of Campari and soda.
You can disagree with the Bush administration and their representatives about the waging of the Iraq war, it’s well within your rights to do so, and many join in your concerns. But comparing the ”tinpot Ghen Khan of Crawford” to General Custer? That, Dick, is just plain lame.
8 Comments
April 15, 2008 at 9:27 pm
Who imposes this phony, academic-sounding verbal junk on brave and hard-working men and women who don’t need the added burden of trying to talk like effete characters from Victorian novels?
Sheer comedic genius. Do you think he has any idea?
April 16, 2008 at 6:26 am
I’d like to think that he has.
April 16, 2008 at 11:41 am
You are more charitable than I.
Probably not a bad quality.
April 16, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Back when Dick Cavett was on television often, I enjoyed his way with words and the entertaining and insightful banter he often had with his guests. But underneath it all, I saw the typical liberal contempt for the common man, his values, and traditions. The New York atmosphere had permeated every ounce of Cavett’s persona and, although witty and quick with a bon mot, he displayed occasionally a hint of meanness which, I suspect, was born in his own evaluation of his life and the lack of dignity and worth in it.
April 16, 2008 at 5:14 pm
I haven’t followed him in recent years. Certainly the choice of Mort Sahl is an odd one. Sahl was a comedian who had a reputation for savaging his friends.
I had forgotten that Cavett used to do standup. It’s an unforgiving business. I remember watching the movie “Arthur” years ago and thinking to myself that all my life my friends have given me a hard time for being self-deprecating. I do that, not because I have low self esteem (I don’t) but because I tend to be pretty sarcastic, but could never say half the things that pop into my head unbidden. So I aim my offbeat humor at myself. I’m an easy target, and God knows I do enough dumb stuff that I never run out of material.
But I could never go after other people. Humor is too hard edged. It is funny, but it also wounds.
April 17, 2008 at 2:25 am
“Cavett does not display the intellectual heft (or chooses to surpress it) to be Bill Buckley’s true doppleganger, but he’s a reasonable facsimile”
Except that Bill Buckley was remembered by all who knew him for his generosity and graciousness even more than for his genius and linguistic skill.
Cavett is, at best, a several generations degraded xerocopy.
April 17, 2008 at 6:28 pm
If anyone can find a Cavett piece in which he expresses this level of contempt for al Qaeda and/or the Taliban, I’ll eat my own shorts.
With fava beans and a nice chianti.
(Insert repulsive slurping sound here.)
April 20, 2008 at 11:44 pm
> I suppose not, Dick. Perhaps because Petraeus is not just some ordinary guy, or someone who makes his living talking on TV about cocktail parties.
What, you mean Petraeus actually earns every bit of respect he gets and a lot more he does not?
Unlike Cavett, whose speaking is lacking in the same absent value his life lacks?
No, Cavett isn’t Buckley, but it’s not intellectual heft he’s personally lacking, it’s the entire Left which is lacking that heft, any more.
There were certainly people who didn’t agree with Roosevelt on many things, possibly even rightly so. There really isn’t anyone on the Left these days — at any level of significant note — who could justify a single one of their positions using anything but rhetorical tricks.
Cavett sneers because that is basically the only weapon left in his armory.