The Investigator

In 1959 I was in Washington working as an investigator for a congressional committee when rumors of quiz-show fraud began to surface. An investigation in New York City had ended, the New York Times reported, with the grand jury reports mysteriously impounded, their contents kept secret. Its suspicions aroused, the committee sent me to New York, where we began an inquiry that was to expose a massive fraud.

In the congressional hearing room, one of the more famous contestants carefully described how he had been instructed in the acting techniques appropriate to a man rising to conquer intense pressure. We then showed film of the show. As we watched his pretended labors of concentration and the jubilant excitement of the master of ceremonies at each successful prodigy of recall, the committee members and the audience burst into laughter. Yesterday's high drama had been transformed into today's hilarious farce.

But the country was not amused. Ralph McGill, the revered editor of the Atlanta Constitution, wrote that "television had robbed people of a kind of faith which it is dangerous to destroy in a democracy, and it is the more so because it is a reflection on all of us and on our national character. The quizzes revealed our deep psychological lust for material things."

When the hearings ended, the quiz shows disappeared. But they were not dead. They had merely entered a 40-year sleep, destined to reappear in our own, wildly materialistic time. And as the times are different, so are the quizzes. Today's shows are almost certainly not fixed. Not only would it be impossible to keep such fraud secret in this age, when every rumor finds a ready voice, but it is not necessary. The questions are too easy, answerable by a person of modest intelligence and learning. The early quizzes asked for information almost no one could provide--e.g., the complete menu of a royal dinner in Enlightenment France. Today's shows are built on the most degraded of advertising techniques: use this deodorant, and you too can have great sex; you too could win a million dollars with a little luck and a reliable lifeline; that jubilant contestant up there could be you. They reflect a change to values more appropriate to the age of Clinton.

Of course what the shows, old and new, have in common is the money. Top winners in the '50s won as much as $200,000, equivalent to almost $1.25 million of our money. Today's prodigies have to be satisfied with a mere $1 million--so far. Both of them reflect their times. Today, as in the '50s, we are embarked on a time of great prosperity, driven by that "lust for material things."

But even as the last witness was leaving our Washington committee room, far to the south young blacks were risking protests over their exclusion from "white only" lunch counters, and across town a young Massachusetts Senator was preparing a race for President, promising to "get America moving again." It is hard to detect such stirrings today. But history's most tumultuous shifts always come as a surprise. And America has always been about something more than money. If that has changed, then the country has not just changed, it has become a different country.