It is an article of faith among television people that what the medium does best is cover actuality live, from beginning to end. Sometimes, though, the results are not quite what was planned. The Public Broadcasting Service's soup-to-nuts (or, more accurately, lobster-to-mints) coverage of last week's White House dinner for Queen Elizabeth allowed the average American a singular opportunity to feel for himself the exquisite pain of the pointless state occasion, an agony of boredom heretofore reserved for the powerful and the well born. There was perhaps something salutary about the 4½ -hour experience but it is doubtful that any sane...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
