Night and Day
I knew Bob Dole was going to lose when he started attacking the media. Rather, that’s when I knew he knew; resigned to President Clinton’s invulnerability, Dole trained his sights on a popular target, accusing the “liberal” press of trying to steal the election, currying favor with his conservative base. Media bashing always plays well; people love to take out their frustrations with everything that’s going wrong in the world on the industry whose job it is to report everything that’s going wrong in the world–even if, as in Dole’s case, the venting doesn’t do any good.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
In Tom Stoppard’s 1978 Night and Day, a politician bashes the press far more effectively than Bob Dole ever could: Mageeba, the Western-backed dictator of the fictitious African “republic” of Kambawe, takes his cane and whacks a reporter over the head–and laughs. Mageeba is understandably pissed off: the newspaper that employs the reporter, one Dick Wagner, has printed a long interview with Mageeba’s enemy, the leader of Kambawe’s Soviet-supported rebels. If the Sunday Globe can give Mageeba a headache, the least he can do is give one back–even though Wagner had nothing to do with the interview. Wagner’s such a smug son of a bitch, he’s got to have it coming–besides, the press is the press.
With its image of foreign correspondents feverishly banging out cold war dispatches on telex machines, Night and Day is undeniably a period piece in this age of instant computer communications. But the play remains exciting thanks to Stoppard’s witty dialogue, his compassion for the characters, and the enduring vitality of the questions he addresses: the role of a free press, the murky matter of owner/worker relations (if the press is to remain free, who’s gonna pay?), and the idealism and occasionally irresponsible recklessness with which reporters practice their sometimes-dangerous craft: in the play’s striking opening image, a man vainly tries to shield himself from a helicopter’s machine-gun fire–by holding up his press card!
