MediaWatch: April 1994

A World Destroyed by Capitalism in Need of Higher Taxes, More Government

Charles Kuralt: On the Road to Serfdom

After 37 years with CBS News, Charles Kuralt signed off from Sunday Morning for the last time on April 3. The avuncular Kuralt will popularly be remembered for his "On the Road" pieces and the artsy, unhurried morning show he created 15 years ago. But all this masks his other side, one which peeked out from under his folksy demeanor throughout his career: a committed liberal. For his retirement, MediaWatch collected the political wisdom of Charles Kuralt.

Environment. During the early '90s environmental craze, Kuralt, who ended Sunday Morning every week with a nature video, was in the vanguard. He espoused the view that technological advancements only bring environmental destruction. On Sunday Morning's May 31, 1992 broadcast, Kuralt introduced a report by saying, "Our motor cars free us and foul the air. Our factories supply us with everything we need and poison the water. Every time humanity makes a great leap forward, we land deep in toxic mud."

Tax More/Spend More. Kuralt repeatedly stressed that if only people had the will to pay increased taxes, government could spend more on our country's problems and quickly solve them. Introducing a January 12, 1992 Sunday Morning piece on Michigan's welfare reforms, Kuralt heaped shame on the state for its lack of "compassion." He began with a parable: "You know the old saying about giving a hungry man a handout -- he'll just be hungry again after he's eaten. But if you teach him to fish, the saying goes, why, then he'll always be able to feed himself. A lot of states are thinking along these lines, trying to reduce their budgets by cutting dependence on welfare, telling a lot of people, in effect, to go fishing."

Yes, for Kuralt, caring equaled spending. He looked toward Europe with envy in an August 1991 Sunday Morning monologue. "A report last week compared health care for children in the United States with health care in the ten countries of Western Europe. Really there isn't any comparison. Nearly all children in Europe are able to see a doctor when they're sick. A lot more of them are immunized, a lot fewer of them die in infancy. Do Europeans care more about their children than we do? There's a simple answer: yes."

On the September 6, 1992 Sunday Morning, Kuralt discussed the plight of the poor in America. "According to guidelines established by the federal government, a family of four can be classified as living in poverty if its cash income is $13,924 a year or less. $13,924 a year for four of you comes to $9.54 per person per day. Can anybody live on that?...One nation under God is what we say in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, but the Pledge was written long ago, and has never been adjusted for inflation. With 36 million Americans in poverty now, perhaps the Pledge ought to be brought up to date to read: two nations under God." But he conveniently ignored that assets and non-cash benefits of the poor are not included in the poverty measure.

Last August, Kuralt thought Americans had been failed by their representatives. Not because of corruption or waste, but because the politicians didn't have the guts to raise taxes enough: "Last week after much posturing and fretting, the elected representatives of the people decided how much sacrifice we should make for a civilized society. By the narrowest possible margin in both houses of the Congress, they agreed, in the interest of deficit reduction, that we could afford: four cents. A rise of just over four cents a gallon in the federal tax on gasoline...In the land of the free and the home of the brave, ordinary citizens might have been brave enough to make a real sacrifice for the economic health of their country. But now we won't know. The politicians weren't brave enough to find out."

Kuralt has also served as a cheerleader for the left in the cultural war. On the May 2, 1993 Sunday Morning, he applauded the Clinton administration decision to put women in combat as a victory for equality. "Les Aspin said last week that he means to clear the way for women in the armed forces to fight in combat. That is a milepost, of course, and an advance of considerable importance to women.... The least sane enterprise upon which human beings ever embark will thus be made non-sexist. Women have always suffered the madness and horror of war. Now at least they will do so with a gun in their hands."

Good Liberals/Bad Conservatives. Kuralt served as a commentator for CBS News during the political conventions in the summer of 1992. The perspectives he delivered for CBS' coverage were glowing assessments of the liberals and condemnations of the conservatives. At the Democratic Convention in New York, Kuralt breathlessly praised Gov. Mario Cuomo's partisan attacks on George Bush: "I'm still in the glow of that Cuomo speech. Mario Cuomo is like one of those three-way lightbulbs...he said he was going to stay on dim so as not to put Bill Clinton in the shade. And then he stepped up here tonight and delivered a genuine 250-watter. A speech bright enough and hot enough to fill up this dark room. I think tonight was Cuomo's night, as last night was Jesse Jackson's."

At the Republican Convention, Kuralt felt the thoughts expressed by some speakers deserved condemnation. On August 17, 1992 he was especially tough on Pat Buchanan, declaring: "I thought the Buchanan speech had ugly elements in it, especially there at the end, take back our culture, take back our country. I think that was an appeal to racism."

Earlier that day, following the media zeitgeist, he slammed the GOP platform as extreme. "This platform the Republicans adopted today reminds me of another Republican platform and another convention, the one of '64, the one that nominated Barry Goldwater, [when] the party's farthest right-wingers took over for the first time and drove through a breathtakingly conservative platform...Those folks were not so interested in winning the election as in humiliating Nelson Rockefeller and the other moderates of their own party." Kuralt continued: "They lost in a landslide. Republicans with long memories might have noticed that something like that was going on here today."

He concluded by attacking Christian Right delegates. "The only excited, demonstrative delegates any of us could find were the ones from the religious right, Pat Robertson's God and Country rally. They remind me of those Goldwater delegates of 28 years ago, far more interested in imposing ideological purity on this party than they are on winning the election...They got the platform they want. No room for a pregnant woman to make any decision [on abortion] at all, even if she was raped. It's tough on welfare, tough on taxes and guns and gays and pornography, tough even on public radio and public television."

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