Though I hate to rain on anybody`s parade, I feel that I must take issue with your July 4 editorial, ”Just an old-fashioned Fourth of July,” in which you muster a half-hearted defense of ABC`s interminable coverage by asserting that ”The TV extravaganza is just the modern equivalent of the old-fashioned rostrum, hung with gaudy bunting, etc.”
Not so! There is an enormous difference between an ”old-fashioned Fourth” (complete with parades, fireworks, picnics, band concerts and bicycle wheels decorated with red-white-and-blue crepe paper) and the grotesque 17-hour spectacle on TV. Once again, the TV monster has reared its ugly, many-antennaed head, this time to homogenize, plasticize, Muzakize–and, yes, vulgarize.
What ABC is giving us is not the 4th of July but another Super Bowl
”Spectacular.” The New Republic was right to show Miss Liberty holding her nose on its June 23 cover.
