I do a lot of television, but there’s a world of difference between a public-affairs program and a network sitcom. The tipoff for me came shortly after I showed up on October 17 at the Warner Bros. studio in Burbank ;to rehearse for an appearance on Murphy Brown. A fellow asked me if I’d brought my wardrobe. Indeed I had. I was wearing it.
Why would a journalist be doing a sitcom? Very simple. I was asked (and they pay). The idea wasn’t really to get me. It was to net The McLaughlin Group, of which I’m part. Or to be truly accurate,” it was to have Murphy Brown and her prissy colleague Jim Dial from FYI appear as panelists on The McLaughlin Group. No, not on the chat show itself — Brown and Dial are fictitious characters, after all but on a mock version that will take up about 5 minutes of a Murphy Brown episode in November.
So I went, willingly, along with John McLaughlin and Eleanor Clift. Now, I know what purists in the media will say: We’re once more blurring that important line between news/commentary and entertainment. Spare me the indignation; I plead guilty. But my transgression doesn’t amount to much. The line between news and fun barely exists anymore. Besides, the 20 million viewers of Murphy Brown will understand that John, Eleanor, and I are real people doing a gig on a sitcom. Won’t they?
Peter Bonerz, the director, said having us there “legitimizes” Murphy (Candice Bergen) and Jim (Charles Kimbrough) as being “like Eleanor and Fred.” Sounds weird. But it’s not as if Murphy and Jim are preparing to oust Paula Zahn and Harry Smith from CBS This Morning. People know Murphy and Jim aren’t real.
“Literally, all we’re trying to do is make people laugh,” Bonerz said. I believe him. By the way, Bonerz is famous in his own right as an actor. He played Jerry the dentist on The Bob Newhart Show. He’s a great director. I base this on the fact he kept telling me how well I was doing.
I didn’t have anything to lose by doing Murphy Brown, other than my reputation, credibility, and self-esteem. The writers for the show didn’t let me down. On political chat shows, conservatives deliver more than their share of compelling lines and zingers. On sitcoms, they’re stuffy and humorless.
On Murphy Brown, I was a conservative slug. I approved the election of an aging Bob Dole. I advocated rolling up our borders to keep out welfare- hungry immigrants. I extolled hypocrisy as the glue that holds civilized society together. I was coldhearted, mean-spirited, and hysterical — you know, just like all conservatives. This was all in the script.
Naturally I was sympathetic to Murphy’s foil, whom McLaughlin refers to as Jim (Don’t Touch That) Dial. Kimbrough, who plays Dial, is a wonderful actor. He makes Dial convincingly pompous and huffy and petty. He fumes and grimaces. Everyone watching is bound to think he’s a dork. So what do I say in response to one of his outbursts? “Jim makes a very good point.”
I don’t blame the writers. In fact, they are very witty and deserve credit for keeping Murphy Brown a hit for eight seasons. Whoever had the brainstorm of putting Murphy and Jim on The McLaughlin Group came up with a show Candice Bergen predicts will be a Murphy “classic.” Douglas Wyman got the writing credit for the script.
McLaughlin could claim a writing credit, too. In the first rehearsal, he proposed to rewrite his lines — not to change the gist, but to make them more McLaughlinesque.
He didn’t want to begin the segment on immigration this way: “Immigration.” He persuaded the honchos to let him say: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses . . . Not!” He also altered the Middle East segment to begin with “Yassir, that’s my baby!” The next day, he tried to kill that line, then relented. “I have no shame,” he joked.
Why should he? As print reporters who appear on TV say, it’s only television. That means whatever they do or say on TV doesn’t matter. (What’s important is what they write.) On his chat show, McLaughlin refers to me as Freddy (The Beadle) Barnes. It’s hardly ennobling. But, hey, it’s only television. To my surprise, every time he called me this on the Murphy Brown set, the crowd of writers, directors, and assistants laughed uproariously. Maybe they know a good line when they hear one.
Or maybe it’s just the sitcom sensibility has successfully invaded chat shows. Come to think of it, Bergen suggested that McLaughlin run a snippet of the sitcom McLaughlin Group, the one with Murphy and Jim, on the real McLaughlin Group, and see how they compare. I shudder at the thought. Maybe sitcoms aren’t so different after all.
FRED BARNES
