On Friday, 28 April 1999, Charlie Rose interviewed Christopher Hitchens about his new book No One Left to Lie To on the first segment of his nightly PBS talk show. For almost the entire interview, Rose attempted to get Hitchens to recant and confess his sins on national television. Although Hitchens parried every feeble thrust -- it was an intellectual mismatch that must have given pause to any commentator who has called Rose "smart" -- the overall effect remained unnerving.
Rather than go through the book in a calm and factual way, Rose chided Hitchens for letting down his friends, breaking confidences, and "cooperating with the state" (odd criticism from a man whose recent career has been made possible by the government-sponsored PBS network) when he swore out a statement that revealed presidential aide Sidney Blumenthal to be lying about his role in the Monica Lewinsky controversy.
Rather than side with truth, Rose repeatedly sided with the cause of falsehood. He chose to speak power to truth, to turn a cliche upon its head, and scolded Hitchens until, unable to speak further -- due to Hitchens carefully honed wit -- the interview was ended and replaced a puff piece for an "independent" filmmaker (and no doubt the simultaneous clicking of a multitude of remote controls).
Charlie Rose has been doing television interviews for a long time. Long enough to know what he is doing in front of the camera. And what certain actions, captured on camera, can do to him.
His first big break was as producer for "Bill Moyers' International Report" in 1975, a job which his official biography relays was obtained for him by his then-wife Mary King, a 60 Minutes and BBC staffer, who talked to Moyers at a party about getting Rose a job. (She has since moved to Atlanta and features prominently in the acknowledgements to Tom Wolfe's latest novel).
Rose served as an NBC news correspondent in 1976, and host of Washington, DC's "Panorama" on WTTG (now a Fox station). In 1978 Rose co-hosted "AM/Chicago" for WLS. The next year he transferred to Dallas-Fort Worth and began the first Charlie Rose Show in KXAS-TV. He divorced his first wife in 1980.
Rose was back in Washington in 1981, appearing on NBC's WRC-TV as host of the second Charlie Rose Show, which he syndicated. Two years later, in search of a rival to NBC's "Tomorrow with Tom Snyder" CBS president Van Gordon Sauter hired Rose to host "Nightwatch" which ran from 2:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. five days a week -- although "Nightwatch" was taped during the day, unlike Larry King's live overnight radio talk show from the same period.
Rose's "Nightwatch" attracted a cult following of late-night television viewers who enjoyed seeing Senators, Congressmen, Cabinet officials and journalists in the years before C-Span gave them greater daytime television exposure. CBS liked the prestige and Congressional goodwill the program garnered for the network in Washington. It was inexpensive to produce and aired when many stations had previously gone off the air, and so did not compete with more profitable ventures. Finally, the show was a personal favorite of William Paley, the wealthy, powerful and aging founder of the Columbia Broadcasting System. Suffering from chronic insomnia, the mogul enjoyed having the program to keep him company as he waited for dawn to break (some wags commented that perhaps it helped ease Paley back to sleep).
Curiously, Rose is now romantically linked to Amanda Burden, one of William Paley's daughters, and reportedly lives the life of a Manhattan socialite when not on his North Carolina farm. Just as his first wife provided entree to the world of New York media employment, his female companion provides access to what still passes for High Society in New York City.
In any case, lured by an offer of $1 million from 20th Century Fox, Rose went on to host a People-style "Personalities". However, the show was a flop, and after six weeks Rose was back home on his five-hundred-acre North Carolina farm -- unemployed.
PBS came to Rose's rescue. The Charlie Rose Show was reincarnated on WNET, Channel 13 in New York City, and premiered on September 30, 1991. It has been on Channel 13 and PBS ever since. Bloomberg Television joined as a co-sponsor in 1994.
The program ordinarily is as dull as a New York dinner party, the interviews are even conducted around a table. It is an attempt to reconstruct something like Ben Sonnenberg's salon, of interest only so that one can see how pedestrian and uninteresting the chattering classes who inhabit Manhattan have truly become. Rose, a cross between Andy Warhol and Bill Moyers, rarely does more than smile and ask dumb questions, although he occasionally interrupts to provide a simulacrum of engagement.
However, there are special occasions when the mask of politesse is removed, and the dull knives of Rose and his staff of Gotham socialites -- among them is one producer from the multimillion dollar Canadian Belzberg fortune currently married to the multimillion dollar Canadian Bronfman fortune -- are unleashed on an unlucky guest who has dared to think for himself.
Last week it was Hitchens.
At an earlier date, it was Morley Safer, who had dared to narrate a humorous 60 Minutes segment critical of the art world. In that episode, Rose had outnumbered the CBS correspondent with some art world denizens who, exposed to daylight, revealed their repulsive natures in scathing and snooty remarks to the effect that Safer had no right to criticize art since he was a mere "journalist." Watching that earlier program, I thought of Chinese "self-criticism" sessions designed to break the will of dissidents. Luckily, Safer does not depend on the New York intelligencia for his livelihood. It was not a charming Rose, but a snarling guard-dog at the gates of New York Society who hosted that program.
In confronting Safer, as in interviewing Hitchens, Rose reveals the dark side of his program, that what appears to be an anodyne chat show can be utilized as a show trial designed to shame and embarrass those who show signs of ideological deviation.
But what is more truly revealed in these occasions are the limits to Rose's own faculty of thought. On his own, confronting dissident intellectuals, Rose is usually reduced to repeating himself or changing the subject after his prey has zinged him. The embarrassment is all his. Truly, Charlie Rose should know better.
Alistair Cooke's Letter From America (BBC)