©1996, ProMotion, inc.
www@bookpage.com
David Brinkley was to move on to other things, bigger and better, and in recent years to a program I rarely miss, This Week with David Brinkley, which I find fascinating. After a lively round of interviews and cross-talk among Sam Donaldson, Cokie Roberts, and George Will, Brinkley usually closes out with a sometimes acerbic opinion for the day. These have been put in book form.
He calls them "homilies" and admits the tag is for no good reason but they are in hopes of leaving the television audiences in a slightly better frame of mind, and, for the most part, they assuredly do that. There are 180 of these in all. They range from the bizarre to the ridiculous with a majority being on the very serious issues of life in the '80s and '90s.
The subject matter ranges from political conventions to silly laws proposed by the Congress, from the reasons that politicians lie to the matter of giving themselves raises and the occasional bursts of ethical piety.
There are the humorous tales, such as the one where a teenager ran away from home and took up lodging at the bottom of an elevator shaft, where he brought in a cot, a hot plate, a television and other comforts of home. He was found out when the elevator riders were baffled by the smell of cooking hot dogs every evening.
Then there is one for which Brinkley has no commentary. It seems that a man sentenced to death for murder approached the hour of reckoning in the state prison. He asked if he could take a nap. But when the guards came to wake him he was unconscious. He had taken a dose of something. They rushed him to a hospital, had him revived and then brought back to prison, where they executed him.
It is that kind of book, filled with the unexpected, and always with the pleasure of reading the dry, good humor of a man gifted in finding the pearls in the swineyard and commenting on them.
Lloyd Armour is a retired newspaper editor.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.