The Pittsburgh Press (October 23, 1944)
I DARE SAY —
The last lap
By Florence Fisher Parry
The news photographers are overdoing their job of photographing public figures. While we all recognize the unfortunate necessity for this, it would take a lot of explaining to convince the public, and even more, the public figures photographed, that it is absolutely imperative for the cameramen so conspicuously to monopolize their subjects while they are speaking to their audiences.
The other night I sat very near Mrs. Clare Boothe Luce as she made her political address to the large audience at Syria Mosque. She is a woman of extraordinary poise; but I was close enough to observe that in spite of her admirable control and desperate effort to disregard the ordeal, her face flinched at the unremitting glare of the photographers’ flashbulbs in her face.
The interruptions sharply reduced the effectiveness of her address, and it was not until she was half through making it that the photographers retired.
Friday night at the Hunt Armory the Republican candidate for President was so surrounded by photographers during the early portion of his speech that it was difficult for many of those in the audience really to more than glimpse him for fully 10 minutes after his address began.
Reform needed
The present campaign has pointed up a number of other needs for reform. There are those in every audience who are hard of hearing, and who constantly complain that the public address system is not tuned loud enough for them to get the whole text of a speech. I have noticed in the theater, this tendency to play down the public address system. In some of the motion picture theaters, it is absolutely impossible for a hard of hearing person to catch all of the dialogue. It is quite evident that the volume of sound is geared to normal hearing.
I say there are too many hard of hearing people nowadays; and that in their interests, the volume should be greater.
Now it is being said that this presidential campaign is becoming “dirty.” Yet the record of past campaigns shows clearly that this one is being conducted in the usual American way, and I, for one, cannot deplore this completely American indulgence. The people of America, when they go out deliberately to become one of a great and cheering throng, do so because they love the circus of campaigning. If this were not so, they would stay at home and enjoy the effortless comfort of listening to the speeches on the radio.
But they go forth and congregate because they themselves want to participate. They want to clap and yell and stamp and boo and cheer.
Take, for example, the night of Governor Dewey’s speech here. Did that great throne weather the rain and fight through tangled transportation really to hear what their candidate had to say? No. They went because they wanted to be part of the rally. They didn’t just want to enjoy him. They wanted to enjoy themselves.
Compromise
For those who deplore this, we suggest this compromise.
Let the candidates, in an honest effort to lift the vital issues of this campaign to a level of serious and solemn dignity, address themselves to the people through the medium of radio at certain spaced and stated intervals throughout the campaign, with no listening audience except the unseen radio audience; and in these special broadcasts, from the quietude of their own separate retreats, advance with dignity and clarity, the issues of their platforms, thus providing those of us who would keep campaigns “clean” our own opportunity to reflect upon the issues.
Then when our candidates make their public appearances before great audiences, let them slug it out in the old American way.
Why could we not have, in future presidential campaigns, planned forums or debates, at which our candidates and their most eloquent supporters could participate in a serious, dignified exposition of their platforms?
Then when the candidates appear on party platforms before great audiences, let them cut loose with all that they have in the true, old-fashioned torchlight campaign American way!
Meantime, for the last stretch in this bitter campaign, let us beg for fewer flashbulbs, and loudspeakers that are tuned up loud!