22/3/91

Dafkaesque

By: Sam Orbaum

Did you read the paper on Sunday? I mean really read the paper, delving into the sense of all those neatly stacked lines of words - or in some cases, the nonsense.
    With mornings the way they are, I get maybe 40 seconds reading-time per page, and I'm a slow reader, and I usually have to read things twice because my retentive powers are weak until I've had my morning zetz of caffeine.
    On Sunday I was taking longer than usual because I stumbled over some big words on Page One. I lost a few more seconds when, on the way to Page Three, the newspaper didn't fold crisply down the center, and I must have looked like I was playing the accordion as I flapped the pages back and forth to get them into position. I quickly skimmed Page Three.
    "Robbers foiled ..."; That was enough to size up the crux of the story. The rest of the headline, and the entire story, were mere details I could do without. The robbers were clearly foiled. Thank heavens.
    "Arab leaders ..."; I had read something about Arab leaders last week. Skip that one.
    "Song contest judg --" I hate song contests. Next story. "Kindergartens to get days back". Ah, lost days of youth. A nice story. Irrelevant, but only two paragraphs long. I read it in a coup d'oeil.
    There was another story buried where I couldn't possibly notice it - in the middle of the page. I peruse the paper in a swooping clockwise arc starting from the top right hand area, tearing my way down the columns and then climbing back up toward the top left. The middle of the page I never even notice.
    I'm sure some day a vital story will be placed in that blind spot with a blazoning headline reading something like "$1 m. lost on Gedalyahu Street" and I would be oblivious, though that sneaky Zimelman across the street would have read it and would be burrowing through my garbage bin, hot on the trail of the stash while I'm busy contemplating a second helping of blueberry pancakes.

I DON'T know why I stopped to read the innocuous story buried among the obituaries. "Cabinet" read the first word of the headline, not a word that bodes well for a riveting read; "expected to approve", continued the headline. I could sense the early-morning bile rising in my spleen, if that's where bile rises. If there is any hope of the cabinet approving anything, it is whopping pay raises for themselves, or a creative way to extort new taxes, or a wanton way to waste old taxes. I was intrigued. I would read this one.
    But like I said, who really reads? I dipsy-doodled through the text to seek out key words, and thus the gist of the tale. "The cabinet dadadadada appointment dadadadada chairman dadadada Channel Two." TV! It's about TV! Tell me more! " ... the decision was deferred dada convene the board dadada Nahman Shai." Nahman Shai! ! I backtracked all the way to the headline and I darn near caught my lips moving as I sleuthed out the scoop.
    The article was no thriller, to be honest, but one sentence in it was. I almost missed the sentence, because I started dadada-ing again: "Mishal dadada lost out to Barel dada installed at Channel Two dadadadadadada Police Minister dadada Prime Minister's Office dadada informed sources dadada--" what?! I knew suddenly that I had just stumbled on a mad verity that one takes for granted because it is a well-established mad verity, but one which, dissected as if it were a passage from the Zohar, shakes you down with frightening new comprehension you could certainly do without.
    The sentence referred to Nissim Mishal, who had been acting chief of Israel Television. "He was installed at Channel Two," the mad verity informed me, "by Police Minister Ronny Milo who has responsibility for the second channel which falls under the Prime Minister's Office."
    From under the neurotic security of my down-filled comforter, I knew that this - this - is what is wrong with the country.
    We are a country of several million serving the public service. We are a great box of Lego pieces in the playpen of the ten dozen men and women and their legions of underlings who govern us.
    That which exists in Israel must be, in some form or another, under political influence. Everything is. Everything.

EVEN IF you somehow accept that entertainment is a political domain, how can you explain Channel Two getting mixed up with the Police Minister, as if it robbed a bank or ran a red light, and why in tarnation is the Prime Minister's Office responsible for ensuring that M*A*S*H or Max Headroom or Recipe Corner show up on my TV screen? Is Yitzhak Shamir so involved in the littlest details of our lives, or does he have nothing else to do? Or is he simply a TV addict?
    You can just imagine.
    I think - mercy me, such a daring thought - that it would be logical to have a television station fall under the jurisdiction of the Communications Ministry, with none but the communications minister responsible for it. Am I the first to think of such an idea?
    The answer is, I rue to reveal, no, it would not be logical at all. The communications minister does not own a TV, so who could expect him to rule over an entire TV station, right? And so he wisely transferred Channel Two to the prime minister, who does have a TV.
    It's a pandemic condition. You will recall that the head of the Knesset finance committee learned about finance from his grandmother; the health minister is not a doctor but a lawyer; the tourism minister has not been to Masada with a camera for a long, long time; the foreign minister is, well, David Levy; the deputy science and technology minister has no idea how to split an atom or repair an ailing computer chip; and Yitzhak Shamir is prime minister without portfolio.
    So why shouldn't the Shas minister of communications administer communications? The answer is: it's against his religious convictions. Then why is he communications minister?
    Aha!