Usually, on Sundays I’m home by seven o’clock to watch the latest episode of 60 Minutes. I’ve been a big fan of the legendary show ever since the early 1980’s when I first watched it as a kid in grammar school. As a young fan, I even wrote a letter to Mike Wallace thanking him for a very memorable show I’ve long since forgotten.
Shortly after mailing that letter to CBS Headquarters, I remember seeing a strange-looking envelope sitting atop the mail pile on the kitchen table. The eye of the “CBS” logo was staring at me from the corner of the envelope and it seemed as if the envelope was balancing itself atop the pile. Actually, for a second, it appeared that the eye on the envelope was actually trying to wink at me.
I knew the CBS envelope probably contained a corporate version of a thank you note for my piece of fan mail, but deep down inside I only hoped that Mr. Wallace had taken the time to write the letter himself. Mike Wallace was my childhood hero, along with Morley Safer, Ed Bradley, Harry Reasoner and Andy Rooney. As a kid, I could barely remember my own name, but I could certainly tell you the five names of the celebrity news gurus who were in the starting lineup for 60 minutes every Sunday night.
Back in those days, I remember climbing under blankets in my living room and listening to the famous, ticking stopwatch on television. As every show began, I glued myself to the television for one hour and watched attentively as the fab-five slam-dunked and debunked all of the world’s top news stories for about an hour. It didn’t matter if the story was about Tylenol tampering or condoms breaking, every week the CBS 60 Minutes crew managed to serve up the news like a cooked turkey on a silver platter for a starving nation. But now that I’m older, I’m able to lift the veil of entertainment and seek the truth and the intent of CBS. Now, I understand why Mike Wallace probably didn’t even bother to look at the letter I sent him, never mind consider writing it himself.
[art by Tom Eliason]
Essentially, now I realize that the prescribed news format of the 60 Minutes news show is solely designed to simplify minds and waste everybody’s time. Watching a full episode of 60 Minutes, or any hour program on television, is pure, elementary proof that the audience has wasted another hour of life by doing nothing but sitting down to watch television. Studies indicate that the average human being typically forgets most images seen on a television screen within about an hour. So, although I do understand how a television program can be entertaining, it generally isn’t more educational than reading the back of a cereal box. And if you’re one of those parents whose hoping Dora the Explorer will teach your kids fluent Spanish, get up off the couch, do some sit-ups, go down to Educational Warehouse and buy your kid some flashcards.
In the long run, watching television is completely counterproductive towards accomplishing individual goals, unless you’re the millionaire selling the real estate books during the 4am time slot or the guy selling garlic presses at midnight. Those guys seem to be doing pretty well, but as I examine my own my life and question whether it has changed for the better after watching an estimated 500 episodes of 60 Minutes for the past 25 years… that’s a good question. 500 hours is about 40 days and I don’t really know if all that time watching Mike Wallace & Co. was such a good investment. At the end of my life, I know I’m going to want those 40 days back so I could live a little longer and see my kids a little bit more, but as a child I was blinded by a masquerade of shiny toupees and ticking stopwatches… and now I can’t seem to make that ticking stopwatch stop.
That day I opened the letter from CBS, my parents were astonished how quickly it arrived in the mail. After opening it up and reading the letter aloud, which was beautifully typed and signed on a heavyweight piece of 60 minutes stationary, I remember checking the signature at the bottom of the page. After examining the letter for a minute with my father, I went running upstairs and quickly slid it into a protective, plastic sleeve of my scrapbook. To this day, I still can’t verify if the letter was signed by Mike Wallace or not, because I haven’t seen the letter since that day. I brought the scrapbook to school shortly thereafter and the scrapbook was stolen out of my locker.
Periodically, I’ll check to see if somebody’s selling the letter on Ebay or another Internet auction site. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody, some day, brings the letter to have it appraised by the folks at The Antique Road Show. If 60 Minutes ever does go off the air, perhaps the value of such a letter might skyrocket and subsequently cause it to surface on the Internet.
In the meantime, maybe the producer of 60 Minutes can use the following idea for Andy Rooney if either one happens to find sixty minutes of their time to waste on reading my column. “Have you ever thought about a show called 30 seconds?” That seems to be about all the time I can spare these days…but remember, please try and find some time to check between your picture frames for my missing letter. Something tells me the time spent looking for it just might be worth it in the end.
“We welcome you to tour around our facilities and see with YOUR OWN EYES the cleanliness of the place!”
