Lifting the Curtain: Barbara Walters
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 23 Jan 2023
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service
21 Jan 2023 – This post is a departure from my usual focus on current political concerns. It attempts a mini-exploration of the public/private interface of a news and entertainment celebrity, especially known for her ability to go ‘persona,’ and even enter intimate terrain with some of the most famous political leaders of our time. Even with a revered TV personality, what we see when the curtain of privacy is lifted ever so slightly can be quite startling, as was my experience, ‘an encounter of the fourth kind.’ Is it okay to lift this curtain, even for an instant, for someone who has so recently died and has had a career that even critics find remarkable for its sustained achievements, and because a woman achieved this meteoric rise at a time when women were still expected to serve morning coffee to their male colleagues and be a quiet presence at meetings. Barbara Walters was a long-distance swimmer against the tide, and yet managed to dwelling for decades among the most luminous of TV stars. This post was published as an opinion piece by CounterPunch on Jan. 19, 2023 under the title Barbara Walters in Real Life: Icon and ‘Pushy Cookie.’ The present text varies insignificantly]
Newscaster Barbara Walters, the nation’s first female anchorwoman, sits in her office as she prepares for her debut on ABC’s evening news program on Oct. 4, 1976. (AP/ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Barbara Walters, who died on December 30, 2022, received many accolades during the days that followed. She was rightly hailed as a TV journalist who shattered many glass ceilings and fused hard news with gossip-style entertainment and an interview style that led even famous world leaders and others, accustomed to formality and social distancing, to drop their guard, seeming to relish the aura of intimacy she created. She was admired, particularly by her female colleagues, who extolled Barbara as ‘pioneer,’ ‘icon,’ and ‘legend.’ She was most frequently celebrated as an ‘iconic trailblazer’ who permanently elevated the role and impact of women in TV journalism. I share this assessment that only someone with her drive, professionalism, and specia style could achieve such an extraordinary career that makes it seem natural to eulogize her death with words of extreme praise, tempered in some assessments by her own self-deprecating image of herself as ‘a pushy cookie,’ and that she was, and probably needed to be, to climb to the heights of media stardom in the patriarchal TV kingdoms in which she engaged so creatively.
In the close aftermath of such a public death, I felt hesitant to share my own less flattering experience with Barbara. Yet as the days pass, I became convinced that this idealized portrayal of Walters needed to be balanced by off-camera encounters, even those such as mine that admittedly seem trivial if compared to the experience of countless others, but were important for me, accompanied by intriguing asides, and I felt no bonds of loyalty.
My contact with Barbara Walters went back many years, reviving briefly three decades later. We were a year apart in age, she a year older, and both of us at the time attending Fieldston High School in Riverdale, NY, but living on the West Side of Manhattan, riding together in the school bus as we were considered by our parents too young to handle safely the long subway ride to 242nd street alone, and then walk for another fifteen minutes up a steep hill to reach the school grounds. We quite often sat together and chattered about various adolescent concerns. My hazy recollection of those conversations of more than 75 years ago mostly remembers that I struggled to get a word in, Barbara talking incessantly in a glitzy superficial way. I was then (and now) too shy to hold my own. I do recall that we sometimes talked about our fathers who both had strong personal ties to entertainment celebrities.
It was widely known after Barbara became famous that her father owned nightclubs, including the Latin Quarter in New York City. At school Barbara had a reputation of talking too much and teasing her student friends with the remote prospect of an invitation to accompany her to spend a weekend evening at her dad’s night club, tantalizing to the teenage imagination. Not surprisingly, no invitation came to me despite our friendly conversations that helped me at a rather early age to become a better listener than talker. Those older guys and her girlfriends who evidently received these much sought-after free passes to the Latin Quarter were apparently discreet or sworn to secrecy, and so I never heard accounts of whether the envisioned debauchery was more than an alluring myth. And I now think that maybe even the whole scenario was nothing more than a harmless phantasy adroitly manipulated by a teenage girl seeking romance.
At least 30 years later I ran into Barbara at a very different time in both our lives, a dinner meeting in the early 1970s of the Editorial Board of the recently established magazine, Foreign Policy. The event took place in the fancy East Side townhouse of Warren Manchel, a banker with international interests, the founding co-editor (with Sam Huntington) and publisher of the magazine, who had been Sam’s graduate school friend at Harvard, and possibly his roommate. In the years before the magazine was sold to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and moved its offices, along with its editorial priorities to Washington, Warren’s home was the standard meeting place for periodic formal meetings of its Editorial Board, which for me at least were social gathering than serious meetings devoted to editorial policy. The attendees were too interested in each other and the world to have much time left over for the magazine.
As an aside, I do not think I ever before or since had the experience of sitting at a dinner table or living room with such a distinguished academic assemblage of overtly ambitious individuals. The group included such establishment stalwarts as Zbig Brzezinski, Joe Nye, Richard Holbrooke, and of course Sam Huntington. Sam had the most creative and interesting mind among us and also seemed the least ambitious (other than myself) when it came to reaching the top layers of influence within the U.S. Government. The others had their eyes fixed on plucking the biggest plums hanging from the upper branches of the power tree that had grown so tall in the climate of Washington careerist politics. Those with academic ties were waiting restlessly in their campus offices for that phone call offering them a big job in government, suffering from what some derisively called ‘Potamic Fever,’ a reference to the river that runs through Washington.
Despite not running in that race, and seemingly out of place, I was there because Warren and Sam had recruited me to join the original FP Board at an expensive French NYC restaurant, not because I was on my way to the top in Washington but in response to my vocal anti-war stance during the Vietnam War. The foundational idea of FP was to create a magazine more alive and responsive to the diversities of ideological outlooks on global issues than Foreign Affairs, then and now the most prestigious and influential journal of Western establishment opinion bearing on foreign policy. As I recall, Sam had supported the Vietnam War, while Warren opposed it on realist grounds, making me am acceptable critical lone voice among the others, all reallists, persuaded to join for reasons of friendship or career. Because of my public opposition to the Vietnam War on the basis of international law rather than anti-imperialism, I suppose I seemed a safe enough bet to satisfy the new editors’ quest for a more diverse venue for foreign policy commentary that was reflective of some ideological differences in the country that often angrily rose to the surface during and after the Vietnam War, but still within limits. In retrospect, I imagine myself an acceptable dissenter as not tainted by Marxism. The Vietnam experience, however negative it turned out as a major failed U.S. undertaking, was not seen as a strong enough setback to splinter the establishment consensus that prevailed at the Council on Foreign Relations and Foreign Affairs. I never felt entirely comfortable in such company, but as Barbara taught me years before I joined the FP Board to believe I would learn more from listening to those with whom I disagreed than smoozing with likeminded comrades whose company I greatly preferred. I should further report that after the Carnegie Endowment took over FP in 1978, the Editorial Board was partially reconstituted, and I was not invited to remain a member, perhaps an early punitive pushback for criticizing Israel in public spaces after 1975. Perhaps more to the point, diversity was no longer considered a virtue among foreign policy influencers, and in fact was seen as a sign of ideological retreat and weakness in reviving the effort to restore confidence in the reliability of American global leadership beneath the storm clouds of the Cold War. Such a goal privileged unity of purpose and policy, and in this atmosphere I was again left out, which was not without its benefits.
As was the habit at these Editorial Board meetings, prominent personalities from various backgrounds bearing on leading global issue were invited guests, and Barbara definitely had earned such a status. On that particular evening she was second to Shimon Peres, the liberal Israeli leader greatly admired in the West. In my view Peres was badly misunderstood by liberal Zionists who wrongly regarded him as a staunch advocate of a diplomatically negotiated fair peace with the Palestine. At dinner with such an influential group Peres had other priorities in mind than his usual concern with pleasing diaspora Jewish communities. As was the custom at these dinner meetings, Peres was given the opportunity to make a presentation, and spoke long before it became fashionable, of the natural convergence of strategic interests of Israel and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East despite their apparent confrontational relationship at that time. When it came time for questions, there were a series of approving remarks in the form of questions from several Board members seated around the dinner table. Put off by Peres’ forthrightly cynical proposal, I dared put forward a mild challenge by commenting upon the apparent tensions between Saudi governance and Israel’s embrace of democracy, and went on to call attention to an apparent lack of any concern about the prolonged suffering of the Palestinian people.
Peres, visibly annoyed, brushed off my remarks as naïve and ‘leftist’ in relation to real world geopolitics. Barbara interpreted my remarks as unacceptably hostile and took offense. She delivered a rather lengthy rant attacking me for an impolitic questioning of Israel’s pursuit of peace, as well as its own interests as explained by its most beloved leader. I felt that Barbara had no memory of our earlier high school encounters, which had the curious effect of amusing me. This impression was confirmed after the dinner was adjourned, and she came to me to apologize for the attack, saying that she had a tiring and frustrating day, and lost control of her feelings (something, incidentally, she was famous for not doing when performing her professional magic). Her high-pitched shrill attack at the time had struck me as an unexpectedly ultra-Zionist outburst, although I had no knowledge of her views on Israel beyond this incident, and I was sufficiently annoyed by her over-reaction to my civilly phrased comments to Peres, whom I had met on other occasions, that I didn’t feel like reminding her that we were once, sort of friends. Reflecting on my own behavior, I confess that I was too intimidated by the surroundings dominated by men of power than to be other than polite in addressing Peres. In retrospect, Barbara the only woman present other than Manchel’s wife, was self-confident enough to let her raw feelings to hang out without any sign of the intimidation that treated what I said according to socially appropriate constraints.
As a further coincidence, Barbara and I were both invited to a small lunch in the Delegate’s Dining Room at the UN two weeks later hosted by Clovis Maksoud, a prominent Lebanese diplomat, to honor the Palestinian intellectual diplomat, Shafik al-Hout. Shafik was a friend, who I shortly thereafter invited to speak to my seminar on international relations at Princeton. As visas only allowed Palestinian diplomats to travel within a 25-mille radius from the UN, I actually needed to obtain permission from the Secretary of State before Shafik could visit. Surprisingly, permission was granted, but only for the seminar, with a clearly stated prohibition disallowing any wider presentation of his views in the form of a university lecture. Such a constraint made the grant of permission less a victory for academic freedom than a personal accommodation probably thought to be without political resonance. Decades later I can report with pride that it was the best attended seminar during my 40 years at Princeton. Shafik carried off the occasion with great charm, wit, and knowledgeable views sensibly presented. The feedback from students was overwhelmingly positive, some saying that they had never before had an opportunity to hear a Palestinian official speak, and were impressed. Overall, the experience reinforced my convictions that grew stronger over the years that when academic freedom is given a freer rein at universities, we all benefit.
Back to Barbara, after seeming so alarmed by any show of sympathy for the Palestinian plight, seated next to Shafik, she let go of her politics, and behaved as someone seeming to flirt with an attractive partner at this lunch that she must have attended reluctantly, understandably fearing boredom in the milieu of UN bureaucrats. The lunch ended with Barbara giving her private phone number to Shafik. I never had the temerity to ask him whether he made use of it. Now I wish I had.
As in life, the asides may be more significant than the story line, and for this I apologize to readers who felt misled by the title and early paragraphs. From the vantage-point of the present, I feel grateful for Barbara Walters’ explorations of the links between private and public in the lives of some of the greatest figures of our time, at her best creating intimacy with historical figures who were not used to such exposure but in the moment enjoyed it. I suppose it says a lot that her most watched interview was with Monica Lewinsky and the U.S. president who most helped gain access to obtain interviews was none other than Richard Nixon.
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Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Chair of Global Law, Faculty of Law, at Queen Mary University London, Research Associate the Orfalea Center of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Fellow of the Tellus Institute. He directed the project on Global Climate Change, Human Security, and Democracy at UCSB and formerly served as director the North American group in the World Order Models Project. Between 2008 and 2014, Falk served as UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Occupied Palestine. His book, (Re)Imagining Humane Global Governance (2014), proposes a value-oriented assessment of world order and future trends. His most recent books are Power Shift (2016); Revisiting the Vietnam War (2017); On Nuclear Weapons: Denuclearization, Demilitarization and Disarmament (2019); and On Public Imagination: A Political & Ethical Imperative, ed. with Victor Faessel & Michael Curtin (2019). He is the author or coauthor of other books, including Religion and Humane Global Governance (2001), Explorations at the Edge of Time (1993), Revolutionaries and Functionaries (1988), The Promise of World Order (1988), Indefensible Weapons (with Robert Jay Lifton, 1983), A Study of Future Worlds (1975), and This Endangered Planet (1972). His memoir, Public Intellectual: The Life of a Citizen Pilgrim was published in March 2021 and received an award from Global Policy Institute at Loyala Marymount University as ‘the best book of 2021.’ He has been nominated frequently for the Nobel Peace Prize since 2009.
Go to Original – richardfalk.org
Tags: Barbara Walters, Journalism, Media
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Dear Richard
As always, a sincere pleasure reading your thoughtful, honest writing.
But this personal memoir, which provides insight into a number of significant figures, is actually most notable for the insight it provides into yourself: a warm, shy, modest and engaged listener whose intellectual capacity in the circumstances put him near the apex of political power so that insight gained from this could inform his critique of the world and shape his conscience in responding to it.
So far, regrettably, I haven’t had time to read ‘Public Intellectual: The Life Of A Citizen Pilgrim’ but ‘time’ will no longer be an excuse. Besides, as I already know, I have too much to enjoy and learn by reading it.
Whether or not you ever win the Nobel Peace Prize, hopefully you at least appreciate that, among those who have read your scholarship and followed your nonviolent activism for decades, you are one of a small group of exceptionally worthy human beings, like Gandhi, whose name stands higher than the Prize.
Warmest regards; Robert
Reply from Prof. Richard Falk:
Dear Robert,
I cannot thank you enough for such an affirming message. Knowing of your lifelong dedication to personal and collective fulfillment on all levels I feel strengthened in my own engagements with a world during this period of dark times by your words.
If you were closer, I would be delighted to inscribe and give you a copy of my memoir, but if you do read it, I hope it will not be a disillusioning experience.
With warmest greetings of solidarity, gratitude, and appreciation,
Richard