Entertainment

Dick Clark a class act to the end

I always liked Dick Clark as a TV host — of music and dance shows, of game shows, of New Year’s Eve shows from Times Square.

But it was only after his 2004 stroke that slowed and impaired his speech when I came to admire him. As long as he had nothing to be ashamed of, he wasn’t going to dry up and wait for a ride from the wind.

Or as long ago Post sports editor Ike Gellis would say, “You don’t re-tire, you ex-pire.”

Several years ago, Clark’s post-stroke appearance on ABC’s New Year Eve show temporarily sobered a house party when a woman, eyeing and listening to Clark an hour or so before midnight, commented that “There’s a man who doesn’t know when it’s time to quit.”

I thought her comment harsh and insensitive, but she had supporters in the room. One said that Clark’s appearances, although abbreviated, made her “uncomfortable, enough to change the channel.” One fellow said that Clark is “embarrassing himself,” wondered if he’d lost his dignity.

Cruel, they admitted, yet, as far as they were concerned, honest.

The debate was on. Was Clark embarrassing himself or was he courageous? He’d done no wrong; he’d suffered a stroke. Should he just go away and stay there?

Would you no longer invite a similarly afflicted relative or friend to speak at Thanksgiving dinner, when each of the celebrants are asked to say for what they’re particularly grateful?

Would that make other guests uncomfortable, affect their appetites, allow the soup to get cold? Shouldn’t such a soul know when it’s time to be seen but not heard? For our sake?

If Clark spoke halting English because he had a thick foreign accent, would he be insufferable? Should Beethoven have quit composing because he was nearly deaf?

All one had to do to hear what Clark was saying was to listen a little harder.

He made some viewers uncomfortable, perhaps enough to turn the channel?

Understood, but that’s their problem. It wasn’t Dick Clark’s.

* * *

It’s both a shame and an outrage that in a city as large, as important and as vulnerable as New York, our local commercial TV newscasts can not be trusted to provide better than ratings-driven, run-for-your-lives! weather forecasts.

This winter, remarkably mild, did not prevent our “trusted news sources” from hysterically reporting — often as the lead story — that severe, dangerous weather was headed our way.

Then cuts to field reporters and mobile units — in the suburbs, in Midtown, at the airports, at the Shovels & Snow Blowers Dept. in Home Depot — for eyewitness warnings and sustained drum beats of doom.

How many times can newscasts cry wolf? Or holler “Fire!” in a crowded theater? Or declare, “The sky is falling” before we don’t believe a word?

Then, what if something truly colossal is nearing? Is it up to us to guess correctly, or do the anchors preface their report with, “This time we’re not exaggerating” or “This time we’re not lying”?

This past Sunday night, local newscasts led with dire warnings of a terrible nor’easter headed right for our kitchens, both hell and high water! Don’t just stand there, panic!

Bottom line: It rained. In some areas, it rained a lot, enough to cause some flooding “in low-lying areas.” It was windy, too. Some trees were downed. But nothing extraordinary. And on the radar, NYC was seen to be well west of the storm’s muscle.

But extreme, dangerous weather is now more an invention of TV executives than the work of forecasters from the National Weather Service.

A recent episode of the cartoon “Family Guy” included Tricia Takanawa, who works for Quahog Ch. 5 News, beginning her report with this: “Is Quahog in the grip of a serial arsonist? The police say no. But my producer says yes.”