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This is May, the month we celebrate graduations. Graduations always cause me to reflect on one of the greatest graduation speeches I’ve ever heard. The year was 1987 and a young journalist named Ted Koppel was speaking to the graduating class at Duke University. Don’t be “Vannatized” said Koppel. He was referring to America’s sweetheart Vanna White from the popular game show Wheel of Fortune. I’m old enough to recall the 80’s when Wheel of Fortune had just begun. Pat Sajak was as winsome as ever, and Vanna White, well, no one was sure. You see, Vanna never spoke on the show during the 80’s. Vanna was a mysterious figure. One thing was certain; Vanna looked good, and man, could she turn (and yes, I said turn, for those of you not old enough to recall the 80’s) those blocks!
As a mysterious figure, Vanna White could be whatever one wanted to imagine her to be. Koppel suggested that we all liked it that way; we were being “Vannatized”. He went on to say, “Permit me to tell you what she does. She turns blocks. She does this very well, very fluidly. We don’t hear Vanna. She speaks only body language, and she seems to like everything she sees. No, ‘like’ is too tepid, Vanna thrills, she rejoices, adores everything she sees. And therein lays her particular magic. We have no idea what, or even if Vanna thinks. Is she a feminist or every male chauvinist’s dream? She is whatever you want her to be: sister, lover, daughter, friend, never cross, non-threatening, and non-judgmental to a fault. The viewer can, and apparently does, project a thousand different personalities onto that charmingly neutral television image, and she accommodates them all.”
Ted Koppel went on to speak very candidly to those 1987 Duke students. His words to them need to be reheard today. Please excuse the extended quote, but I could not resist:
“You won’t be surprised to learn that there is not a great deal of room on television for complexity. We are nothing as an industry if not attuned to the appetites and limitations of our audience. We have learned for example that your attention span is brief. We should know; we help make it that way.
No, there is not much room on television for complexity. You can partake of our daily banquet without drawing on any intellectual resources, without either physical or moral discipline. We require nothing of you, only that you watch. Or say that you were watching if Mr. Nielson’s representatives happen to call. And gradually it must be said we are beginning to make our mark on the American people. We have actually convinced ourselves that slogans will save us. Shoot up if you must but use a clean needle. Enjoy sex whenever and with whomever you wish, but wear a condom.
No! The answer is no. Not because it isn’t cool or smart or because you might end up in jail or dying in an AIDS ward, but no because it’s wrong, because we have spent five thousand years as a race of rational human beings trying to drag ourselves out of the primeval slime by searching for truth and moral absolutes. In the place of truth we have discovered facts, for moral absolutes we have substituted moral ambiguity. We now communicate with everyone and say absolutely nothing. We have reconstructed the Tower of Babel, and it is a television antenna. A thousand voices producing a daily parody of democracy in which everyone’s opinion is afforded equal weight regardless of substance or merit. Indeed it can even be argued that opinions of real weight tend to sink with barely a trace in television’s ocean of banalities. Our society finds truth too strong a medicine to digest undiluted. In its purist form truth is not a polite tap on the shoulder. It is a howling reproach. What Moses brought down from Mount Sinai were not the Ten Suggestions. They are commandments (are, not were). The shear brilliance of the Ten Commandments is that they codify in a handful of words acceptable human behavior not just for then or now, but for all time.”
These words prompted a round of applause from the Duke University students that spring day in 1987. They wouldn’t be given a hearing on today’s college campus, much less a round of applause. Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones, who was a brilliant medical doctor turned preacher, once told his congregation, “When I was a medical doctor, I never let my patients write their own prescriptions.” God, the Great Physician, has prescribed His Word for your spiritual and physical well-being. Have you been Vannatized? Stop writing your own prescriptions, submit to God’s Word, and be healed.
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