THE CONTROL ROOM - A poem for the ones who feed the lines

THE CONTROL ROOM

A poem for the ones who feed the lines

I. THE TALENT

There is always a face.

That is the first rule of the machine:

Give them a face.

The face is handsome or the face is stern or the face is the face of a man who looks like he could be your uncle. The face has a voice. The face has a desk. The face has a light on it. The face says tonight we ask the hard questions.

And the face believes it.

That is the thing about the face—the face almost always believes it.

The face thinks it is the star.

The face thinks the words are its words.

The face thinks the questions are its questions.

The face goes home and tells its wife I really got him tonight.

And the face is not lying.

The face is simply not the author.

The face is the mouth.

And the mouth does not know where the food comes from.

II. THE VOICE IN THE EAR

The face has a small speaker in its ear.

The face has had it since the first day.

The face calls it the IFB and the face calls it the earpiece and the face calls it standard.

And the voice in the ear says:

Go to the file.

Ask about the brother.

Don't let him talk about the paper.

Bring up the 1955 thing.

Wrap in thirty.

Wrap in thirty.

Wrap in thirty.

And the face nods, and the face turns, and the face says

Let me ask you about your brother—

and the audience thinks the face is brilliant.

The audience thinks the face is quick.

The audience thinks the face is thinking.

The audience does not see the voice in the ear.

The audience does not see the man in the booth

with the headset and the coffee and the clipboard

who has been doing this for twenty years

and who knows exactly which question opens the wound

and which question pours the salt

and which question makes the man on the screen look like a liar

before he has said a single word.

The voice in the ear is the whisper man with a headset.

Same job. Better equipment.

III. THE CONTROL ROOM

Behind the glass, in the dark, in the cool,

there is a room the audience never sees.

The room has monitors. The room has switches. The room has a clock.

The room has a man called the producer

and the producer has a vision

and the vision is not truth

the vision is the show.

And the show has a shape.

And the shape has a hero and a villain and a moment of tension and a resolution.

And if the truth does not fit the shape,

the truth gets cut.

And the room decides:

Which camera.

Which angle.

Which reaction shot.

Which three seconds of silence to make him look guilty.

Which twelve seconds of stammer to make her look unstable.

Which face to cut to when the answer is too good.

The room is not lying.

The room is editing.

And editing is the most powerful lie ever invented,

because it never says anything that isn't true.

It just decides what you get to see.

IV. THE STAGE CREW

And before the face, there is the crew.

The crew is not on camera. The crew is never on camera.

The crew is the ones who set the lights so the face looks honest.

The crew is the ones who build the set so the face looks important.

The crew is the ones who put the flag in the background

and the books on the shelf

and the window with the fake city behind it.

The crew is the ones who mic the room,

who run the cable,

who test the signal,

who make sure the whisper gets to the ear

and the ear gets to the mouth

and the mouth gets to the screen.

The crew is the ones who clean up after.

The crew is the ones who break down the set

at two in the morning

and go home to a beer and a couch and a game on the TV

and never once think about the man whose life was rearranged in the edit.

And this is the part that should make you sick:

the crew is not evil.

The crew is working.

The crew has a mortgage.

The crew has a kid with a dental appointment.

The crew is doing a job.

And the job is the machine.

V. THE SEGMENT

And the segment airs.

Three minutes and forty seconds.

Produced by a team of twelve.

Written by a staff of four.

Approved by a lawyer and a standards department and a man in a suit who never watches the show but knows what the sponsors want.

And in those three minutes and forty seconds,

a man is made.

Not the whole man.

The shape of the man.

The version of the man that the machine needs.

And the version is not false.

The version is edited.

And the man goes to work the next day

and the man's coworkers have seen the segment

and the man's mother has seen the segment

and the man's daughter has seen the segment

and the man's daughter asks him a question at dinner

that she would never have asked

if the voice in the ear had not said ask about the brother.

And the man answers the question.

And the answer is the answer.

And the answer is not the answer to the question the man was asked.

It is the answer to the question the voice in the ear designed.

VI. THE PANEL

And then there is the panel.

Four faces at a curved desk.

A moderator with a pen.

A clock on the wall.

And a topic that has been chosen by the producer

because the producer knows that the topic will make the ratings go up.

And the panel argues.

And the panel is not arguing.

And the panel is performing an argument

that was sketched by a writer

who was given a brief by an editor

who was given a note by the producer

who was given a call by the man in the suit

who was given a number by the sponsor

who was given a market by the machine.

Four faces.

One script.

Zero dissent that was not approved.

And the audience watches and says

well, they really went at it tonight.

And the audience is right.

They did go at it.

They went at exactly the places they were told to go,

and nowhere else.

VII. THE LAUGH TRACK

And here is the oldest trick in the room:

The laugh track.

Not the literal one—though that too.

The permission track.

The little signal that tells the audience

this is the part where you are supposed to laugh,

this is the part where you are supposed to be afraid,

this is the part where you are supposed to hate him,

this is the part where you are supposed to feel sorry for her,

this is the part where you are supposed to be proud of the country.

The audience does not know it is being conducted.

The audience thinks it is feeling.

The audience is being tuned.

Like an instrument.

Like a radio.

Like a machine that was built in 1955 and has been in the booth ever since.

VIII. THE WHISPER MEN AND THE CREW

And now let the record show that they are the same men.

The whisper man in the bureau

and the whisper man in the booth

are the same man in different chairs.

The one files a name.

The one edits a clip.

The one flags a file.

The one frames a shot.

The one says it came to our attention.

The one says we go to break.

The machine does not care which room you work in.

The machine cares that you work.

And the machine pays you in the same currency:

a lawn, a sprinkler, a door that locks from the inside,

and the deep and quiet comfort

of never having to look at the person you processed.

IX. THE HOST AND THE HOSTAGE

And here is the thing nobody says:

The face is also a hostage.

The face has a contract.

The face has a brand.

The face has a number that the machine watches.

And if the face asks the wrong question,

the voice in the ear says wrap in thirty,

and the next week the face is not on the screen,

and the week after that the face is not on any screen,

and the face learns what the crew already knew:

Nobody in this building is the author.

Not the face. Not the panel. Not the moderator.

The author is the machine.

And the machine has a budget.

X. THE AUDIENCE

And the audience.

The audience is not stupid.

The audience is tired.

The audience has a job and a mortgage and a kid with a dental appointment.

The audience has thirty minutes between dinner and bed.

The audience wants to know what happened today.

The audience does not have time to watch the control room.

And the machine knows this.

The machine was built for this.

The machine was built in 1955 for exactly this—

for the audience that has just enough time to be told what to think

and not enough time to ask who decided.

And the audience goes to bed.

And the audience sleeps the sleep of a person who watched the news

and believes they are informed.

XI. THE RECKONING

So here is what I want, and I want it plainly:

Show us the control room.

Not the set. Not the panel. Not the face.

The room behind the glass.

The switches. The monitors. The clock.

The producer with the headset.

The writer with the brief.

The editor with the note.

The man in the suit with the number from the sponsor.

Show us the cut footage.

Show us the questions that were killed.

Show us the segment that never aired.

Show us the email that said don't go there.

Show us the note that said we need a villain this week.

And if you will not show us,

then we will say it out loud in the daylight,

with your names on it,

one by one,

and we will call it what it is:

Not journalism.

Not entertainment.

Not news.

The control room.

The voice in the ear.

The whisper men with better equipment.

And the machine that was built in 1955

and has been running ever since.

XII. THE FIRE

And the fire on the old stone altar

that never asked for a signature,

that the animals knew by,

that the boys knelt down at before the county ever had a form—

it is not in the control room.

It was never in the control room.

The control room cannot see it.

The control room does not have a camera angle for it.

It is burning in the kitchen where two people are actually talking.

It is burning in the letter that was actually written by hand.

It is burning in the meeting that was not recorded.

It is burning in the mouth of the one who says I was there, and this is what happened.

The machine can edit the segment.

The machine cannot edit the fire.

"Let the facts be submitted to a candid world."

And we mutually pledge—

to each other—

our lives, our fortunes,

and our sacred honor.

And to the ones in the booth:

We know you're there.

We know what you cut.

And we are going to say your names out loud.

Hieros Rev. Dustin Irish-Webb