Reading articles in The New Yorker is a serious time commitment, so I’m usually running a couple of issues behind.

I mean, okay… I could skip Project Runway and Shear Genius and get all caught up, but that isn’t going to happen. So let’s say that for me, it’s easy to get behind.

However, I do get around to every issue, and when I do, I’m always glad. Case in point: In the July 28 issue, there’s a fantastic personal history written by Charles Van Doren, who in the 1950s rose to fame for his unprecedented winning streak on the game show Twenty One, then fell into disgrace after it was revealed the game was fixed. I saw the movie Quiz Show, so I knew all this had happened, but it’s fascinating to hear about it directly from the man himself.

(After the jump, I’ll explain why the story got me thinking about Today, poetry, and Kathie Lee Gifford.)

Van Doren takes a pragmatic approach to his story. He doesn’t beg for sympathy or insist that his downfall was someone else’s fault. Instead, he just lays out the facts, tinged with just enough emotion to keep it gripping.

The only missing piece? He never explains why he cheated, or why he lied about it later. But I think that makes his article more interesting. Outside of fiction, people usually don’t have a single, clear motive for things. It’s more compelling for Van Doren to deny us an easy read on his personality, because it keeps us from reducing him to The Cheater or The Man Who Needed to Be Loved.

But the essay isn’t interesting simply for it’s treatment of Van Doren’s rise and fall. As he recounts his life, he tosses in details that I think warrant their own features. For instance, the story about Ralph Fiennes semi-stalking him. And the bit about his renowned father traipsing around a farm.

And then there’s this quote, which gives a startling peek at the history of the Today show:

I fared better doing segments for Dave Garroway’s Wide Wide World show, a Sunday-afternoon cultural program. I soon became a semi-regular on this program, appearing once a month in place of Garroway. Some of “my” shows were pretty good, and the arrangement led to Garroway’s accepting me as a regular on Today. (Garroway, a television pioneer, was the first host—and star—of Today.) I was awkward at first, but before long Dave gave me a daily five-minute spot at the top of the hour in which to report on cultural and literary events; I read a great poem or two every Friday morning and talked about its author. Viewers liked this; so did Dave.

Think about that for a minute: There was a time when Today put someone on the air to read poems.

I don’t watch Today now, so maybe they still do this, but considering the fact that Kathie Lee Gifford just got added as a fourth-hour host, I doubt it.

And I’m not saying that’s a problem, per se. It’s tempting to scream, “Cultural Illiteracy!” and sigh for the good ol’ days when folks liked a good poem, by God, and not all this filthy talk and ladies taking off their clothes.

But that’s not accurate. Oprah hawks Faulkner. And though a program like CBS Sunday Morning airs on, well, Sunday mornings, it still uses major network airtime to explore the fine arts. We’re not a nation of dolts. Not all of us.

But imagine a poetry reading during high-stakes airtime like Today‘s opening hour. What would happen? What would change?

And really, couldn’t the networks convince people that’s what they want to see? As much as conventional wisdom hollers that television is  beholden to what the people crave, I think that sometimes the people can be told what to crave. Or at the very least, a program can remind us what we’ve been missing.

It might be a worthy experiment for a struggling talk show or nightly news broadcast: Get an energetic commentator on there a few times a month to read a poem, and remind America how astonishing, how moving poetry can be. You could mix the poem right in with the latest story on Miley Cyrus or Obama’s campaign. People are used to making leaps like that. (I’m not the only New Yorker reader who watches Shear Genius. I just know it.)

I think a lot of good could come from inviting the nation to sit still and listen to a poem. A brief pause for the contemplation of art could take the edge off the daily grind.

In fact… maybe when I get back from vacation, I’ll start doing that myself, right here on The Critical Condition. Or if anyone from a television network is reading, send me an e-mail. I’d love to be your saucy poetry guy. I’ll make it fun and punchy, I promise.