TELEVISION : Weekend Special: Big, Rare Spectacle for a Small Screen

Wow! So what if the Statue of Liberty’s centennial may not deserve all this loud honking. How often does America get such gorgeous prime time entertainment?

Whatever the reason, don’t question it, enjoy it.

Friday night’s three-hour Liberty Weekend special on ABC was no routine prime timer. It’s true that the American music tribute may have been safely middle-of-the-road. And just because you like George Gershwin (take that MTV), did not mean you would like John Philip Sousa and Barry Manilow.

Here, though, was a rare “spectacle” that fit into a TV-sized picture. And what a big, wonderful whiff of nostalgia, filling us with a good, healthy sense of ourselves the way Friday’s breezes filled the sails of the tall ships in New York harbor.

The evening ended on another high note with Sam Waterston playing Henry David Thoreau and reciting his “Civil Disobedience” speech, followed by vignettes on people who exemplify Thoreau’s philosophy.

Written directed and produced by Susan Lester, it delivered a critical message, although there was no squaring the portrait of a Vietnam veteran with civil disobedience. It appeared he was inserted to politically balance another profile of a man who went to Canada to protest the war.

Whoopee!

The special’s third element was a 27-minute fireworks show billed as America’s largest ever. And even the small screen conveyed its scope.

You also got a sense of what World War III would be like.

Whoops!

It may not have been “The Wackiest Ship in the Army.” But it wasn’t the advertised grand, breathless, pulse-quickening spectacle, either.

Maybe you had to be there to experience the thrill, romance and exhilaration of Friday’s international flotilla of ships that sailed through New York harbor and up the Hudson River to celebrate the refurbished Statue of Liberty’s 100th birthday.

On TV, though, forget it.

The fabled parade of tall ships and short ships, of barks, barges and brigs, was . . . nice. It was . . . pretty. It was . . . interesting. And, on occasion, despite the sea’s mystery and fascination, it was also . . . borrrrrrring .

The tall ships got rave reviews a decade ago when they performed in New York harbor for the nation’s bicentennial. After the past week’s enormous buildup, however, this was it? The screen seemed cluttered and chaotic. The setting, lacking the expected grandeur, instead was reminiscent of a TV parade where the floats become a blur after a while.

West Coast viewers could see Friday morning’s sailathon and statue dedication live on ABC and Cable News Network.

CBS--with old sailor Walter Cronkite reporting form the Coast Guard craft Eagle--showed the events on a delay. NBC’s West Coast feed omitted the parade of ships, switching to Wimbledon tennis after an extended taped telecast of the dedication ceremonies.

The ships were another element of Liberty Weekend overkill that at once celebrates America’s democratic ideal and chest-thumping ethnocentricity, with TV becoming the major thumper.

These few days have seemed like an extended episode of “The Twilight Zone”: You’re trapped in another dimension, an endless nightmare of immigration anecdotes and liberty sagas, sermons, anecdotes and interviews, a dimension where TV hosts are supermarket checkers, processing guests as though they were grocery shoppers.

George Burns gets the nomination here for Liberty Weekend Guest of the Week for being the first aged former New Yorker interviewed on a network morning show (“The CBS Morning News” Friday) to not recall his first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty. He did remember some jokes, though.

It’s been a week for emphasizing big, Big and BIGGER, as in Thursday night’s booming opening ceremonies on ABC, only small slices of which were available to the other networks under controversial TV rights arranged by David L. Wolper, Liberty Weekend’s chairman and executive producer.

Hence, anything on TV not smacking of extravaganza has seemed fresh. That included Friday’s edition of NBC’s “Today,” which monitored a Fourth of July celebration in Seward, Neb.

There’s more Liberty Weekend bigness coming though. That includes Sunday’s four-hour finale on ABC.

The glitter and glitz proceed without a glitch.