Playing 'Fair' with TV news

on October 02, 2008 at 4:06 PM, updated October 02, 2008 at 4:27 PM
Playwright Thomas Diggs

Fair and Decent. Where: Luna Stage Company, 695 Bloomfield Ave., Montclair. When: Now in previews, opens Oct. 10. Through Nov. 2. Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m. How much: $20 through Thursday. Thereafter, $25 Fridays and Sundays and $30 Saturdays. Call (973) 744-3309 or visit

Everyone learns early on that life isn't necessarily fair. Thomas H. Diggs, though, decided to write about it.

"I didn't expect to," says Diggs. "Then, when I was at grad school at NYU, a teacher urged us to 'write the play you would never dare to write.' It was a challenge I decided to take."

The result is the politically charged "Fair and Decent," which is in previews prior to an Oct. 10 opening at Luna Stage Company in Montclair.

The play's subject is the Fairness Doctrine, a policy instituted by the Federal Communications Commission in 1949 that required news broadcasters to present both sides of an issue.

"When I was a kid, you'd always see a 'point-counterpoint' on the news," says Diggs, now 47. "That was the result of the Fairness Doctrine, which wasn't a law, but a regulation. If you wanted to get a broadcast license, you had to abide by it. Radio and television had a scarcity of voices and outlets then. Years later, by the time cable TV came in, they didn't. So, during Reagan's presidency, that policy disappeared."

Diggs doesn't allege that Reagan himself initiated its removal.

"The people around him in the think tanks apparently started the dismantling of the Fairness Doctrine, and such conservative judges as Bork and Scalia agreed to end it. Nothing was done illegally," he hastens to add.

"Many changes resulted, though. If the Fairness Doctrine were still in place, you wouldn't now have a Fox News or a Rush Limbaugh. These days, anything on the news can be said unchallenged."

Diggs has no first-hand knowledge of what goes on behind politicians' closed doors. "So," he says, "I've supposed that striking the Fairness Doctrine was the idea of a young Republican who said, 'In a country that's more than 50 percent Democrat, we'll never get a majority -- unless we get the Christian right and the conservatives together.'"

In the play, set right after Reagan's election, Trip (Alan Pagano) works on eradicating the Fairness Doctrine with Reed (Michael Ellison), a conservative Christian. Reed has problems at home, too: He's ashamed of the developmentally disabled child he had with his wife, Mary Beth (Jennifer Dean). Another subplot involves Gil (Thom Molyneaux), Trip's father, who worked in a think tank, too, and Addison (Richard Bowden), Gil's old political enemy.

Nevertheless, Diggs says he's tried to be fair and decent himself.

"I've attempted to create compassion for the Republican operatives," he says. "Trip is a young Karl Rove, and I dare you to love him. I've dared to love him myself."

Diggs, a Manhattan resident, grew up in Augusta, Ga., and Memphis. "Red states," he points out, "but my parents were McGovern Democrats," he adds, citing the 1972 liberal candidate who carried only one state and the District of Columbia.

He attended Brown University and planned to be an actor. "But my baby-face meant I'd get cast in younger roles, and those parts weren't leads," he says. "With all that time backstage with nothing to do, I started writing one-act plays."

After graduation, he taught English in Korea, Japan, Nepal, India and in the Himalayas.

"I wanted to be an emerging playwright then," he says, "but Reagan cut the National Endowment for the Arts, so I wasn't able to get a grant." He pauses and shakes his head. "Sometimes I worry that 'Fair and Decent' is actually my personal vendetta against the Reagan administration."
