Brian Lamb, our man in Washington

The civic-minded and intellectually curious among us catch some of our biggest waves while channel surfing on C-Span.

The nonprofit cable network provides us with great roaring riptides of polite Q&A sessions and dramatic wipeouts of the congressional legislative process.

On Sunday it was announced that C-Span founder Brian Lamb would be stepping down as chief executive of the network he founded in 1979.

Besides their meticulous documentation of Washington goings-on, C-Span has trained its eye on writers, critics, and public intellectuals with programs like the interview show Booknotes, Lamb’s pet project that he will continue to host in his reduced capacity.

The idea of making the most basic workings of government visible and audible to everyone seems like such an obviously good thing — something really necessary for a free democracy. It’s actually extraordinary it took until 1979 for something like C-Span to exist.

You learn to appreciate Brian Lamb not because he’s unafraid to “tell it like it is” but because he’s completely comfortable showing it like it is and keeping his mouth shut. As an interviewer, Lamb demands your respect for what he doesn’t say: the joke left unmade, the rear orifice left unripped, the guest’s revealing comment left hanging in the air without mercy.

Brian Lamb is one of the few thoroughly good guys in the media. While his belief in journalistic professionalism and objectivity seem cute by today’s standards of fair and balanced shouting matches (in which everyone involved is equally, objectively moronic), you have to respect a prominent television personality who basically denies his own personality.

The guy has never even said his name on the air, for crissakes. Never could there have been a “Brian Lamb Factor” or a “Countdown with Brian Lamb.” Whether he would acknowledge it at this point or not, the entire federal government is “The Brian Lamb Show” — he just turns the cameras on.

The American people pay for all this that goes on in this town. It’s always been my contention — and it’s not a sophisticated, intelligent position, it’s just a gut reaction — that if we pay for something and it’s the public’s business we ought to be able to see how it’s done. It’s just that simple.