Then he put on the full power of the personality that made him the most listened-to newscaster on the air, TV and radio. The manner that made the news sound human, like it really happened to real people. He put it on full power, and went to work.
First he showed a big map of New York, and talked about how people thought of it as a big, impersonal place, but it wasn't. He made it everybody's home town.
Then he traced the map right down to the exact spot where the buildings were. Then he turned on a movie, and he showed the back-door, garbage strewn, and a room where a family slept, seven of them, and the privy they shared with five other families.
Then Bill turned off the movie, and he brought that family to the mike, each of them dirty and in clothes that never had amounted to much, and had seen a long life since—even the baby. One kid's shoes had a sole flapping off, another had the toes cut out so he could wear them, though he'd long outgrown them.
"We haven't added to what we found," Bill said. "This is the way the ... I've introduced them as the Jones family, let's leave it at that. This is how the Joneses have had to dress. This is how they've had to live. This is a very real part of America," he said, and his voice was choking a little, and Randolph thought, if he's putting that on, he's the best actor I've seen yet.
Randolph found himself glad he was alone, and didn't have to speak himself. His own throat felt choked.
"And now," said Bill to his audience, "It's time for the witches...."
The camera shifted, and there was a papier-maché model of the buildings, built so you could look in the curtainless windows and see the squalor, lighted with a single bulb on a string. There was a gray pall over the whole thing, and newspapers and trash blowing against the front of the building. The gray pall, Randolph had figured from the sub-scene two weeks ago, was an effect of lights on a net curtain, but the effect was really good.
The thirteen witches, slender witches, danced in waving their products and crying their chant, their crimson-lined capes swirling out to glimpse the audience their long, slender legs.