TV REVIEW : TEARS OF CHAGRIN FOR ‘TEARS OF JOY’

You couldn’t parody commercial television’s bad taste and penchant for trivialization any better than ABC does itself tonight with “Tears of Joy, Tears of Sorrow,” an hourlong special airing at 10 on Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42.

Since it isn’t meant as parody, however, your reaction is to gag rather than laugh.

Most of the program is an innocuous, pleasant collection of highlights from movies, TV programs and commercials that have moved audiences to reach for their hankies: “Gone With the Wind,” “E.T.,” “The Way We Were,” “On Golden Pond,” “Roots,” “Brian’s Song,” “The Waltons,” along with ads for Kodak, McDonald’s, Hallmark and the Bell System.

Nothing wrong there, save a few quibbles over the choice of clips and the pompous writing, delivered with great sincerity and little meaning by John Forsythe.

But tucked in with these manufactured moments of melodrama is a segment about news events that have produced tears: the funeral procession of President John F. Kennedy, the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy, the “I Have a Dream” speech of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

To equate these monumental, life-altering events of slab-cold reality with the calculated, fuzzy-warm sentimentality of Hollywood and Madison Avenue is an act of such thoughtless insensitivity that to “Tears of Joy, Tears of Sorrow” ABC should add tears of embarrassment.

The writers and producers of the program were Robert Guenette, David J. Eagle and David Horowitz.