Smile, they're on candid camera

Growing up I was allergic to chocolate so, to me, a "Brownie" was always a Kodak camera. So too, "cheese" was not something you ate, but something you said as you smiled for the birdie.

Mine was a generation of film, flash-bulbs, dark rooms, slides and going down to the drug store to "pick up the pictures." I remember the excitement of the Polaroid camera, then the video and camcorders, not to mention those miniature "spy" cameras you could buy from the back of a comic book, that promised so much adventure and action that it didn't matter that they never ever worked.

And then, of course, there was Allen Funt (whose last name alone was fodder for a hundred adolescent jokes, as of course was the word "fodder") and his, "Smile, you're on Candid Camera."

What a premise for a TV show: A hidden camera catching folks being silly by being human. Back then, it seemed so clever and so ingenious, and so uninvasive, especially when limited to that one half-hour show about what a camera could show. But that was then and now is now, as, for almost 24-hours straight, hidden (and not so hidden) cameras show all of us almost everything about everyone.

Today, cameras, aka video equipment, reveal what's going on beneath the sea and among the stars. Cameras course through the earth and our veins revealing defects in both, even as they monitor our banking transactions, car and rail travel, and the coming and going (and taking and grabbing) inside every mom-and-pop shop in America. Forget big brother, now even the littlest sister is keeping an eye on her nanny.

Cameras mounted on handlebars, dashboards, street signs, lapels, doorways, satellites, drones and blimps eliminate the need for a thousand words by bringing up just one picture. Indeed, cameras today see into everything but the future, the soul and the voting booth.

Yet though appropriately absent from the still private voting booth (and changing booth?), the presence of cameras in government seems to be a real gift to the electorate.

Cameras in federal, state and local legislative chambers allow people to see government by (some) people serving (and sometimes entertaining and other times disappointing) the people.

While C-Span spans the nation, of special note are the cameras of Cable's public service channels that broadcast local village board meetings.

How wonderful (and often informative) it is for citizens, young and old and older, to watch their village government, the government closest to them, at work on their behalf (and bewhole).

Perhaps in a time where, as noted before, transparency is the watch(ed) word, board meetings ought to be more closely watched. Perhaps in response to residents and officials bemoaning the lack of civility and candor and the risk of misquotation, villages like Lawrence (my own precious hometown) should join great villages like Lynbrook and Rockville Centre that publicly broadcast their monthly board meetings.

With nothing off camera and little in-camera, all parties will be on camera as ideas are shared, opinions are considered and action is taken (or not).

It's hard to attend evening meetings, and reading minutes can take hours, whereas everyone could tune in at their leisure to smile and watch candid democracy. Government on t.v. is truly reality television, and watching local government after (or during) Jay or Dave might just be picture perfect.