Assenting?

My task for today is assenting, but I've found that very hard to do for this reading. Not because I feel the argument being made is wrong, but rather that I found the evidence for it rather lacking. Doherty sets out his argument at the end of the first paragraph on page 2 (continuing from page one):

"During the Cold War, through television, America became a more open and tolerant place."

This is set against the conventional argument that TV contributed to conformism rather than openness and tolerance. The argument is clear, but in reading through the following 58 pages I just didn't find anything that definitively backs it. The only example that came close was the account of the show where Joe McCarthy appeared as the guest politician and was asked critical questions by the members of the audience (or in some cases only statements were made). This was the only example I could find of television that was broadcasted that goes with Doherty's argument. On second thought, there was also the example at the very end with Lucille Ball having her real life pregancy correspond with Lucy's on air pregnancy.

Yes, there was plenty of exposition and discussion of the many incidents where prominent TV stars were accused of Communist ties and fought back (or did not fight back) against them, the Goldbergs, I Love Lucy, etc, but it seems almost all of that transpired off-screen, which I felt detracted immensely from Doherty's argument. The title is Cold War, Cool Medium, and so I felt that to really back his point Doherty needed to show that events on-screen backed his viewpoint. Of course, he has another 200-some pages to do this so maybe this is just laying the ground work.

On a side note, I was a somewhat shocked to read about the numerous televised broadcasts of atomic bomb tests. I mean, I've seen some of the various tapes replayed in movies or tv shows and so on, but I guess I never realized that those tapes were actually broadcast to people at the time that they happened -- I assumed that they were more like archival footage that was later re-used. The idea of watching a live atomic bomb go off almost gives me shivers.