Between Pitt, Musk, Monkeypox, mandatory vasectomies, constantly mutating Covid and the “crisis” surrounding the shortage of baby formula I feel like I am being buried under an avalanche of information super highway BS – even without the conspiracy theory nutjobs.
We are all being victimized by an unending stream of click-bait. Welcome to our brave new world, suckers. Fear and voyeurism sell soap powder. And that’s the way it is.
Dear mainstream media outlets:
Instead of repeatedly screaming out in terror that “THE SHELVES ARE BARE!” and there is a “HORRIBLE FORMULA SHORTAGE!” perhaps someone might do a little reporting on what America did before formula existed. Babies have been around for a very long time you know. Presumably they have always needed food, and that should lead to some obvious questions for the journalism community.
Are there any alternatives to formula? Were babies healthier before formula came on the market? Are women who wish to breastfeed being adequately supported in the American workplace?
Is this really the “CRISIS!” you are making it out to be, or are solutions going unexplored? I dunno, maybe you’re sales departments won’t let you do any “news” that might threaten to alienate some of the women in your audience? Is that it? Or maybe you just don’t want to delve too deeply into an issue that is central to women’s health and the survival of our species?
According to kdishealth.org: “A number of health organizations — including the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Medical Association (AMA), and the World Health Organization (WHO) — recommend breastfeeding as the best choice for babies. Breastfeeding helps defend against infections, prevent allergies, and protect against a number of chronic conditions.”
Do the people who manufacture baby formula want women to know there are alternatives out there and that some of those alternatives might be far healthier for babies?
True, fear and not solutions drives the ratings, but damn this is getting old. (My apologies if anyone has already gotten into some actual journalism regarding this question. I can’t watch and read everything.)
Watching a discussion on CNN this morning. According to the political mavens, “Abortion, Economy Top Midterm Issues For Voters.”
Not this voter.
My top two issues are campaign finance reform – reversing the idiotic “Citizens United” decision and getting dark money out of American politics. That’s number one. Universal healthcare, is number two.
Ted Kennedy, was hammering away on the need for universal healthcare in the mid 1970’s. But we still don’t have it. Shouldn’t any thinking, developed culture have universal healthcare which includes comprehensive healthcare for women? Why is this still even a question?
A handful of honest politicians have been trying to get real campaign finance reform passed for decades, and for a while they did, but others then canceled it out, taking things in the opposite direction and leaving us not with transparency, but near-blindness with regard to where the money that funds our political system is coming from, giving oligarchs and giant corporations a free-hand in controlling our government. We won’t be a truly free people until we get big money out of our politics. But we still don’t have that, either.
If I were to throw in a third issue that’s being missed, it would probably be term limits for the House and Senate. And number four, and this is a biggie, eliminate the Electoral College. Elect the president by popular vote. Both, I think, would require amending the Constitution. It would be worth it.
From ballotpedia.org: “Since the national popular vote was first recorded in 1824, there have been four presidential elections where the winner won the Electoral College and lost the popular vote:”
Seems to me that these much larger issues have to be dealt with before any of the smaller issues will fall into line with what most people want. Isn’t that what our system is supposed to do? Could that be why so many Americans seem so angry? Because laws aren’t being passed and sometimes presidents elected based upon what most Americans actually want?
Are we really adequately represented in DC? Or is the country increasingly controlled by big, dark money from god knows where?
Nobody’s talking about any of this. Probably because it’s too complex. Not something that will attract viewers.
We have gone from suffering through four years of waking up each morning and turning on the tv to find out what new madness Donald Trump had unleashed on the country and the world to now doing the same for a man Trump has declared to be a “genius,” the Russian butcher of women, children and the elderly, Vladimir Putin.
How some Americans can still be so misinformed as to support Donald Trump, is something that should concern us all. Reversing the spread of misinformation and disinformation in the American media should be a priority.
Americans must be made aware of the critical need to preserve the transmission of fact-based information, real journalism, in America. They need to be made aware that not everything that came to us through the “Reagan Revolution” was a benefit to the country. Some of it, like the extreme deregulation of the media and media ownership, may have actually weakened our democracy.
The Federal Government, should perhaps, be considering legislation to restore some power to the FCC. Bringing back some version of the Fairness Doctrine might be a start, with the regulation covering not only broadcast and cable outlets, but American originated internet news outlets of a certain viewership and income, as well.
Something must be done to prohibit alleged news outlets from pitching pure propaganda disguised as legitimate news to a vulnerable public. At the very least, news outlets should be required to separate out and clearly label legitimate fact-based news from opinion.
We simply cannot and must not let Donald Trump and his supporters do to America what Vladimir Putin has done to Russia, through the use of misinformation and outright lies.
After years of celebrating violence and ignorance we now live in a violent and increasingly ignorant society. Why is anybody surprised?
Steve Allen, wrote about what were then the country’s creeping cultural woes in his books “Dumbth” and “Vulgarians At The Gate.” Too few listened.
Even now, it’s easier to cut funding for education than to ban the flood of assault weapons on our streets as so many of our politicians continue to complain about the effect while doing next to nothing about the cause.
The violent hi-tech entertainment being pumped out of Hollywood has become so commonplace that most of us are numb to its existence. Do you suppose constant exposure to people cutting one-another to shreds with semi-auto and automatic firearms has anything to do with turning it into a reality on our streets?
Increasingly, Americans have abandoned their cars for “urban assault vehicles.” Giant trucks and SUV’s which make them feel empowered, a phenomenon that got its start following the Los Angeles Riots in 1992. I was there and I watched it happen, as high-end sports cars and other smaller vehicles disappeared from the freeways to be replaced by giant SUV’s. It happened almost overnight and spread across the country.
And even the NFL. Yes, God help me, I am going to say something about the untouchable NFL, which is nothing more than contemporary gladiatorial combat held in coliseums modeled after the original in Rome.
Full-contact American football, is all about violence. It teaches violence and makes it acceptable. And we love it, because we have been conditioned to love it. Not to mention its appeal to our apparently primordial lust for watching combatants, in this case mostly African-American combatants, smash one-another to bits in a fight over a relatively small plot of land. This love comes with a price tag we happily accept. According to Statista, in 2020, the 32 teams of the NFL generated 12.2 billion dollars, making pro football the most profitable sport in the United States.
As of Saturday, February 12, the average price for one seat at the Superbowl was $8,733.
In movies, on tv, with video games and through sports, we continue to be conditioned to accept and even love violence. At the same time, the average cost for one year in college is now up to $36-thousand. That’s for just one year. Who can afford that? Who are the wealthy trying to hold back by not making the great equalizer of a good education available to all?
How many times must people be told that it’s more cost-effective to pay for a child’s education than for a lifetime in prison?
It all ties together, but Steve Allen, is no longer here to preach the gospel of common sense. One man who was brave enough to try and save us from ourselves. Alas, he is gone, mowed down by an urban assault vehicle, leaving us alone to ponder the possibility that our ongoing approval of violence and ignorance may have something to do with our increasingly violent and ignorant culture.
You don’t think so? According to USA Today, in 2020 there were 611 mass shootings in the U.S., taking 513 lives and injuring 2,543 others. That’s up 47% from the year before.
Some, including Representative Adam Kinzinger, one of only a few Republicans with the courage to speak out against the insanity, are talking about the possibility of another civil war as a disinformed and misinformed American public goes mad trying to untangle themselves from the tangled mess they’re in using the tools they’ve been taught to use – ignorance and the violence it spawns.
What I wouldn’t give for another Tom Snyder to come along. Somebody with the smarts and articulation and savvy to carry a talk show without all the Hollywood hype. Somebody who just sits down and talks to a guest in a calm, intelligent, informed fashion, without breathlessly rushing forward in an effort to turn everything into a joke.
If you’re too young to remember, Tom Snyder had no fancy set, just some chairs spotlighted in an otherwise blacked-out studio. It was all he needed. Anything else would have been unnecessary. A distraction. The show was about featuring Tom Snyder, not the set or the music or non-stop technical gimmickry or feedback from a live audience. It was not rushed. It was relaxed and thoughtful. And entertaining as well. It was there, on Tom’s “Tomorrow” show that America was introduced to the “Not Ready For Prime Time Players,” The original cast of SNL.
I didn’t know Tom Snyder well, but I did know him. We both worked for KABC in Los Angeles for a time and I remember “Old Tom’s” theory about why talk shows failed. It was, he said, because the networks settled on a format for a show first and tried to plug a personality into it later. In Synder’s opinion, they should have found the personality first, and then built the show around that person, what the personality needed and wanted to make him or her comfortable. I think he was probably right. I think that’s why Snyder succeeded. And there were others.
For whatever Charlie Rose’s personal faults may have been, he was also a great talker around that big round table on PBS. Dick Cavett, also did a talk show with the conversation and not a lot of hype carrying the show.
Not coincidentally, all three of them knew how to interview by way of actually having a conversation. Unlike most of today’s comedian first and interviewer second personalities, Snyder, Cavett and Rose, actually listened to what their guests said, as opposed to ignoring what they were saying because they needed the time to formulate their next wisecrack, leaving us with a gaggle of personalities all doing the same thing – trying to recreate something Steve Allen created without Steve Allen.
It was Steve’s feeling, that the one and only reason any of the tv talk shows succeeded was because they were on tv with the captive audience television provided. He may have been right.
What we have now feels not so much like an intellectual vacuum as a lack of sophistication on the part of those who manage the tv and cable outlets. It feels like some or maybe all of them, haven’t been around long enough to develop a frame of reference for what’s possible. That keeping it simple, in the fashion of Tom Snyder, might still work. Provided they could find another Tom Snyder and were then willing to get out of the way and let him do his thing, whatever that thing might be.
CNN, has been many things. When it started out in the early 80’s, it was berated by the established media, who called it “Chicken Noodle News.” However, with time, those at the news channel proved themselves to be able competitors who demanded to be taken seriously. But that was before punditry, before the O.J. Simpson Criminal Trial showed news executives from coast-to-coast that it was possible for a relative handful of pundits covering just one topic to hold a massive audience glued to their screens for hours on end. That, changed things forever.
And now, here we are, in this brave new world of broadcasting with 7/24 “news” channels, delivering daily sermons on what their audience wants to hear, and crazies with podcasts who are permitted to spew hatred to an eager audience of misinformed and disinformed while the FCC, appears to be stumbling about, wondering what it’s supposed to be.
CNN needs to decide whether it wants to be predominantly news or entertainment programming. If those running the channel want their efforts to be considered primarily a news outlet, then they will have to wake up to the fact that the free world is currently nose-to-nose with Vladimir Putin on the Ukrainian border.
Covid, is important, but there are other developments out there that deserve some attention. As for all the coverage they continue giving to Trump and MAGA, perhaps they should consider how much their prior coverage contributed to his winning the presidency and whether it’s more important than what’s happening politically in L.A., New York and overseas.
News, is news. It is Journalism-based and requires an adequate staff of journalists to gather, verify and report out information. Click-bait to get ratings is entirely different. It’s a threat to our democracy. A very real threat that won’t go away so long as that which makes the most money trumps that which best keeps our populace informed with valid information giving them the ability to decide who and what they want to be.
I know the newspaper industry is in trouble. I know their advertising base has been depleted by all the “new media” out there. I also know they are still needed if we are to survive as a free people. For years the “news” has been coming mostly from print reporters who went out and dug it up. What you see on television, is usually a follow-up to a story that originated with a newspaper or wire service. The great Walter Cronkite, famously, was uncomfortable putting anything on the air at CBS until it had appeared in the New York Times.
Consequently, I expect the Baltimore Sun to put the dysfunctionalism of the City of Baltimore and the State of Maryland, their inability to work together for the common good, under a microscope on a regular basis. With two past mayors and the current Baltimore State’s Attorney, all indicted, and street crime that continues to be out of control, they should be holding public officials accountable daily. With the indictments and the crime and the general governmental mess, Baltimore, should be a journalist’s Nirvana.
That said, what their editorial board just came up with, broadly condemning President Biden, left me thinking that the people who wrote the piece must have spent the past several years doing nothing but watching reruns of Gilligan’s Island.
I was fine with the editorial until it was coming to an end, with the accusation that Joe Biden hasn’t been “honest.” Really? When? And if that wasn’t enough, they then capped it off with, “For his second year in office, not being Donald Trump will not be enough.” They have got to be kidding. Not being Trump, will be more than enough. Except for those who have spent the past several years sequestered on an island eating coconuts with the Skipper and Mary Ann.
Can a major American newspaper really be that blind to the threat Trump and his Russian-backed cabal pose to the survival of our democracy? Apparently so. Can they be blind to the possibility that this current situation with Trumpist Republicans blocking any forward motion in the Senate, causing a federal logjam and general discontent throughout the land, and the pressure that puts on the White House – wouldn’t that be the perfect time for Putin, to threaten to send his troops into the Ukraine?
Oh, but that’s a stretch, isn’t it? Or should we be asking ourselves, “Who still supports Democracy, and who stands against it?” Maybe Joe Biden not being Donald Trump, is enough after all.
So the Republicans, bullies and cowards that they are, are threatening to stay out of future debates? Very telling isn’t it, that they don’t want to expose their platform of lying, cheating, and putting a dagger to the throat of Democracy in front of a live tv audience?
Not a week goes by without this new Republican Party, with he who must not be named at the helm, proving themselves to be in opposition to our Constitution, and as such, out to destroy our liberty, laying waste to the self-determination our founders established with the warning that we might not be strong enough to hold onto it through time. It’s happening right in front of me and I can’t believe what I’m seeing, an entire party turning its back on liberty, the freedom so many of our friends and relatives fought and died for. Some, many hopefully, of those who continue to call themselves Republicans, have been duped. The others, are traitors, doing all they can to tear us apart.
Meanwhile, out in Hollywood-
Javier Bardem, is still making the rounds promoting “Being the Ricardos.” Rotten Tomatoes, gives it a 68% rating. I think the critics are being kind. For me, and possibly most of us who grew up watching Lucy and Ricky, it just did not work. They didn’t pull it off. I’d give it 35%. Maybe. On a good day. And I’m a big fan of Sorkin, Bardem and Kidman. Hollywood, needs to leave the classics alone. Whatever you might think of her, in her time, Lucy, was classic. Some years ago there was a rumor going around that one of the studios was thinking about a re-do on “Casablanca.” It hasn’t happened, yet, thank God. The characters are too strong and too firmly set in the minds of millions to be adequately duplicated.
We’ve been watching “The Great,” on hulu, and it is mostly great. The acting and directing in this spoof of the story of Catherine the Great of Russia, are both great as is the cinematography. The writers though, need to get their heads out of an apparent mindset that it is necessary to take an otherwise outstanding production and turn it into soft-porn to generate an audience. For me the unnecessary up close and personal sex scenes put a knife through the heart of what otherwise would have been one of the best series offerings, with some of the smartest writing, ever. Not that long ago, this genre was regarded as “dirty movies,” to be viewed only at trashy theaters in a bad part of town. Now it’s becoming commonplace. Makes you wonder where we’re headed, doesn’t it? This one is up for a SAG award.
With social networking hearings taking place on the hill and pundits repeating the same information to the point that it becomes almost comical, the question must be asked, “Is Facebook inherently evil?” The answer, I suspect, is probably not. Not if you block all those you want nothing to do with, unfollow all those others you don’t want to hear from, and then have the smarts and the stomach to ignore the ads and political nonsense that might come your way.
Thing is, these are some really smart people, and with all those alogarhythms they’re using, you have to wonder if any of us can really determine the degree to which we’re being played? I’m not even sure what an alogarhythm is despite a year of algebra in high school. I can’t remember a bit of it. I had to google the word to get its spelling.
For several years now, going back to the Arab Spring, some have warned that technology is rapidly outstripping our ability to control what’s going on. The geeks, some used to downplay, are taking over and it’s no small matter. It’s not Mark Zuckerberg’s fault that he stumbled onto something that caused him to fall backwards into a mountain of cash which continues to grow. Nor is he immune to the same attraction to power and money that attracts us all. He’s just a kid who saw a good thing, took advantage of it, and then watched it grow. No different from Bill Gates, or so many other highly successful American entrepreneurs really. Some might say he got lucky. If he hadn’t done what he did, the Winklevoss twins, or somebody else, probably would have.
Whether Facebook and Twitter brought about the Arab Spring, or simply served to assist something that was inevitable, with or without social media, is still being argued. One of the best arguments I’ve read, is that the uprising would have happened even without the Internet, that people have been getting together to change the course of world history for thousands of years. But did social media help facilitate it? Undoubtedly so, but it’s no sure bet there wouldn’t have been an Arab Spring without Facebook.
Events that have followed, from the madness in Charlottesville to dozens of flash mobs, marches and protests generated online, demonstrate the power of social media. As does the election of 2016 and the attempted coup four years later, making most of us understand that this has gone beyond being serious. It is now threatening.
The angst and gnashing of teeth on Capitol Hill, demonstrates how far behind hi-tech our politicians are and how much needs to be done to try and catch up. They should have been discussing the regulation of social media before some of them even knew what it was, which means they are years late in understanding what it is capable of. Not sure even the geeks can answer that question
Nobody knows where all of this is going, and that’s what makes it so frightening and difficult to understand. At least they’re now trying and that’s a start. That said, it should also be noted that Facebook and some of the other hi-tech behemoths have purchased their own opinion factory, the American Edge Project. According to their website, they are a coalition “dedicated to the proposition that American innovators are an essential part of U.S. economic health, national security and individual freedoms.” Critics charge that the 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organization, which may allow secret money to influence our elections” is just a front for Zuckerberg and Facebook. A “political advocacy group” they call it.
I saw an ad sponsored by the American Edge Project on one of the news shows just last night urging viewers to tell their representatives to give hi-tech the freedom to do what it wants to do, unfettered by cumbersome regulations. Free to continue growing its bottom line.
Facebook, is expected to have sales of more than $34 billion in the fourth quarter of this year, even with the whistleblower document dump and near-hysteria on the Hill, as our elected representatives try and understand what it is they are dealing with so that they can try and develop a plan to deal with it. And what is it?
I can tell you what it is. It’s all about alogarhythms and billionaire geeks who want to build their power base by increasing their profits. And they want government regulators to leave them alone. Simple, right? Yeah, simple as the simplest alogarhythm. And sales of more than $34 billion in the fourth quarter. For just one company.
Our elected representatives are gonna need some serious help.
So the “election” has concluded in Russia, where exit polling indicates Vladimir Putin’s party will again be the big winner? And the major media is reporting out the story as though it should be taken with even an ounce of credibility? Seriously?
Down in the great State of Florida, currently so overcome by the Delta Variant, that for a time they were putting up tents, that goober police department that failed to take the boyfriend into custody or at least keep him under surveillance after he returned from a trip with his girlfriend’s camper but not the girlfriend, has yet to provide any explanation as to how they could so completely botch things up. Somebody from the media needs to go after them and the local DA with a vengeance, until they get some answers. Maybe Barney Fife was on duty when the boyfriend came back with the van but without the now missing girlfriend? According to one report, the cops in North Port, Florida, are now working on “multiple person investigations,” and are asking anyone with any information to contact the FBI. Yeah, contact the FBI, that’s probably a real good idea.
Some consideration needs to be given to the fact that the Islamic State is taking credit for a couple of bombing attacks against the Taliban. In other words, the civil war in Afghanistan continues but without Americans being stuck in the middle. Is there anybody out there who still believes we shouldn’t have gotten out? That Joe Biden, didn’t do the right thing? I’m sure there are, but then, some still believe the election was stolen and that we continue to be under threat from Jewish space lasers.
And finally, congratulations to the four civilian astronauts who just managed to orbit the earth and splash back down into the ocean. Something Col. John Glenn, USMC, accomplished in 1962, as part of a space program that was a joint military/civilian effort which concluded with our putting men on the Moon.
Glenn , for those who don’t know, was the first American, to orbit the earth. At the time it was a huge big deal, because the Russians had already done it, we were playing catch up, and Glenn, put his life on the line to get it done using rocket science which, at the time, wasn’t all that dependable. Our rockets were famous for blowing up.
I knew John Glenn, and he was probably the closest anybody will ever come to being a real-life “Captain America.” Consequently, I can’t get too excited about these billionaires going out into space to play, only because they are standing on the shoulders of giants like Col. Glenn. A little more perspective on what’s really happening, a little context with regard for the past would be nice. All I’m hearing is a lot of mindless cheerleading, almost nothing about the giants who got us to where we now are or the possible pitfalls of abandoning what was a relatively successful civilian/military partnership, in favor of a privatized space program. Something tells me that at some point we may come to regret this whole privatization thing. It would be nice, at least, if somebody started talking about it. If not thinking about it as well. I know that’s asking a lot.
If you missed Ted Koppel’s piece on ‘CBS Sunday Morning,’ then you missed a wonderful piece of broadcast journalism. It deals with the real “Mayberry, RFD,” in Mt. Airy, North Carolina, the boyhood home of Andy Griffith. How it’s been idealized and why, and what it might mean to us as a country. Koppel’s report was excellent. Here’s a link to it. Click here.
Have a nice day.
Back when I was still working for others, as a member of the “mainstream media,” it always amazed me that there was a pervasive view of what we were doing as a targeted attack on somebody or some idea, when all we were trying to do was present the facts while being fair to all sides involved by keeping our personal opinions out of it. Now, here I am, thirteen years away from the business, and it appears to me that the mainstream is launching an attack on Joe Biden. An attack that is unbalanced, without context and therefore, unfair.
Biden, went from being in the hotseat for pulling the country out of Afghanistan, to being the guy whose popularity plummeted as he attempted to manage “multiple crises,” for which, it was made to appear, he was somehow responsible. It was pack-journalism “multiple-crises” time. I don’t know who started it but before long it was pervasive. Let’s take them one by one.
With regard to Afghanistan, it’s too early following the pullout to condemn anybody for anything. The point, I think, is that a great many Americans are just happy to be out of that unholy mess. War without end, amen. You can have it. It could be that years from now, Biden will be seen as the one president who finally had the courage to get us out of there and that going into Iraq, was a mistake from the beginning. A Republican mistake.
Then there is Covid. Biden didn’t start that one, either, but it could be argued he is managing it as best anybody could under the circumstances, and certainly a thousand times better than Trump and the Republican anti-vaxers did.
Rounding out the tri-fecta of media crisis condemnation is Hurricane Ida. Again, this is not Biden’s fault and he and the Feds responded to it in a timely fashion. No, he wasn’t out throwing paper towels at the peasants like the idiot Donald was, and his response was again a thousand times better than either Trump or Bush.
Biden got us out of an endless war he did not start. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, did. Biden, is also doing a better job of handling the Covid situation and problems associated with Hurricane Ida, than any of his Republican predecessors, particularly Trump, whose stalling and denial in the beginning only made matters worse with Covid, and George W. Bush, who pretty much just ignored Katrina until it became so embarrassing that he was forced to leave his birthday party and go do something.
But these facts, this perspective, is seldom or never mentioned by the mainstream media, which seems intent upon condemning Joe Biden, making it look like they are trying to take him down, rather than pursuing an accurate contextual accounting with regard for historical perspective. You know, balanced journalism, without continuing to pretend the developing fascism of the right should be treated with the same credibility and validity as those who believe in and continue to support democracy.
It is past time to stop pretending this is about anything less than the central question of the expanding fascism of the right taking on the patriotism of those in the center and on the left who are being pilloried for their alleged liberalism. Or, simply put, Neo-Nazism on one side and the supporters of American democracy on the other.
This is not opinion. To any reasonable, rational, informed person, it is fact. And it is time for the mainstream to get down to business and begin reporting out the facts regardless of the backlash, because our country, our very liberty, is at stake. Business as usual, pretending both sides have equal validity, no longer works. Not when one side is Neo-Nazi, and cares nothing for the truth. It is time for the mainstream to get out of the hair and makeup infotainment business and back in the journalism first business, no matter how much it hurts.
It almost feels like the mainstream is afraid of telling it like it is with regard to how badly the Republican Party has abused and misused the power it has been granted by the American people over the past several decades as Republicans continue to shift from the party of Reagan, to a Neo-Fascist mob.
A gang of liars who fear the truth will expose them for who they are. Women-hating, gun-toting, science-deniers, who attempted a coup de’tat against the country and failed. The mainstream media needs to get on that instead of attacking Joe Biden, who so far, has done a pretty damn good job as President, without inciting a riot or encouraging anyone to stage a coup.
Learned today that Ed Asner had died. And Lou Grant, along with him. A purist has left us.
I first met Mr. Grant, on tv, while working as a reporter for WBNS-TV, in Columbus, Ohio. I hadn’t paid any attention to the Mary Tyler Moore Show before Columbus, but when I got there and noticed everything in the newsroom either slowed or stopped when the “MTM” show came on, I too, started paying attention and laughing along with everybody else.
Often times, the buffoonery the show portrayed was close to the truth of what went on in America’s tv newsrooms. Sometimes, it was right on target. Uncomfortably so, for some of us in the business.
The second time I met Lou Grant, it was at a fundraiser for a youth symphony orchestra in Los Angeles, and he was playing Ed Asner. We were in what was serving as a “green room” for celebs. I knew who he was and was surprised when he knew who I was as well, and for some reason, maybe because he had played a tv newsman and I was a tv newsman, we hit it off and started talking about the news business.
It was his contention, that the news business was done. That it was dead, and that it wasn’t coming back. For my part, I argued that like everything else, the news game is cyclical, and while the trend toward “infotainment” may have taken us down the wrong path, surely it would not last. Surely, the pendulum would eventually swing back in the direction of journalism being primary and infotainment being secondary. I pointed out that we had previously gone from the “yellow journalism” of William Randolph Hearst, to the excellent product the New York Times and CBS News were putting out in the 1960’s, with Walter Cronkite on the news desk. “Not gonna happen,” he said. And that was that. Lou Grant in the person of Ed Asner, had spoken. Or maybe it was Ed Asner, speaking for Lou Grant. For just a minute there, as the conversation got a little heated, I wasn’t sure.
I never bumped into him again, at least not that I can remember. If you’re in Hollywood long enough you meet so many celebrities so many times that you forget who you met when or how often, and I was there for more than 30 years. What I can tell you is that I’m not sure Asner wasn’t right in his conviction that the golden era of American Journalism is over and that it won’t be coming back. At least, not like before. Not like it was when Lou Grant was City Editor at a major paper in Los Angeles, working for a family that cared about their reputation in the community as opposed to a corporation that cares only for the bottom line. I just don’t know. I do know from following his political causes that Ed Asner, was a purist. A great actor who gave life to the characters he portrayed and believed in the purity of the causes he supported like the United Farm Workers and the Screen Actors Guild, where he served two terms as president.
His death leaves a big hole in who we are. Regardless of what you might have thought about his politics. Perhaps I feel this way because I spent a lifetime in the news business. Or maybe it’s because Ed Asner was just that good at bringing to life the character of Lou Grant, and the ethical, principled and fair, old-school news business he represented.
He may have been art representing reality, but it’s a reality we all desperately need.
The endless Covid/Cuomo cycle to the exclusion of almost everything else on the 7/24 channels will put you in therapy if you let it. Just like FOX, CNN and MSNBC, put Donald Trump in the White House. Just as the unending stream of accusation is about to sink the career of Andrew Cuomo and possibly his brother as well, simply for being his brother.
After hearing someone being condemned forty or fifty times, one is likely to believe the condemnation regardless of its legitimacy.
This incessant yammering about the same two or three stories over and over is dangerous. The government needs to step in and somehow balance out the demands of the First Amendment with what’s best for the country as new tech continues creating a new intensity in communications with too little attention being paid to the quality of the product.
As a species, we are barely beyond the “monkey see, monkey do” phase in our development. We can’t be expected to deal with this.
During my tenure at KTLA, the morning news people wanted me to go over to one of the comedy clubs in Hollywood, get some training on how to do standup, and then go on stage with my “act” while our cameras rolled. I said no, not because I didn’t think it might not be an interesting experience, but because the thought of doing standup comedy terrified me.
A famous actress once told me how much she admired those of us who did live tv news, because, she explained, we had to talk off the tops of our heads, with no script and no room for mistakes. That said, doing standup comedy has to be one of the most frightening things I can think of. Standing out there under the lights all by yourself with the obligation of making people laugh is to me way scarier than doing live tv news. And increasingly, it’s becoming next to impossible due to the ever-expanding universe of political correctness.
In this current environment one wrong word or distasteful act can be a career ending mistake. For some, there are no second chances, even after an apology for something that was done years ago. What Al Franken did was dated, and not totally unexpected for someone who had been a cast member of Saturday Night Live. Nevertheless, he was treated like a felon and cast out from his job in the United States Senate, for the act of making someone of the opposite sex feel uncomfortable – before he had become a senator. The overreaction to Franken’s transgression will surely go down as a mistake made by a party caught up in the fever and fury of PC reform.
In the 60’s, Foster Brooks was one of the funniest comedians out there. His portrayal of a sloppy drunk wouldn’t stand a chance today. He would in fact, probably be barred from the studios as his act is no longer acceptable territory. Alcoholism is a medical condition, of course, and as such it isn’t something to be taken lightly. And yet, the more responsible we are, the more seriously we take ourselves and the more PC we become, the less we have to laugh about, making a comedian’s job far more difficult.
Is there some point at which losing our ability to laugh at ourselves will yield a negative return? Might evolution eventually take us to a place where humor has been transformed into something some of us will no longer be able to recognize? And those who do recognize this “new comedy” as being funny will have no idea what real comedy was? That it was something that actually caused people to laugh out loud?
Are we at a point where we all need to lighten up just a little? Even the suggestion sounds politically incorrect, so maybe we’re there.
A tv producer friend used to tell me, “There isn’t anything you can say that won’t gore somebody’s ox.” I think he may have been right and maybe we’re simply dealing with it? Perhaps evolution is carrying us all forward to a place of necessary increased sophistication with no offense taken and fewer laughs heard? I really have no idea, but I do feel sympathy for today’s comics, who are being forced to deal with whole generations who apparently feel entitled to be in a “safe place” where they are showered with love and acceptance and nothing else. Certainly no criticism, no matter how constructive. Every little snowflake is perfect unto itself.
I’m sure you’re wondering whom the actress was. Truth is, I can’t remember. After more than 40 years in the biz, these things are bound to happen.
1Bob Compton