Category: Media

By on

By the time I finish writing this blog, I might have changed my mind but right now I have to say Peter Falk as Columbo is my favorite television character. The show dates from the 1970’s and has aged surprisingly well. Unlike most detective shows where the trick is to figure out who the murderer is, the audience knows who the murderer is but how Columbo figures out who the murderer is.

The murderer is almost always some rich and powerful person who thinks they are smarter than the bumbling appearing Columbo who stumbles into their lives . Because they think they are smarter than Columbo, they fall into his trap of giving too much information that they inadvertently give away important details, seemingly innocuous information, that seals their fate later in the show.

Falk and the writers gives Columbo an array of distinctive quirks. His rumbled rain coat that he is always wearing and he can’t bring himself to rid himself of even after his wife buys him a snazzy new one, his ever present cigar, his scratching head when confused, his car — a barely functional vintage Peugeot convertible, his sad sack and barely functional pet dog, his never on screen wife who he calls Mrs. Columbo and who is full of good advice, and his saying “just one more thing” as he his leaving the suspect which tricks a usually exasperated person into giving some seemingly unimportant detail that really is at the heart of what Columbo is looking for.

You can’t help but root for Columbo as he manages to manipulate these arrogant assholes into prison. He plays into their egos, letting them think he is a bumbler while finding out everything he needs to know. Part of Falk’s charm is he manages to ingratiate his suspects into helping him and working with him to help him catch the killer while actually setting a trap for the unsuspecting guilty party. It is particularly fun when the suspect catches on to Columbo’s game but have gone too far to save themselves from falling into one of his traps. Their disdain for him throughout the show and their disbelief that this idiot outwitted them is the best revenge.

So if you are looking for a good detective show and you have exhausted everything you know, you might revisit Columbo as I think you will find it a rewarding experience.

By on

Mike Johnson, the new Speaker of the House, in case you can’t keep track with the rapid turnaround in that position, revealed that he and his 16 year old son have a porn accountability device on their electronic devices. So what? Is this really anybody’s business? He made a deal with his son about keeping themselves honest about viewing pornography. I don’t think this is in any way controversial or, for that matter, news worthy.

Yet some how this made the headlines. It is an incredible waste of space. It adds nothing to what we know about Mike Johnson as we already knew he was a fundamentalist Christian. It isn’t particularly surprising for him to have such a device and that he monitors his son’s viewing. It is his business.

So why the headlines. Now I would hate to say anything bad about the media but I think the only reason this is here is that it involves pornography and a public figure. It makes for a catchy headline. Speaker of the House, Pornography. The boys and girls in the Fourth Estate must have already had this typed and published before realizing what a snooze fest this was.

But given that there isn’t much going on now, what with the war in the Middle East, the war in the Ukraine, the Trump trials, questions about the economy and Taylor Swift’s dating Travis Kelce they had so much space that they had to fill it with something and this is what they decided to fill it. Empty space filling more empty space.

By on

Newt Gingrich believes that Former President Barack Obama is running the Biden Presidency behind the scenes. Just in case you didn’t hear it, and I am sure because she wants to keep the American public informed on all the scuttlebutt in Washington, Megan Kelley passes along this little tidbit in a discussion she was having with another reporter. Neither one provided a bit of evidence that this was indeed what was happening. Never mind, it is vitally important to feed conspiracies to the hungry Right-Wing mob. They have difficulty holding up their pitchforks without a daily does of conspiracy.

Since they are purposefully vague about what Obama is actually doing, I am trying to identify what the actual problem is. If they mean that Biden is appointing the same people Obama worked with in his term. So what? Isn’t that standard operating procedures here? A new Democratic President will obviously use experienced Democratic operatives from a previous Democratic President in their appointments. If they are saying that Obama secretly jumps the White House fence every night so he can run the government while Biden sits drooling in his wheelchair, then I think they need to provide some details backing this speculation.

This innocent passing along of speculation because it it important for the public to know is just bull shit. The media loves it and, of course, will pass the scoop along with nary a second thought. They love controversy and if people provide them with controversies, they will publish it. Why, if people are talking about it, then it is news and it would be an absolute disservice to the American Public to keep such important information from them.

I don’t know about you but I am not sure passing along gossip counts as meaningful dialogue or responsible behavior. Perhaps one of the reasons that the American public holds the press and the government in such low regard is their questionable behavior in supplying the American Public with evidence about what they are saying.

For the record, I have absolutely no facts to back up what I am saying but I think it is really important to get this unsubstantiated information out there because it might be true and it is vitally important that the American Public weigh in on my idle speculation. It could be important or it could light a fuse to a keg of dynamite, who am I to judge, I am just telling you what I’ve heard.

By on

I enjoy a good conspiracy theory as much as the next person. For me, though, a little evidence is required for me to take the bait and don my aluminum foil hat. This doesn’t seem to bother Vivek Ramaswamy, extremely long shot Republican candidate for President. He doubts the 9-11 Commissions findings. He wants to know how many armed US government officials were on board the planes that crashed into the twin towers. He admits he doesn’t have any idea or any information about how many were on board. Facts don’t matter. He has questions and damn it they must be answered.

The 9-11 commission admits to one government official being on board and he did not carry a gun. This isn’t good enough for Ramaswamy though, he needs another commission to confirm this fact. Now, I would think, and I am just guessing here, but in the spreading conspiracy theory world that’s all you need really, an inkling and nothing more, so I am going to go out on a limb here, that if there was any government official with a gun on board that day, they would have used it to stop the high jackers who only had box cutters. That this new commission is unlikely to discover anything new is besides the point. Coming from a candidate who claims fiscal responsibility is important to him this seems odd but then the similarly fiscally minded Republicans wanted 10 investigations into Benghazi even though each commission had remarkably similar findings.

Now Newt Gingrich, and, of course, another person who absolutely wants to rein in government spending on wasteful projects, claims that Former President Barack Obama is actually in charge of the government and not Joe Biden. Given that the Republicans claim that Biden is a doddering old man who should be in an old age home and not the White House, you would think they would take some comfort that Obama, a much younger and vigorous man, was actually in charge but no the nefarious Obama, partnered with the always evil Hillary Clinton, are up to no good. This is Gingrich’s theory, all gut instincts and no facts, and it needs investigating.

What bothers me about these obvious attempts to grab the media’s attention is that the media willingly just gives it to them. It is a remarkably easy method. Just say something outrageous and if you are half way famous person — the media will go out of their way to spread whatever bullshit conspiracy the person is talking about. I don’t blame Ramaswamy and Gingrich. They want attention and they know what they have to do to get it.

The media’s behavior is disappointing to say the least and belies the Republican argument that the media is against them. The media isn’t for or against anyone or anything. All they want to do is to sell papers. They are devoid of positions for the most part. So if anyone wants attention, all they have to do is say something outrageous and the media will do the rest. And you see where this takes us — Donald Trump, who, by the way, is out of office, gets 24/7/365 day coverage while the environment burns. There is not stop coverage of trans children which affects less than 1% of the students in public education because Governor DeSantis thinks it is the number one problem for American Education. It is all a diversion from what really matters. But never mind, I understand that there are some problems with deck chairs sliding on the Titanic. The good news is the passengers all have free ice.

By on

I can’t believe drag shows are still in the news. But Republicans have latched on to them as if they were the gravest danger the nation now faces. Witness –Bill Lee, Tennessee governor, joining Florida Governor DeSantis, in stopping drag queens from entertaining children. The good news is that the Republican clearly have run out of scare tactics because, if you take away Republican governors, there is absolutely no one worried about this.

It is not the first time that Republicans hyperventilated about non-issues. It is, after all, what they do best. How can we forget the problem of a nine months pregnant woman deciding to abort right after she goes into labor. This simply doesn’t happen and no doctor would proceed with the abortion even if it did. Even though it never has happened, Republicans demanded answers and Democrats stupidly answered them. In the end, the Democrats looked like people who would kill a new born baby if the woman wanted to obtain an abortion just prior to delivery. Why Democrats continue to fall for these hypothetical question about something that never happens and never will is beyond me but sadly they do.

This is why I am concerned about the drag show debate currently going on because awkward opposition to these laws might give people the impression that the Democrats are encouraging parents to take their children to drag shows. This isn’t the case at all but any time you involve yourself in a ridiculous debate, you risk saying something stupid like parent’s should decide whether their child should go to a drag show. Well, yes, this is absolutely true but it really isn’t something that most parents need worry about in the first place because drag shows are adult entertainment usually performed in an establishment that serves alcohol. Children won’t be attending even if, God forbid, the parents approved of the child going.

That doesn’t stop Republicans from getting upset about it. These new laws will have little impact on anyone. Drag shows will continue unimpeded for their adult audiences and children will continue not to see them. That the drag show issue continues to be debated, only shows the sorry state of American politics. A heated debate is going on about something that doesn’t affect anyone, that no one cares about, and that no law is likely to change the current situation. But, by all means, let’s continue to talk about the dangers of children at drag shows.

It is a a rather clumsy ploy by Gov. DeSantis and his fellow Republicans to put the spotlight on non-issue with which they think they damages Democrats. I doubt seriously if this is true. This is an issue that only is of burning importance to true believers. DeSantis and company might be able to shore up their own numbers with their fellow Republicans but everyone else? Have you heard anyone expressing concern about the dangers of children at drag shows? I haven’t.

It does however move the spotlight to an issue that, at best, is of peripheral concern to most Americans. The media loves talking about drag shows because drag queens are entertaining. Drag queens are much more fun viewing than say a spot about the origins of the war in the Ukraine. This also means, if the media is talking about drag shows, they aren’t talking about Healthcare, Jobs, Education, the Economy, the War in the Ukraine, and well the list goes on and on. Issues that actually affect people. But then the media isn’t about news, it is about selling ad space. The media prefers scandals over meaningful information about what is going on in the world. In other words, they prefer controversy and sex than news. This is why the Republicans are rampaging over drag shows and this is why the media is happily reporting about them.

It also shows that the Republicans are politically bankrupt. Concern about the dangers of drag shows is smoke and mirrors, a sleight of hand to draw attention away from these other more pressing issues. Do you think that Republicans would be talking about drag shows if they had any credible policies to deal with the the array of problems facing this country? Why would they spend so much energy on such a non-problem like drag shows if they could actually attract voters with winning policies regarding the economy or education or healthcare? Or protecting children, for Christ’s sake. They want to protect children from drag queens, which isn’t a problem, while ignoring the dangers of crazy men with guns shooting up schools which actually is a problem. And they are getting away with it.

This is where the Democrats need to confront them. Can Republicans show the damage that drag queens have had on children? How does that compare with gunmen? Would teachers and students need special training if a drag queen entered a school? How about if a gunman entered a school? Given the difference in dead children that gunmen cause in schools and the damage that drag queens do what would be a more prudent way to spend our time and money? Let’s ask them awkward questions about their empty priorities and see how well they respond.

By on

If you needed another example of the criminal malpractice of the present media networks, I give you George Santos. Why are they still talking about him? He is unimportant and his reputation is ruined. The only thing that could possibly revive his career now is if the press continual spotlighting of him creates sympathy among the perpetually persecuted wing nuts on the Republican right. The press is doing everything it can to make this possible.

Santos, a freshman congressman with little political power, may have been an important story as long as Republicans defended him. Once he was unmasked as a serial liar, most Republicans, at least the establishment ones, have abandoned him. The Republican leadership may allow him to stay the next two years in order to keep their slim majority but Santo himself is done. Any future opponent for his house seat, Republican or Democrat, will have ample examples of his perfidy and the voters of his district can remove him from his position.

Yet the media headlines his every lie as if the already multiple lies they have revealed before weren’t enough to convince the public he is a liar. Santos said this, Santos said that, every lie he utters makes a new headline with talking head round tables outraged at his brazen inability to tell the truth. For a business that runs on trying to capture the public’s attention with the new and the sexy, this seems like a peculiarly boneheaded move. There is nothing new about it and Santos is far from sexy. Why bother to read every new outrageous lie? I am convinced. Tell me something I don’t already know but Santos is no longer worth my time.

The Santos story is easy pickings. Santos, narcissist that he is, will continue to talk. If he talks, he will be lying. The average high school news reporter can google the information and discover the lie. Why the media has latched onto this story like a dog with a bone is a mystery. Their continued interest and piling on of Santos, they risk making him sympathetic to the already prodigious number of media haters. The enemy of my enemy and all that, see Donald Trump if you are interested in more details.

Worse, Santos is a distraction from more important issues. There can only so many headlines, so many talking head roundtables. If they are all talking about Santos, they aren’t talking about inflation or the Russian war or the meth epidemic or any of the million and one bigger problems than George Santos.

By on

Oakland Athletic’s outfielder Skye Bolt apparently got sick during a baseball game the other day.

However, why this is worth precious new’s space is baffling. There is no news there. He barfed. It isn’t funny. It didn’t impact the game. There was no daring rescue to get him off the field. The poor man quite simply barfed and walked off the field afterwards. This is not news.

But, for some reason, it is making the news. Whenever the news media complains about they are just doing their jobs and they are under attack for reporting the facts, I always think of instances like this. Yes, true enough this happened. In a world of billions of people, someone is going to be barfing. There is probably someone barfing this very moment. Why is this man barfing important to me?

The media has surrendered their lofty perch when they opted to reporting the sensational. They have a lot of discretion on what appears in their papers and in their news programs. Apparently vomiting athletes brings in viewers who want to see the gory details. Sadly it says a lot about their audience and it demeans journalism that they can’t restrain their lust for ad revenue to feed their audiences prurient interest.

By on

I lost faith in journalism during the 2016 election. The press likes controversy. It likes big personalities. it likes people who will say crazy things. Who better to provide those things than Donald Trump? Trump is a headline waiting to happen. The press dutifully gave him everything he wanted.

The press portray themselves as innocent in all this. They simply report the facts and leave it to the reader to decide. But this isn’t the way things work. Supplying the world with facts is important but the press really needs to sell advertisements. This means they need to show their potential customers their media outlet has a large customer base. This is the only thing that truly matters to the press. So while, they do print facts, they have a lot of discretion on what facts appear in the headlines and at the top of the hour. If it is likely to grab the audience’s attention, that particular fact has a better chance of seeing the light of day. All Trump had to do in 2016 is to say something crazy and the press aimed their laser like gaze on Donald Trump.

This was particularly true during the Republican Primary where the press couldn’t look away from Trump. Keep in mind, there was well over 10 candidates running for the Republican nomination in 2016. Governors, Senators, Business Leaders but the press ignored them because Donald Trump said crazier things which made for better news which meant more customers watching. All Trump had to do was call a press conference. The full press contingent showed up so they could duly report the facts. Trump received so much press coverage that he spent very little of his own money buying advertisements. He didn’t need ads, he had the press right in his pocket. They provided all the advertising he needed. The other poor saps couldn’t compete with the media savvy Trump.

This love affair continued after he was elected. It was Trump Trump Trump for four long years. Any crazy thing he said was put in the headlines, investigated and discussed endlessly by everyone in the press. While this was all going on, Trump’s allies were doing real damage to environmental and ecological regulation, replacing judges with hardcore conservative ones, giving tax breaks to their pals and undermining any government department they could wreak havoc with. The press, however, couldn’t take their eyes off of the very entertaining Trump and his headline grabbing antics.

So, here we are two years after removing Trump from the presidency and what is the press doing — putting him in the headlines every single day. This raid on his home is ridiculous. The only thing the press can do is speculate. Hour after hour of speculation. How is this valuable? The only facts they can report is that is happened and that Trump and a lot of Republicans are pissed off about it. There isn’t much else to say, at least that is a fact. It certainly doesn’t warrant the coverage Trump is getting and the only person that can be happy about all the attention he is getting is Trump.

And, of course, the press is loving it too. Don’t let them tell you otherwise. They love Trump. It isn’t a healthy love. It is very much a sick co-dependent love. But when Trump speaks, they will be right there reporting. What actual reporting can be done about Mar-a-lago? The press even admits that they don’t know anything yet. They keep saying we will have to wait to know what the raid was about. Why not wait then? But they kept help themselves. Instead, our best and brightest reporters are speculating about what the Mar-a-lago raid means, how it will affect Trump and what Garland might be thinking.

The net effect of this is it gives Trump all the attention he craves. He is a narcissist. He doesn’t care if the press is unfavorable to him, he just wants to be talked about. The press is co-operating with him in spades. Trump is Moby Dick and the press is Captain Ahab. They won’t give up until they put him in prison. Trump is 76 years old. He can drag this on for years and still die in the comfort of his own home. It isn’t going to happen. They also want Trump true believers to admit they were wrong and Trump is a bad man. This isn’t going to happen either. They want to prevent him from running for president in 2024. This could happen but the present strategy is putting Trump in the headlines again and he is loving it and the people who love Trump are back at his beck and call. The very things that propelled him to the White House in2016.

If nothing else, taking Trump off the front page would stop this co-dependent relationship. The press doesn’t have to play Trump’s game. It would require a lot of discipline and, sadly, it doesn’t look like the press understands or even cares to learn the lesson as long as Trump sells advertising.

By on

This damn war is so depressing. The Ukrainians desperately need the world to witness what is happening so they are sharing their experiences in the various different ways that modern technology has to offer. It is heart rendering. I can’t think of another way of saying it. There is a particularly moving one where a Ukrainian girl is evacuating Kyiv with her mother and saying goodbye to her father who must remain. The little girl is inconsolable. The father is inconsolable. I, of course, am moved to tears myself.

Usually, I avoid watching scenes like this because they depress me. There is nothing I can do to make the father or his little girl feel better. I am watching a family’s intimate moment, perhaps last moment together. Is this something I should be watching? Who is filming this and why? I don’t think the family is filming it so that 20 years from now the family will sit down and watch the day that they all broke down because they were being separated by war. It’s being posted by someone for all the right reasons — to show the trauma of the war on people experiencing this violence. OK. I have seen it. It made me cry. What now?

It worries me that the Ukrainians might have a different idea about what these videos are doing. I think many of them are trying to move us to action. Action that will genuinely help them in their struggle. Military action. You can hear it in their voices. The Russians are terrible. Help us. We, on the other hand, are just watching the news. Genuine help is not coming. We all know this. We are dealing with an unstable man who has been embarrassed on the world stage. He also has nuclear weapons. The biggest responsibility for the rest of the world right now is to see that Putin doesn’t start recklessly sending nukes this way and that. This means that the Ukrainians are on their own and all the heroic and heart rendering videos showing their struggle isn’t going to change that.

I sincerely hope that the Ukrainians throw the Russians out. They absolutely deserve a victory. But, I am having really mixed feelings about giving them any hope that the West will change their minds and help them out militarily. All these brave people saying look what is happening to us, you can’t just stand there and watch, can you? I am afraid we can and, sadly, we must.

In the meantime, all the war coverage feels wrong to me. Nightly, I see desperate people asking for help. After I have a good cathartic cry about their situation, I change the channel to my regular television viewing of murder mysteries and situation comedies. Aside from giving them my best wishes, there is nothing much I can do. The war, however, is great reality television. The hero rallying his people to fight back, brave civilians taking up arms to defend their country, a menacing villain everybody loves to hate and emotional conflict for days. What I don’t want, and what I am afraid I am seeing, is for a whole country to commit suicide because they think that help is on the way when all we really plan to do is watch it on our televisions. Has the war just become a snuff film which we can all safely watch under the guise of responsible journalism?

By on

I find myself increasingly irritated with the quality of reporting emanating from even the most prestigious news outlets like the BBC and the New York Times in regards to the evacuation of Kabul. It seems like everybody needs to get evacuated. Everybody.  I am not sure why and they aren’t particularly adept at telling me why.

A good example of this occurred several weeks back on the BBC that still nags at me.  Lyse Doucet, a BBC correspondent, interviewed an Afghan man who felt abandoned by the British because of visa issues which left him in Kabul after the Taliban took over. The man worked for the contract caterer who supplied meals for the British Embassy. He felt like he served the British well during his tenure and deserved evacuation without all of the visa application roadblocks the British government were putting in his way. Again, his only connection to the British government was serving meals to the embassy staff. He felt this work made his immigration during this time of chaos automatic and necessitates the British to ignore their application process for him and his family. He never really explained why other than he worked hard for the British. Doucet doesn’t pursue it. She does let the viewer know he feels abandoned and would like to very much for the British government’s help in bringing him there. 

I do not want to live in a Taliban controlled Afghanistan. I feel sorry for any Westerner or any Afghan ally who was left there.  I also want the Western governments to continue to help anyone who wants to leave.  I am sure that there are hundreds of thousands of people who want to leave Afghanistan. But, if the BBC was looking for a compelling story about someone trapped in Kabul and who is in immediate danger from the Taliban, the trusted news organization missed the mark by quite a lot with this particular story.

Evacuating a country, in the best of circumstances, is difficult operation. Afghanistan is far from a perfect situation. The country is in a civil war.  It was a dangerous place before the Taliban took over and it remains a dangerous place today now that the Taliban has taken control.  Both the Westerners who went to Afghanistan and the Afghan allies who worked with western governments knew this when taking their jobs. The British government was faced with a difficult job of evacuating their citizens and any Afghans allies. They had to prioritize based on the chaos around them, the resources available to them and the people who needed to leave immediately.

This is where the BBC breaks down. Just because the man felt he should be evacuated doesn’t mean that it was urgent for him to leave, or that it is important for him to jump the queue. Doucet doesn’t even try to make his case.   I kept thinking what exactly has he done that warrants the British government getting this man and his family to Britain. I am sympathetic to him wanting to leave, a lot of people do. But does he risk death or prison because he remains in Afghanistan. Did the Taliban threaten him?  Did the BBC have evidence of the Taliban threatening anyone and everyone who worked with the British embassy?  What were other Western governments doing for their catering staff?

Doucet milked this man’s uncompelling story for all that it was worth while spending precious little time determining if the man warrants any real concern. It is sad that he wasn’t on the list to evacuate immediately but if I were compiling that list, and given the facts I have, I would certainly have left his name off of it. Which leaves me pondering why the BBC chose to air this story. I am certain there are better examples out there that illustrates the point they were trying to make. Unfortunately, this man’s story fails miserably. It lacks both context and urgency. In the end I learned about an Afghan who doesn’t want to live under Taliban rule and who felt his very tenuous link with the British government entitled him to better treatment. The British government disagreed and he remains in Afghanistan with a lot of other Afghans who want to leave and who will have to struggle with British visa process to gain entrance.  It is a sad story and I am sure there will be more sad stories like it before the Taliban is through, but the man was not abandoned and he doesn’t warrant any special treatment.