Speculation...

Perhaps you've seen or heard or read about yesterday's rear-end crash involving 2 T-line commuter trains in Boston.

Coverage on local television, as it always is with these stories, was live, immediate, and went on for hours despite the static nature of the video and the glacial nature of the flow of any real, new information from the scene. They like to call this "breaking news," which most often means the dominance of technology over substance. After a fairly short interval there were basically no developments, nothing "breaking" to say or show.

Reporters and cameras were shooed away to spots up on the hill away from the actual scene, or left to to do stand-up reports from the front of a nearby hospital where nothing was happening. We had the same endless aerial shots from their looping helicopters hovering helplessly over the mangled mass of metal down below. We had the static shots of the brave rescue volunteers milling about down on the tracks. Then riders on the train, anxious for their 15-minutes began to call in to tell their stories. "I was sitting in my seat and suddenly we were hit. My glasses fell off. My bag flew out of my hand. I crawled around and found them and got off the train. So did everyone else. We went home." Twenty meaningless stories; all the same.

I expected all that. Have come to accept it, even. Time filling while the news department management and the viewers hope to see something fresh, possibly wrenching.

What got to me yesterday throughout was the level of speculation and half-baked assertions that the anchors, stuck away in their studios, were pulling from their imaginations and God knows where else. Half, and quarter baked stuff, especially from the peculiarly and inappropriately folksy male anchor on the CBS affiliate, WBZ-TV, (though all the others were nearly as guilty). On and on they went, words words words, filling the air despite the nearly complete absence of any actual information.

Guesses stated as fact about what all the rescue volunteers were doing, what might have caused the crash, the supposed mindset of the officials on the scene, even thin-air statements about the probable condition of the woman who was operating the train that smashed into the one stopped in front. (She later died).

None of it was meant to sensationalize the situation, none of it was meant to be insensitive, I am sure. But once again it demonstrated how these glib, high profile anchor folks are basically untrained and unprofessional. Smooth, yes. For the most part. But spectacularly unaware of the consequences of their vapid, uninformed drivel.

Whatever happened to: don't speculate; only say what you know to be the facts.

Of course if they ever did that what would they do with the hours of empty, arid, silent hours of coverage while we sit around like the video vultures we are, leaning into our screens. Waiting on the injured and the dead, live.

McKinnon

I don't know, maybe it's just me but I find this story absolutely remarkable. At least, I really want to.

Mark McKinnon has a long history as a media advisor, starting with Democrats in Texas, before switching to George Bush. He's served our current President and other top Republicans, developing some of the nastiest ads against John Kerry last time (though not the deplorable Swift Boat crap), and has been most recently employed as the chief media person for John McCain in his run for the White House.

But last June McKinnon made a public announcement. He told everyone that he could not work against Barack Obama if Obama became the Democratic nominee saying the election of a black person would "send a great message to the country and the world."

The comments came at a time when McCain was wallowing at the bottom of the Republican presidential pack, and Clinton appeared inevitable on the other side. So it didn't have much weight, didn't seem to carry. In fact, I don't even recall reading or hearing about it then.

Today however, things are completely different. McCain will be the nominee and it appears certain that Obama will as well. And today McKinnon stepped up.

He actually did what he said he would. He resigned from his job with McCain.

I was surprised, excited. So pure. So uncompromising. So damn principled.

Right? How could it be other?

Though just now, from the dark, unprincipled, self-serving world of politics comes a flicker of a doubt. What if McKinnon thinks McCain can't win? What if he hopes to go home to the Democrats? What if this was just a job application.

Kennedy

Now we find that the seizure over this past weekend was caused by a cancer in Ted Kennedy's brain.

No one knows how fast life turns, so suddenly, better than Ted Kennedy. He has experienced family deaths, excruciating humiliation, personal failures, and peculiar, complicated, often unsettled dark times, along with a bounty of joyful and triumphant moments. And all have been commented on, analyzed, held up to the light and paraded around endlessly in public places.

This isn't about any of those well known incidents. We have heard so many of them anyway already, and I fear we are in for them over and over again the next several days.

This is about my single personal contact with Senator Kennedy. A story I have told privately many times.

It was some 30 years ago and I was developing a national television series showcasing how The U.S. Constitution had a significant impact on individuals, some well known and some not.

Somehow the Senator's office found out, and asked me to testify about the particulars before a committee Kennedy was heading. I flew to Washington and answered questions for no more than 5 minutes. Everyone smiled and nodded. I was glad to have been asked but felt it was certainly not important to anyone (but me) except as an indulgence, a small nod to someone working out of Boston from someone representing Massachusetts.

But as I left the committee room I sensed a rather large presence moving out just behind me, and then a tap on my shoulder.

Ted Kennedy.

"Thanks for coming," he said to me smiling. "I'm glad you are helping celebrate The Constitution. This country has meant so much to me and my family. Given us so much. Let me know if I can help further."

He shook my hand, went back inside.

I thought it was a nice additional gesture, but probably just a little more constituent glad-handing, not likely anything beyond. Enough that I got some publicity for the work, some face time, an ego boost out of it.

About a week later the Senator himself called me to ask whether I needed any assistance getting additional participants for the project. I figured, what the hell, and gave the staff person he put on the phone the names of six individuals I wanted who were not returning my repeated requests.

Within 2 days I heard from them all, and each one eventually appeared.

When I called Senator Kennedy back to thank him, he repeated how glad he was to be able to be of assistance.

"It's just what I do," he said.

TO HIS HEART, BIDDING IT HAVE NO FEAR
Be you still, be you still, trembling heart;
Remember the wisdom out of the old days:
Him who trembles before the flame and the flood,
And the winds that blow through the starry ways,
Let the starry winds and the flame and the flood
Cover over and hide, for he has no part
With the lonely, majestical multitude.

Yeats

Kristol's Version

After Obama appeared with Chris Wallace on FOX News Sunday, Wallace gathered around him his usual crew which includes the Daffy Duck of the right, William Kristol.

Kristol, who likes to "point out," used the opportunity to point out how Obama is faltering and stumbling and losing ground to the ever charging, ever tough Hillary Clinton. Then Kristol, practically unable to contain his glee, essentially jumped into the camera to further claim that Clinton not only has all that momentum but, (wait for it) SHE LEADS IN THE VOTE COUNT, TOO.

I'd like to make that an exact quote but I don't have a transcript. However, there is no question it is exactly what he was saying. Loud and certain, no waffling.

Skip forward a mere 24 hours to Kristol's column in the NY Times:

Furthermore, if you add up the votes in all the primaries and caucuses — excluding Michigan (where only Hillary was on the ballot), and imputing the likely actual totals in the four caucus states, where only percentages were reported — Clinton now trails in overall votes by only about 300,000, or about 1 percent of the total....

Note all those qualifiers in the column. Compare his assertion in the friendly, and shall we say, less constrictive environs of FOX News to that of the NY Times, which still clings (sadly, often weakly) to some standards for truthfulness. (And even in the Times, Kristol still tenaciously includes Florida and its disallowed primary in this version of his count.)

He can't even agree with himself.

I can hardly wait to see if he has yet a third version in The Weekly Standard where he is Editor.

Well, actually I can wait.

Kennedy responds....

I get so few comments here so I was delighted that Dan Kennedy himself chose to read and respond to my last, just below, about using first names of public figures. I am particularly pleased that Kennedy (notice I don't refer to him as Dan) would take time to do that because my post was about his Media Nation blog, and because I particularly respect his opinion.

Since comments are public I thought I'd post it here in a more prominent place, along with my reply.

Dan Kennedy said...

I don't know. His first name is unusual, which acts as kind of a branding. And his last name sounds more like a first name. Couldn't that have something to do with it, too? And what about Rudy (Giuliani)?

I say:

Patrick isn't, to the best of my knowledge (limited I admit), involved in this kind of branding, nor is his staff or advisors. And neither is Obama.

As for Rudy, this was a famously unlikable man, and before his campaign dropped off the face of the earth I am guessing he tried putting forth “Rudy” to soften his image. But though he used his first name as his website address he still referred to himself there by his full name. And the various articles and blog entries I just googled also used both, except in a few cases when it was a second reference within the same piece.

I support allowing the individual to decide how he or she wants to be known, and in a respectful environment we should honor that.

So, fine to say FDR or Give-Em-Hell Harry or Ike. Not so with Patrick or Obama.

And really, I believe that in the cases of Patrick and Obama people use their first names to diminish them and not to show informality or respect or because of any branding, except for the negative kind. The racial aspect also remains.

First Names ....

There is a media blog called Media Nation, written by a smart, concerned, informed Boston professional named Dan Kennedy. I have mentioned it before, and it is (almost) always worth reading.

Today Media Nation focused on Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, dealing with Patrick's continuing deflation in the public eye after a high rolling beginning. That appears, certainly, to be true. But it not what this is about.

This is about the comment section so commonly available at the end of blog posts (including mine).

In the case of Kennedy's piece about Patrick I noticed that the large majority of those posting comments called the Governor by his first name only. So it was Deval this and Deval that. And Kennedy, in his header also calls him Deval.

I wonder whether, even the most anti-Bush people would write about him in public as George? Or refer to Cheney as Dick (without the obvious joke)? And though Hillary Clinton wants to be known as Hillary only, that's clearly to differentiate (and distance) herself from her husband.

So why do it with Governor Patrick? Just as a certain group have taken to using Barack instead of Obama. And does it, just perhaps, have to do with the fact that they both happen to be Black?

Just asking.

The Primary...

The New York Times has written a (link)wonderful editorial about the Pennsylvania primary.

Please, read it. Please.

Marathon....

Yesterday was a beautiful day in Boston and everyone who could showed up. Either to run or to watch. I don't live too far from the finish line so I walked over later in the day as the late arrivals were heaving across the end marker, showing the pain but also the joy in having completed the task.

Many in the four deep crowd remained, cheerfully applauding each competitor, taking their photos, and straining to try to find Lance Armstrong who was running for the first time.

It was a peaceful and contented crowd, and a moving positive event.

This morning when I went by the same location the barriers were down, the litter mostly picked up, remnants of the race largely gone. By tomorrow the area will be returned to normal.

I was thinking about all that while I am getting ready to watch the results in another long-distance race... in Pennsylvania. This one is is different though. By tomorrow when the results are in, and the crowds gone, we most likely still will not know the winner --- only the losers. Us. As usual.

In that marathon the garbage will long remain, the ugly aftermath will linger, barriers still up, the political pollution continuing to foul the air and diminish our possibilities.

WBZ-TV ... say good-bye to all that

Today in Boston the CBS owned television station, WBZ, laid off about thirty staff members. Thirty! Including several of the best known on-air personalities.

The company did the same in other cities where it is an owner, including San Francisco and Chicago, according to reports. But it is in Boston where I live, and at WBZ where I worked (off-and on) in a variety of capacities, including News Director, for oh-so-many years, where the largest number were sent packing.

Probably most everyone knows that newspapers across this country are in sad shape, owners and editors and writers praying they might find some way to recapture their lost readers and attract new ad dollars. No one is predicting how our print media will look in, say, 10 years or so. It's the internet, not paper, which is is the Holy Grail,

I can tell you that inside television, back years ago when I was so involved day-to-day, there was always a kind of built in smugness about layoffs and revenue. We used to tell everyone that we were a recession-proof industry, grabbing viewers faster than an amoeba multiplies. That we'd never have to lay off anyone. We were "golden." The only question was how much profit would increase from the year before. To have let even one someone go, and called it a layoff, would have been embarrassing. Thirty at a time would have been seen as cataclysmic.

We fired people, sure. Firing we did regularly, with a kind of calculating pleasure. But only individuals. Usually lower level staffers, or managers caught up in the unending political intrigue. Anchor talent, the most visible representations of television franchises, were also tossed aside the moment after their ratings fell off, or when they got too uppity about money, or when they pissed us off, or when someone newer or hotter became available. It was a management tool, firing was, designed to keep staffers off balance and afraid, and to drive home how unconcerned we were about losing this person or that one.

(I recall sitting in a room full of overworked, struggling television people who had been showing up seven days a week trying to develop a new local programming venture of great importance to the company. They had finally gotten up enough courage to ask for a meeting with the President of the television station group to tell him that they were discouraged, tired, overworked and maybe underpaid. After dancing around it for a while, someone finally spoke up. Without missing a beat the President said in a soft voice more terrifying than if he had yelled: "Listen. You hear that?" The room became quiet, the occupants strained to hear whatever it was it was he was referring to. After a moment the President raised his arm and pointed upward. " Come on. Listen. It's a 747. And it is circling. And it is filled with people. And all of them want your jobs." The meeting ended. Everyone knew he meant it.)

Now it has changed. People stay a very long time at television stations, there are contracts, pay is considerably higher, hours more appropriate, and there is even gratitude for performance and service. Loyalty is often rewarded. Management and ownership is more enlightened, generally. Abuse still exists I am sure, but not as blatant, not as callous as when we were "golden." People still get fired, especially on-air talent and news management, but a surprising number of employees stay for a very long time. Here in Boston that is particularly true at WBZ and the ABC affiliate, WCVB, both of which have a coterie of people, many well-known, who have been around for years.

What has changed is that now television itself is not doing too well. The networks have been losing their audience base for years and revenue is down. At the local stations there has also been a serious fall off in audience size and advertising year-to-year as well. Television is finally getting tossed around in the same boat with newspapers. And its future is just as uncertain. The trouble is, the jobs are gone, the audience is not terribly interested or engaged, the advertising is drying up.

So, today when all those people were let go at WBZ-TV no one who had been folling developments within the industry could really be surprised. Layoffs? Oh sure, we knew it was coming.

So, listen. You hear that? That plane load of people is still circling. Many plane loads. But for most of those thirty folks who used to be at WBZ in Boston, and for the others elsewhere, there will be no place to land.

The Eye Doesn't Lie ....

You really can't fake these things. Though lord knows many try.

And in a world of plastic, phony, posed people it is rejuvenating and reassuring to see this photo of these two important people linked together, joined joyfully in one place at the same potentially historic time.

Kristol (Un)Clear....

The ugly stuff is just really starting. Kristol, in NY Times, wrote a column claiming that Obama had indeed been inside the church the day the Rev. Wright delivered his loudest (and most seen) anti-America stuff. But Kristol got it wrong. Obama was not there, he was in Miami campaigning on that day, and can prove it, too. Sent the info on to Kristol who retracted (sort of) today.

I sent this letter to the Times. Don't know if it will be published, though I'd be surprised if it is: (Update on 3.23: Not published)

To the Editor

Re: Generation Obama by William Kristol, (Column, March 17)

Atop his column I see that Kristol has placed a correction regarding his prior claim that Obama was in church that day when Rev. Wright made his often shown angry comments. Now Kristol acknowledges that he was wrong. That Obama was somewhere else. The correction, of course, does not make up for the fact that Kristol apparently did not bother to check his source, or to check with the Senator's office before writing his original column. And it does not make up for the fact that the original has been circulated, uncorrected, by various websites and will, no doubt, continue to be falsely used against Obama. It is this kind of rogue writing and most basic and fundamental journalistic failure that may yet cause the Times to regret bringing Kristol aboard.

JS
Boston, MA.

My Times Is Your Times...

The old grey lady got slightly more grey today, giving up 2 seats on its board to outsiders who have been agitating against certain practices and policies by the paper.

The family Sulzberger continues to retain voting control but the 2 hedge funds, which have accumulated 19 % of the company stock, have wedged their way in. The outsiders, now insiders, want The Times to sell off certain of its holdings including The Boston Globe, some smaller newspapers, the Times building, and even a minority position in the (gasp) Boston Red Sox.

Sulzberger put on a happy face about the defeat: “Both the board and management welcome the perspectives and insights of our proposed new directors.” Uh huh.

And the victorious insurgents: “Our nominees look forward to working with the other directors and management to build and deliver value for all shareholders.” Meaning, look out, the battle has just begun. And it's going to get ferocious.

With All Due Respect....

This will be brief.

I have been listening, for years now, with wonder and irritation to folks who use a particular phrase to set off feelings or opinions they hold about an individual or an issue. It comes up a lot these days because the media pundits have a lot of time of their hands trying to explain their current evaluations of the candidates both here and gone.

But it is not limited in is use. It is everywhere. Today alone I heard it six times. Two in a store while a customer (not me) was debating whether she should get a refund on an item, once in an email I received about a movie director, and three times during a TV panel discussion regarding John McCain's Conservative credentials.

And I tell you, the next time someone says it to you--- especially if it is going to be about you ---- either run away or get ready to be offended, because what is coming next is not going to be good.

No one who says, "With All due respect," is going to follow that with anything giving the subject or object its "due," and most especially none of it will even remotely be related to "respect."

Google will confirm that more than 12-million times if you check it out.

The only expression that is worse is when someone says, "Hey, nothing personal," right after telling you, "With all due respect, I have to say you are a complete a-hole."

The Oscars ...

And now ladies and gentlemen, the academy awar... ZZZZ..ZZZ..ZZZ...zz.....

Bobby Fischer

I've been reading accounts, from diverse places, of Bobby Fischer's death today.

He was at the top in his field, almost as elusive as Howard Hughes in his personal life, and I dare say the only American chess player whose name was known to most (or any) Americans.

He captured our imagination and attention by beating the unbeatable Russian player at a time when chess' cold calculating environment would be a perfectly fine metaphor for the cold war that locked together our two countries. And he made money, eventually big money, doing it. There was even a movie, Searching For Bobby Fischer, that counted on his name being enough of a curiosity, enough of a draw, to bring in the public.

But along the way we discovered that Fischer was anti-Semitic and a Holocaust denier, though a Jew on his mother's side, and probably, it turns out, on his long gone father's as well. Then we read and heard his anti-American rants after 9/11 in which he said we deserved what we got. The man who was King thought of himself as a pawn.

So, today when after he died in Iceland (another perfect metaphor --- for his soul) I read with fascination and then disgust the obits posted by some of the main media outlets.

Without fail they characterized him a "brilliant," "gifted," player. Most I saw also called him "eccentric," (CNN and Washington Post and Reuters and BBC), or "reclusive," (AP), or "iconoclastic" (NY Times). But while The Times had a few details recalling his virulent anti-Semitism as well as his anti-American outbursts, many barely mentioned that at all, or only in passing. And in the AP story, syndicated around the world, there was nothing at all.

An update: There is a follow-up article in the NY Times today (Saturday) about Fischer. I found it a mushy, oddly sympathetic piece, filled with soft, slightly dismissive references marking what the writer calls Fischer's chess playing "gifts" and labeling his remarks about 9/11 and that Jews were "filthy lying bastard people," only as "delusions." How generous. How kindly. How charitable and non-judgmental.

Oh, and the President of The World Chess Federation recalled Fischer as, "an intellectual giant I would rank next to Newton and Einstein."

Somewhere Hitler is smiling, and every past, practicing, and potential hate deviant is relieved.

Weighing In...

I am recuperating here. Some dental surgery. Not much, actually the continuation of a process that began six months ago or so. And not likely to set me back for too long they say. Just enough to get me to thinking about the some recuperation needed by others after the New Hampshire primary.

So, I am weighing in. Words on a page to take my mind off my muffled mouth, though I know this dental discomfort is making me testy.

The recuperators:

The media: I mean all those men and women who slogged through the never ending days leading up to the vote, all those reporters, print and video, who not only jumped on the Obama bandwagon, but constructed the bandwagon just so they could ride on it.

As Tom Brokaw so retrospectively pointed out to the often insufferable Chris Matthews on MSNBC:

BROKAW: You know what I think we're going to have to do?

MATTHEWS: Yes sir?

BROKAW: Wait for the voters to make their judgment.

MATTHEWS: Well what do we do then in the days before the ballot? We must stay home, I guess.

BROKAW: No, no we don't stay home. There are reasons to analyze what they're saying. We know from how the people voted today, what moved them to vote. You can take a look at that. There are a lot of issues that have not been fully explored during all this. But we don't have to get in the business of making judgments before the polls have closed. And trying to stampede in effect the process.

-0-

Oh yeah? Come on back from OZ Tom.

Brokaw has been around long enough to know that's not going to happen. Didn't in the Truman-Dewey race, didn't in elections within recent memory, surely didn't in New Hampshire, and won't this time as we head to super-whatever-they-are-calling-it coming up in February. The media will never recuperate because what they need to recuperate from is in the DNA of their business. They will only press (no pun) on, grabbing or creating the story whenever the opportunity presents, particularly when it's the polls, their collective sniffers ever ready for the slightest indication of an aroused or a potentially interested public. Especially when that opportunity presents itself to media folks who are already tired and bored, and repeating themselves to an audience that hasn't been really listening. Their very careers depend on grabbing that opportunity.

Obama: Sure he came from way behind to almost catch up, to almost take it. I really like him; I think he just could be the answer if only we can remember to ask the right question. But in the last days before the vote he started to appear slightly smug on the stump. Like someone spending the money before the check arrived. He needs to recuperate from that urge, though I think he has enough intelligence and enough drive to possibly be able to do that.

Clinton: I don't know whether she spontaneously welled up, I don't know if she really promised to iron the shirts. I do know that somehow she (and those others) are trying to position her huge slide in the New Hampshire primary from a commanding lead to a small, slight win as a wonderful accomplishment. She is quoted today as saying it was the last debate that pushed her through and not those wet eyes, not that heckler with the shirts, and not the women who rallied 'round and pulled the lever. She also said today that she had finally found her voice. Where was it hiding while she was piling up all those 35 years of experience she keep going on about? Who can know what she actually thinks about what happened in New Hampshire; who ever knows what is real with Clinton and what is opportunistic and programmed. To me, from a slight distance, it felt like a mercy win for her up there. And it feels as though she doesn't really understand that she needs to recuperate from being Hillary and the fact that so many people (voters included) just didn't like her even in this latest version.

McCain: He sometimes seems like a more genuine rendition of himself now. And maybe he has the legs to get to the nomination. But he is so boring on the stump. Can he recuperate from that? Perhaps a start would be to get some energy and actually talk to us, instead of stumbling head down through a terribly written victory speech that sounded like it came from someone running for president of the 9th grade.

Romney: Clinton lite. If he wore pantsuits and frosted his hair he would be her, but without any of the bona fides. There so much recuperation needed here that I don't know where to begin.

The pollsters: Actually, they don't need to recuperate. And wouldn't admit it even they did. They will just keep on asking their questions, compiling their results, and watching with the rest of us as the media gleefully runs with it, Brokaw not withstanding.

... and this just in: In his own blog, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams writes, "Give us a few weeks — we will promptly forget the lessons of this debacle in polling, predictions and primary politics. We will all live to screw up another day, though our performance in New Hampshire will be hard to beat."

Ain't that the truth.