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