Category: Politics, Religion & Money

Barbara Walters’ Ultimate Claim To Fame?

Barbara Walters has always seemed to be one of those people who is famous because she has a desperate need to be famous. Walters is close to eighty years old, and in one last sad effort to reclaim the spotlight for herself, she has pulled out what she must think is her ace card. With Oprah’s help Walters has gone public about an affair she had thirty years ago with Edward Brooke, when he was a senator from Massachusetts. Who cares?

Geraldo is another one who bugs me. Everything these people do is so obviously really about their insecure little selves, and not what they claim to be informing us about in their roles as pseudo-journalists. Why do they keep showing up, year after year?

Now that I’m on a roll, I met Ed Brooke once, when I was a reporter and he was running for re-election in 1978, only to lose to Paul Tsongas. I wasn’t particularly wowed by him. Brooke came across as having a solid politician’s false front. I also met John Kerry at the same time, when he was an assistant DA investigating claims Ed Brooke had made about his divorce. I forget the details. Hey, maybe Kerry was looking into rumors about the Walters affair! But my point is that Kerry was aloof, just as he’s been described all these years.

Somebody who I interviewed, who impressed me very much indeed, was Ted Kennedy. He would have been about 45 at the time. Kennedy sat me down, a nobody kid radio reporter, and for nearly half an hour he talked my ear off, about every issue that concerned him and every bill he was working on. He had every fact and argument and viewpoint about everything right at his fingertips. When it was time to go he got going, but when I had his attention I really had his undivided attention, and I can’t recall any other politician taking the time and making the effort to do that for me.

Media Matters

Having been, in a relatively small way, in both the broadcast and print media, I’m fascinated by the blurring effects the Internet has had between these industries. Newspapers have been hit the hardest, and they’re doing what they can to adapt, mostly by taking advantage of the Web.

One innovation is to use blogging software, so letters to the editor can now be comment threads. Another approach is to add video. The suburban paper here, The Metrowest Daily News, posts videos on YouTube that are relatively rough, but servicable. Some are interviews, while others capture events, such as this suspicious truck fire at a Bose (the Wave Music System) Corporation parking lot.

Larger newspapers, such as The Boston Globe, are now posting slickly-produced videos to complement their feature stories. The video below goes with the story at this link, and I think it does a good job of helping to get the writer’s point across.

By the way, as I’ve pointed out before, the newspaper business had decades of warning that changes were coming. The very thing that was a great burden and expense, the printing and distribution of paper, was also a primary reason (along with literacy) for the success of newspapers, because it gave them control over access.

Papers liked to promote the idea that a single copy would be read by more than one person, but of course they preferred that not too much of that went on. Readership is only a guess, while circulation is a known number, and it’s always better to sell more copies.

Battlestar Colbertica

There was a new Tek Jansen installment on Stephen Colbert last week. I’ll leave it to you to find it on ComedyCentral.com. There was also this funny pass-off from Jon Stewart to Colbert.
[flv:/Video/2008/APR/ColbertGalactica.flv 440 330]Thanks to my buddy Bismo, we’re very much into watching Battlestar Galatica on DVD. Very impressive with Emmy-winning special effects by Bismo’s friend Mojo Lebowitz, as seen on the Panasonic PT-AX200U projector! We’re about to start season 3, so the last thing we knew, the Cylons were occupying the new terrestrial settlement. Please, no spoilers!

General Idiocy

Army Gen. David Petraeus can’t be ignorant, so he must be an idiot. Or he thinks we’re idiots.

The so-called “surge” was supposed to give Iraq “breathing room” to get its political act together. Obviously, the troop build-up had nothing to do with the reduction in violence, as proven by what happened in Basra. It could happen again at any time, and there’s nothing the American military can do to prevent it.

There’s a power struggle in Iraq. The latest example happened to be between two Shiite factions, one of which is the alleged ruling government. Prime Minister al-Maliki took military action in an attempt to assert his political control over Muqtada al-Sadr, and even with our help he didn’t exactly win. Hey Petraeus, you know what this is called?? CIVIL WAR!

Petraeus knows that if he says a single word that isn’t in keeping with what George Bush wants to hear, his career is over. Bush says he listens to the generals and not politicians, but the generals who tried to speak the truth are gone. But ya know what Petraeus needs to think about? If McCain isn’t elected president, his career is over anyway.

The Bush-Cheney apologists are now reduced to making two weak and sorry points justifying our continued presence in Iraq:

  • There was less mayhem for a while
  • We broke it, so we have to fix it

BUT WE CAN’T FIX IT! The mess over there will play itself out whether or not we’re there. The first order of business for the next president must be to get us out of Iraq.