I spent the better part of an hour this afternoon in a small gym with three TVs, one of which had both the up and down channel buttons missing, which meant it was stuck on one channel, in this case CNN. While I certainly understand that today's attempted explosion of a Detroit-bound airplane is a newsworthy terrorist story, a big deal with what appears to be a happy ending - passengers and crew subduing the terrorist - I can't help but complain about the way I flipped CNN into worthless firehose mode.
What they ran without end was a shot of the plane in what I assume to be a remote corner of the Motor City airfield, hazmat guy or two lurching in an out like The Hurt Locker as reality show, some cops walking and talking near the wings, and on the other side of the split screen some CNN anchor or expert talking and taking calls from other experts, but none of them offering anything but firehose conjecture.
Is this really going to be the way it is forever on cable news?
Thank God and Santa for TCM, running Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles on the second TV in the gym.
My son had turned the third TV to Nick. And it wasn't Spongebob.
Back when I was growing up in the 1960's, when the Vietnam War raged, boys came home in boxes every week, college campuses were filled with protests, Watts burned and heroes were assassinated, there was one man nearly everybody in America turned to for a half-hour a night: CBS News Anchorman Walter Cronkite, the man for whom the title was invented covering the 1952 political conventions, who passed away today at age 92.
It's impossible to imagine today that one person on television was such a trusted authority and that our nation had the collective attention to turn to him like that. Maybe having only three broadcast networks pre-cable made it possible, but Cronkite was a unique guy. Smart, firm, well-read, aware, he seemed the most evenhanded man in America. Not cool, not hip, but not square. Not a source of much parody by the college kids of the time, save for his standard closing line, "And that's the way it is." Even in his terrific historical dramatization show, You Are There, but with the historical date appended.
He got his start on local radio in the 1930's but made his bones as a war correspondent in North Africa and Europe during World War II. He was recruited by legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow to join his pioneering television news team and went on to anchor the CBS Evening News for 19 years. Not only did Cronkite break the news to America of the President John F. Kennedy and Reverend Martin Luther King assassinations, but his courageous 1968 commentary on the Vietnam War after the Tet Offensive, where he told viewers that he has come to the conclusion that the U.S. could not win that war, was perhaps the major turning point in national public opinion.
Here's a man married to his wife for 65 years who kept faith with family and country. And enjoyed sailing -- I once saw him driving around Martha's Vineyard, where he was a longtime seasonal resident, during the summer I spent there in college. Couldn't wait to call the folks and tell them I had spotted a real legend, the goosebumps kind.
Take a look at this pivotal broadcast in television history, when Cronkite announced JFK's death, incidentally with Dan Rather on the scene making his name known for the very first time, later to succeed Cronkite as CBS News anchor. The confirmation of Kennedy's death begins around the 5:00 mark, with Cronkite uncharacteristically, albeit very briefly, cracking a little emotion:
Contrast to learning about Michael Jackson's death on Twitter.
And how much less coverage Cronkite's passing will receive in the media today.
So as anyone could have predicted, the shoe-throwing Iraqi journalist is now a hero across the Middle East:
Newspapers across the Arab world printed front-page photos of Bush ducking the flying shoes, and satellite TV stations repeatedly aired the incident, which was hailed by the president's many critics in the region.
Many are fed up with U.S. policy and still angry over Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003 to topple Saddam.
As many as 98,000 Iraqi civilians may have been killed since the war began, according to Iraq Body Count, an independent organization that tracks media reports as well as official figures. The war has cost nearly $576 billion so far, according to the National Priorities Project.
Wafa Khayat, 48, a doctor in the West Bank town of Nablus, called the attack "a message to Bush and all the U.S. policy makers that they have to stop killing and humiliating people."
In Jordan, a strong U.S. ally, a 42-year-old businessman, Samer Tabalat, praised al-Zeidi as "the man. ... He did what Arab leaders failed to do."
The web has delivered a load of shoe-throwing parodies as well, my favorite being the last one on thisHuffPo page, featuring The Three Stooges.
My guess is that the incident will be repeated here in the U.S., possibly in mass fashion, once/if El Presidente gets in front of another crowd again soon. Maybe it'll spread even further, like the comical Yippie pie-throwing at public figures usually carried out by Aron Kay.
In case anyone has forgotten why El Presidente might deserve the shoe-pie treatment, he's still wrong, even admitting so, and not the least bit sorry about it:
Roger Ebert has a great piece on the sudden slashing of film critics from newspapers nationwide in favor of even more tabloid-style celebrity "news":
A newspaper film critic is like a canary in a coal mine. When one croaks, get the hell out. The lengthening toll of former film critics acts as a poster child for the self-destruction of American newspapers, which once hoped to be more like the New York Times and now yearn to become more like the National Enquirer. We used to be the town crier. Now we are the neighborhood gossip.
The crowning blow came this week when the once-magisterial Associated Press imposed a 500-word limit on all of its entertainment writers. The 500-word limit applies to reviews, interviews, news stories, trend pieces and "thinkers." Oh, it can be done. But with "Synecdoche, New York?"
The whole article is dead-on and devastating. Now, I'd argue that while the main fault is with the newspapers, there's some other trends responsible as well.
For one, with the fractionalization of media and audiences, movies no longer seem to be at the apex of culture that they held in the 1960's and 1970's. With all major studios under corporate control most downsizing their specialty divisions, and few independent studios still around, it seems harder and harder for serious critics to find serious movies to write about, discover.
For another, the reviews themselves seem more thumbs up/thumbs down (one downside of the Ebert legacy) rather than analysis or discussion that might get a more problematic film an audience.
Then there's the Internet. Not only has it created a proliferation of reviewers all along the professional-to-amateur spectrum, but with sites like Rotten Tomatoes, you can get all the opinions you'd ever want in a click, along with a neat summary and % approval number. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but I do think it has impacted some critics' jobs.
The greater problem here is the decline of the daily newspaper. Even where circulation is okay, the new corporate owners and turnovers mean more newsroom cuts, degraded and less experienced reporting, the need to pay for acquisitions after the fact with layoffs even if they end up reducing circulation further.
We're all the poorer for it, and one can only hope that something new and improved shakes out before too long, or we may end up being a blinded society, with no eyes and ears on what's really happening -- inside or outside the movie theaters.
And the only news we'll be left with will be celebrity in nature.
While the mainstream media is still playing catch-up, Jonathan Martin in Politico makes a compelling case for the current news on "terrorism" -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran -- all strengthening Barack Obama's hand with the most auspicious timing possible:
Barack Obama’s long-awaited and much-hyped trip overseas, in large part intended to overcome a perception that he’s not up to the job of commander-in-chief, seems to have come at the perfect time as recent events in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran have played into his message.
Chuck Todd was on MSNBC today saying the GOP is, actually, panicked by Obama's trip overseas:
And while covering for Andrew Sullivan, hilzoy slams home the point that Iraq Prime Minister Maliki's interview statement supporting Obama's approach to the Iraq War completely undermines any remaining rationale for the McCain campaign:
McCain's entire rationale, as a candidate, turns on Iraq and related issues, like terrorism and (to a lesser extent) Iran. What else is he going to run on? His grasp of the economy? His health care proposals? The widespread popularity of the Republican brand? He can't even run on the rest of foreign policy: McCain's approach to foreign policy has always lacked any kind of integrative vision; he treats problems in isolation from one another. This means two things: first, McCain really doesn't have an overarching foreign policy vision, and second, for him, Iraq has always been The Big Thing, and as a result, everything else got slighted...
...Again, McCain would have to choose: does he say that Iraq's government has made some real political progress, and is capable of making its own decisions? In that case, he should accept its wishes. Does he say that he can disregard its requests on matters of Iraqi sovereignty? In that case, he undercuts a lot of his claims that the surge has enabled real and lasting progress in Iraq.
As I see it, Maliki's statement is all upside for Obama. It neither poses risks for him nor presents him with problems. But it's a minefield for McCain. And this will, I think, become clearer as time goes on, when people begin to ask him these sorts of questions.
Chris Bowers thinks it may be endgame happening right now:
I am trying to think of the last time that Iraq was actually bad for Republicans and good for Democrats according to the pundit elite.
And, to top it all off, Obama is expected to have a million people attend his campaign rally in Germany on Thursday, which would make it the largest political rally in German history. Think about that for a moment: an African-American is heading up the largest rally in German history.
Obama is changing the world, and the world likes it. That is something McCain can never match. This trip should not only give Obama a bump in the polls, but position him extremely well for issue debates in the fall. This overseas trip could really be checkmate in the election.
He's been playing it coy ever since starting his book tour, but this high profile column makes it seem like he's already decided, or maybe is leaning all-but-decided to go for it.
One of the way Karl Rove and his acolytes are able to manipulate the mainstream media so successfully is the myth of political news balance.
The mainstream television media does not seem to allow itself to show just how bad one political party has damaged the country, much of which is through its unparalleled hypocrisy (i.e. gay marriage bans/closeted GOP politicians) as well as its lawbreaking habits.
Josh Marshall puts it all together in "The Muck Gap" from TPM. Highly entertaining and quickly informative.
