Category Archives: Media

Now, Wait A Minute!!

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We are intrigued by the Trumpists who think our former president was correct when he said now-retired Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley should be executed for treason because he called his Chinese counterpart in the crazy post-January 6 days of the Trump administration to assure him that the United States was not planning an attack on China.

Trump called the conversation “treason,” writing on his (un)Truth Social page, “This guy turned out to be a woke train wreck who, if the Fake News reporting is correct, was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the Prsident of the United States. This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH. A war between China and the United States could have been the result of this treasonous act.”

The statement is remarkable because Trump seems to give credence to reporting by those he considers “fake news media.” But such self-contradictions within his constant self-aggrandizing verbal disgorgements are always expected.

Many observers warn that this typical Trump rant is another call for violence by his supporters and is an example of why his re-election would be perilous for our Democratic Republic. While reporters who interviewed several Trumpists in Iowa, where he recently campaigned found some willing to cut Milley some slack, one seemed to voice the common temper of the larger MAGA cult: “Why was he not in there before a firing squad within a month?”

As long as the Trumpists are asking THAT question—

There’s another question that nobody we have heard of has asked Trump. And if anybody does, we know the answer will be a doozy.

The question is this:

If it was treason for Milley to assure the Chinese that there were no plans for an attack—-

WERE THERE PLANS FOR AN ATTACK?

Well, Donny?

Squirming

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One of the biggest jobs of any reporter is to hold public officials accountable for their remarks or their actions.  Sometimes the official cannot prove a point he wants to sell to the public.

You know they’re in trouble—and they know they’re in trouble—when they refuse repeatedly to answer a straight question with a straight answer.  And all that does is make a good reporter bore in.

It should make voters ask questions themselves, chiefly, “Why is he dodging, ducking, and bobbing and weaving?” and next, “Can I trust what he’s saying.”

In our long experience of challenging the veracity of political rhetoric (and I absolutely loved doing it), I made sure our listeners heard the verbal dance of the politician who didn’t know what he (or she) was talking about or who was tripped up by issues of truth.

Governor Joe Teasdale once told me, “I’ll never lie to you but there will be times when I won’t tell you the truth.”

???

The public, as well as the reporter should always have their antennae up for such moments.  Such as a news conference in Washington—– when one of our Congressmen became a prime example last week.  Southeast Missouri Congressman Jason Smith, the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, held a press conference to announce that he had 700 pages of evidence that President Biden had been involved in son Hunter’s business dealings overseas and that involvement merited impeachment.

The only problem, as pointed out by NBC reporter Ryan Nobles, is that the supposedly damning evidence was about events that supposedly happened three years before Biden was President or even a candidate for President.

Watch Smith squirm:

It is not uncommon for the person being pressed for a straight answer to cast an aspersion on the questioner or to simply refuse to take any more questions.  That, my friends, is usually a clear reason to doubt the validity of the statements.

The public should watch or listen to these kinds of events—and should wonder why this public official cannot give the public a straight answere or in some cases no answer at all. It is so frequent in our political system today that I fear the public has become inured to it.

Does Smith have legitimate information? The first hearing, which lasted six hours, has been roundly criticized from both sides as a nothingburger, to use an old phrase Ted Cruz once used to describe questions about some actions by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. FOX News Channel’s Neil Cauvoto agreed: “None of the expert witnesses today presented any proof for impeachment.”  Under questioning, the Republican’s own witnesses said there wasn’t enough evidence in the huge pile of “evidence” Smith was pushing to impeach President Biden.

Smith’s conduct in that press conference did little to build confidence in his “evidence.” And six hours of rhetoric from both sides and from chosen witnesses didn’t either.

Is his pile of paper big enough to hide a bombshell?  Not based on the other evidence—-against his evidence, apparently.

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The Sacred Burial Site, and Other Musings 

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I knew a man named Ed Bliss who wrote the news for Ed Murrow and Walter Cronkite.  They wrote their commentaries; he oversaw the writing of their newscasts.  We often had Ed conduct newswriting seminars at our national broadcast journalism convention.  One day I asked him,  “When is a person no longer ‘late,’ but is only ‘dead?’’  Ed didn’t know.

When will we no longer refer to “the late” Queen Elizabeth II?  Why don’t we refer to “the late Harry Truman?”

King Tut is dead, not “late.”

A related issue showed up a few days ago in a news story that salvagers plan to start plucking unattached objects from Titanic despite an international agreement that considers the wreckage “a sacred burial site.”

What is a “sacred burial site” and does it become less sacred after a certain number of years?

RMS Titanic Inc., based in Georgia, has the salvage rights to Titanic. It plans an expedition next May to shoot a new film of the deteriorating ship and recover any unattached artifacts despite an agreement among Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and France that the wreckage is considered a sacred burial site off-limits to looters and salvors. There is a United States law supporting that position.

RMST, on the other hand, reached an agreement in 1994 with the owners of Titanic (Liverpool and London Steamship Protection and Indemnity Association to be considered the exclusive salvor-in-possession of Titanic. It has retrieved many items from the sinking and has put them on display in museums such as the one in Branson and in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.  The place is worth seeing.

Video: (12) Titanic Museum VIP Guided Tour in Branson, Missouri – YouTube

The museums are owned by John Joslyn, who led a 1987 expedition down to the Titanic.  The museums hold artifacts recovered after the sinking but not from the wreck of the ship proper.

Other artifacts are housed in other museums in this country, Canada, and the UK.

(Your correspondent has some of the anthracite coal recovered by RMST from the debris field)

RMST says it does not plan to alter the wreckage.  But deterioration of the hull has opened new ways to get remotely operated vehicles inside. Court documents say the company also would “recover free-standing objects inside the wreck.”  The Associated Press reports that includes items in the Marconi (radio) room that aren’t bolted down.

The telegraph that sent out the distress calls that fateful night is a specific target.  RMST wants to pull it out.  A judge has rejected a federal government challenge to that plan saying the historical and cultural significance of that device should not be lost to decay.

There are fears that the creatures and the elements will leave the wreckage nothing more than a huge pile of rust within another twenty years.

Very large.  A couple of months ago the BBC reported on the completion of the most detailed view of the wreck, shaped from more than 700,000 digital photos that create a 3D rendition.  The network superimposed the image(s) on the stadium used for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

Titanic: First ever full-sized scans reveal wreck as never seen before – BBC News

or: Titanic: Scan reveals world’s most famous wreck – BBC Newsround

The concept of the Titanic site as being a sacred gravesite brings us back to the “late/dead” discussion.

We have heard of only one human remain found at the wreck site in the many dives to the site, a finger bone with part of a wedding ring attached that was concreted to the bottom of a soup tureen.  It was retrieved but was returned to the sea floor on a later dive. It is generally concluded that the passengers’ and crews’ bodies have long ago been consumed by various deep sea organisms.

Some have pointed to shoes on the ocean floor as being remnants of the people who wore them.  But that contention is questionable.

Some argue that the Titanic is a graveyard—-an argument heard at the Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor and for other lost (and many later found) ships.

But if the bodies have long since disappeared, is it valid to consider such sites as sacred graveyards?

And how long must a body be dead before it can be removed from its burial site, perhaps to be studied by various kinds of scientists?

The mummies of Egypt, mummies found high in the Andes mountains, bodies preserved in peat bogs in northern Europe, skeletons excavated at Williamsburg, Virginia—all of these people clearly are not “late” and society does not demand that they stay buried.

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, however, requires that Native American remains that are unearthed or located be transferred to their lineal descendants, for reburial—-the sacred ground philosophy.

And that raises a secondary question.  Is it sacred ground only because it is OUR ancestors, OUR people?

And why shouldn’t the Titanic be explored and artifacts be brought to the surface?  Are we dishonoring the dead by displaying the clothes they were wearing when they died—long after any physical trace of the person who wore those clothes has disappeared?  Or are we instead honoring their memories?

An autoworker in Wichita, Kansas—Joe Combs—was looking for answers when he saw pictures from the titanic debris field of shoes:

Titanic Shoes: Myth & Reality | joeccombs2nd

I think your thoughtful correspondent comes down on Joe’s side—that we honor the victims of the great tragedy—-and those who died less tragically hundreds or thousands of years ago by seeing something tangible about them and in doing that we recognize they were people rather than one of x-number of casualties of a tragedy or citizens of lost civilizations.

This concept is brought home strongly at the Titanic museums when entering visitors are given a card with the name of one of the ship’s passengers on it.  At the end of the trip through the museum, the patron can learn if “they” survived or died in the sinking. It’s a good way to humanize the experience.

As for referring to someone as “the late,” maybe we have the answer.  It comes from Robert Hickey, the director of the Protocol School of Washington. In his 550-page book, Honor & Respect: the Official Guide to Names, Titles, and Forms of Address, he writes:

Use ‘the late’ before a name of someone who is deceased – often recently – when one wants to be respectful. For example, on a wedding program:

—-John Smith, the bride’s uncle, will give away the bride in place of her father the late Thomas Smith.

—-The groom is the son of Mrs. James K. Gifford and the late Stephen R. Gifford

Some style guides say a person can only be ‘the late’ if they have been dead less than a decade. 

That sounds like a reasonable guideline.  Even at that, ten years is a long time to be late.

 

The Bag

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Did you ever hear someone say something out of the blue that just hit you squarely between the eyes?   Something that stopped you cold.  Something you had to write down because it was so startingly profound to you that you dared not let it escape?

It is so rare that this kind of thing happens.  Stops you in your tracks.

I was asked to speak to the local Unitarian Universalist Fellowship a few days ago and on Thursday I was doing the final edits of my remarks before printing them out.

As I was typing those last thoughts, I was listening to Sirius/XM’s channel of old radio programs from the 30s into the 60s when radio drama and entertainment finally faded away because television had become the established preference for people’s entertainment.

I was listening to an episode of “Have Gun, Will Travel,” a western drama show about a gunslinger-for-hire named Paladin (no first name ever given). Some of you might remember Richard Boone in the role on television in the early 60s.  But before then it was on radio with John Dehner, whose face you might recognize before you recognize the name) as Paladin.

Paladin had been hired to deal with an Indian chief who was reluctant to give up a white child who had been kidnapped when his family was wiped out. The chief argued that the boy was “his son.”

They finally decided the boy was white and would be returned to relatives. At the end of the negotiation, the “chief” said something that reached out of the speaker and instantly grabbed me. It was so startling and so profound (in my estimation) that I paused the broadcast and went back to get the wording correct.

“Skin is leather bag God made to hold the soul. Color of bag no matter.”  

That’s a grabber.  I’ve searched the internet to see who really said something like that and can find no reference.  It was so startling, so different from the usual dialogue written for those old radio dramas for Native Americans, that I typed it at the end of the speech—-not that I planned to use it but because I had to make sure I got it.

I don’t think I’ve ever had something—especially a non-news item—jump out of the radio like that before and instantly force me to halt what I was doing so I could write it down—and I’ve heard a lot of great rhetoric (and a lot of really lousy rhetoric, especially lately) come out of the speakers of my radio, my television, and my computer.

I think I’ll tidy it up a little bit and find a good use for it from time to time.

“Skin is a leather bag God made to hold the soul.  The color of the bag doesn’t matter.” 

Amen.

 

The demise of local news

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A friend has passed along an article written a few years ago by Jonathan Bernstein, a columnist on the Bloomberg Views website in which he lamented that the “demise of local news may be ruining Congress.”  Bernstein wrote that several senators facing re-election found that “no one in their home states knows who they are.”   He cited a piece by Washington Post writer Paul Kane, who saids, “A prime cause of this fight for name recognition is the increasingly fragmented media in which partisans largely receive their news from ideologically driven cable news and social media. Middle-of-the-road voters, reliant on their local news, are often left in the dark.”

Kane noted, “Overall, there are more reporters covering Congress than ever, except they increasingly write for inside Washington publications whose readers are lawmakers, lobbyists and Wall Street investors.”   He cites North Carolina Senator Richard Burr, began his Washington career in the House before moving to the Senate in 2005.  When he arrived in Washington, three newspapers from North Carolina had Washington Bureaus.  Now, none of them do.  “I can give a major policy speech, and no newspaper in Charlotte or Raleigh or Winston-Salem will even cover that I was there, much less that I gave a policy speech.”

Bernstein offers a scenario:  The president proposes a new initiative.  If the local newspaper has a Washington bureau, a member of Congress might figure out how district voters feel and then endorse whatever constituents want.  The constituents can then read the news coverage in the local paper.  But that’s not how things work anymore.

He wrote, “More and more politically active voters get their news from national partisan TV, radio and digital outlets. Less engaged voters can easily tune out all political news, at least until the height of election season. So the safest bet for an incumbent is going to be to echo the party line (which will normally mean no coverage at all) or, better, just to keep his or her mouth shut. Why stick with the district’s needs over party loyalty when no one in the district will ever hear about it — except the die-hards who support the party line no matter what?”

He also worried that the changing face of the news business works against the local Senator or Representative proposing things that benefit the district.  “If the rewards for action are reduced, fewer and fewer members of Congress are going to bother,” he says.  The end result: “The demise of state and local political reporting is often thought of as a potential threat because without a vigorous press, no one will expose malfeasance, and politicians will have weaker reasons to avoid corruption.  But perhaps the reduced incentives for good behavior by these elected officials are an even bigger reason to despair.”

This is not just a national issue.  It is a matter of concern in every state.  The same concerns Bernstein voices apply to our state and city governments.

There probably are fewer reporters covering state capitols full-time than there are reporters covering Congress.  Newspapers from St. Joseph, Cape Girardeau, Springfield, and Joplin once had year-around reporters at the capitol.  Not today, although Springfield still sends a reporter to the Capitol during sessions.  There once were two wire services covering state government. The Associated Press is the only one left.  Second newspapers from Kansas City and St. Louis went out of business years ago.  Don’t expect to learn much from metropolitan TV or radio stations about what’s happening in Jefferson City although what happens at the capitol affects their viewers every minute of their lives.  Missouri Independent, a new and aggressive news organization whose articles appear in several newspapers, is an important addition and works hard to fill the yawning gap in coverage of state government and politics.

Missouri newspaper subscribers are more likely to get their news about state politics and government from weekly columns written by their legislators than they are to read anything from a local reporter that details or questions what the local lawmaker is doing or saying because few local news outlets have anyone focusing on covering the actions of their area lawmakers. The weekly columns from office holders must not be acceptable substitutes for reporters who are the fires to which political feet are held.

The situation is worse when it comes to local radio or television news telling of what lawmakers or even city council members are doing.   The corporatization of radio stations has eliminated many vigorous local news departments.  When stations that once had people covering city hall, the courthouse, the school board, and other local events become only one of a half dozen (or more) formats under one roof—and sometimes not even in the same town they are licensed for—with one person who does some news on all of the stations only during morning drive, citizens are not well-informed.

And in an election year, the voters are left to the mercy of manipulative commercials and partisan podcasts.

The economics and the technology of the news business have changed.  In general, those changes have led to more concerns about the bottom line and less concerns about informing the increasingly less-educated, more self-centered electorate who make up a political system that favors agendas over broad public service. The public is in danger of being the frog in the pot of water not realizing it is being boiled to death.

It has been observed that the best thing to happen to newspapers in many towns is the disappearance of local radio news.  People have only the local newspaper to turn to if they want to know about events at city hall and elsewhere. But it is unlikely those newspapers have anybody specifically assigned to make local and federal legislators accountable to their constituents. And in too many instances, local newspapers have come under ownerships that have no local commitments and thus provide few safeguards against poor public policy to their readers.

Some cities are fortunate that new owners step in who have a dedication to their communities and who believe in the responsibility the press has to them.

It is easy to blame the media for the shortcomings in political awareness among the public.  But to do so is to ignore the responsibility that we, the public, carry in a free society. Bernstein spoke of irresponsibility when he wrote, “More and more politically active voters get their news from national partisan TV, radio and digital outlets. Less engaged voters can easily tune out all political news, at least until the height of election season.”

If we despair of today’s politics, we must despair of ourselves.  While the too-often bottom-line-only news media share the blame (some might say “the credit) for what we have become as a political people, we cannot escape our own personal civic responsibility to pay attention, to ignore the manipulator and the self-serving promoter, to question claims and concepts, to ask if those who claim they can do anything unilaterally really have the power to do so in a three-branch system of checks and balances, and to evaluate, think, and act for ourselves.  Citizens cannot allow themselves to be victims of “the demise of local news.”  It is better to live and ask questions than to exist and accept self-serving answers or comfortable assurances.

Think about that as we sit in the pan of water while the political stove gets hotter.

You can read Bernstein’s article at : https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-05-31/demise-of-local-news-may-be-ruining-congress

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The Leopard Hasn’t Changed His Spots

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CNN has gotten some undeserved criticism for holding a town hall meeting with Republican likely voters and Donald Trump in New Hampshire last week.

Kaitlin Collins knew that she was going to have to try to lasso a tornado.  She knew that Trump would show no respect for anyone except himself and maybe such admirable figures as Putin and Xi and that he would try to steamroller her.

She did such a good job that Trump called her a “nasty person.”  He didn’t like it that she kept correcting him and challenging his lies, even if it was like trying to take a sip from Niagara Falls.

If I were her, I’d wear that comment with a certain degree of professional pride.

Some Democrats were critical afterwards, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for one: “CNN should be ashamed of themselves.  They have lost control of this ‘town hall’ to again be manipulated into performing election disinformation, defense of Jan 6th, and a public attack on a sexual abuse victim. The audience is cheering him on and laughing at the host.”

From the Republican side of the aisle came this from Erin Perrine, the spokesman for the Never Back Down super PAC backing Ron DeSantis: “The CNN town hall was, as expected, over an hour of nonsense that proved Trump is stuck in the past. After 76 years, Trump still doesn’t know where he stands on important conservative issues like supporting life and the 2nd amendment. How does that make America Great Again?”

Niall Stanage, writing for The Hill, said “Trump did not so much win the event as CNN lost it—catastrophically.” Stanage didn’t like the audience whooping and hollering and applauding Trump, even when he attacked Collins and E. Jean Carroll, the woman who earlier in the week won a five-million dollar damage suit against Trump for sexual battery and defamation.

Rival network commentator Joy Reid on MSNBC referred to the show as “blatant fascism meets the Jerry Springer Show.”  We think that’s a little over the top because no fist fight broke out over somebody’s claim that Trump fathered her child, although the program aired just a day after a civil court jury found Trump liable in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case.

And what did Trump think?  With his typical modesty, he called the show a “very smart thing” that got “Sky High Ratings that they haven’t seen in a very long time…Many minds were changed on Wednesday night by listening to Common Sense, and sheer ‘Brilliance.’”

Well, of course. Would you expect anything less from a “stable genius?”

While the soundtrack certainly sounded like the audience ate it up, audience cutaways during the broadcast showed plenty of audience members were silent and non-demonstrative.  Republican consultant Matthew Bartlett told correspondent Tara Palmeri of Puck News, a digital media company covering politics, finance, technology, and entertainment news, that many in the audience were “quietly disgusted or bewildered.. In a TV setting you hear the applause but you don’t see the disgust, “ he said.

He was critical of Collins for sparring with Trump instead of taking more audience questions because some disgusted audience members “were ready to confront him” if they had been given the chance.

Here’s why the CNN town hall was not a train wreck:

1.The first such gathering in the campaign cycle showed what our democracy is up against. And it showed the GOP frontrunner for what he (still) is.  And what he is, is what he has been.  He has not learned from his 2020 defeat or from the Carroll lawsuit for from the House January 6 Committee hearings or even from many of his former supporters and enablers who have told him his loud whining about losing the election and doing nothing wrong in trying to intimidate elections officials, the media, prosecutors, and opponents is not doing him any good. He is not a surprise anymore. Republicans can complain about the event, but the energy spent complaining is wasted. Better it be channelled it into keeping his minority segment of the party from keeping the entire party down to his level.

  1. The program provided plenty of evidence for supporters who are thinking about moving past Trump that they should waste no time doing it. For those who are finding him tiresome and his bluster wearing thin, this program gave them an early opportunity to look for a grownup who can life the party out of Swamp Trumpy.
  2. The program showed that he has a core group of supporters that for reasons normal people cannot understand still buy into his egotistical irrationality no matter what.
  3. Clearly, other Republicans know they need to find a way to unify during the primaries to deny him enough delegates for an assured convention nomination (as was the case in 2016).
  4. Trump’s performance might have shown why some believe his firm grip on the party is eroding. Mainline party members can figure out how to put him in the rearview mirror. It’s the old saying, “The enemy you know is better than the enemy you don’t know.”   Trump delivered an opportunity to his party. Several Republicans are making noises about running.  Before they form a circular firing squad, they need to eliminate the outsider who has more bullets than each of them have individually.
  5. If Democrats haven’t cut that broadcast into hundreds of segments they can campaign against, they’re asleep at the switch.
  6. AOC is wrong. Trump might have taken control of the program but he didn’t run over Collins. At the end of the show she was standing almost nose to nose with him, showing control many people would have lost long before, and not backing down to his windstorm, always reminding viewers and listeners that the words “Trump” and “truth” are only remotely related.

He thought she was “nasty.”  This observer thought she was quietly tough enough that he called her a name. I hope somebody creates a bumper sticker to pin to her office bulletin board.

In months to come, there will be other town halls involving both parties.  The cumulative impact of those other town halls should weigh heavily against Trump.  But it would be a mistake if those other town halls focus too much on attacking Trump instead of offering clear, positive, honest alternatives to him.

In fact, he probably hopes they do spend too much time attacking him instead of offering their party and the general public something better.  People like Trump enjoy being attacked by better people because it makes him look bigger and makes them look smaller.

It’s better to have the worst possibility first.  After that things can only get better.  God knows this program succeeded in showing us all why he deserved to lose in 2020 and why he deserves to lose in 2024.

Then again, as we’ve said a few times, Mr. Trump needs to be less worried about whether he’ll get four more years and more worried about whether he’ll get ten to fifteen.

Blood Right

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Ten years ago, I threatened to break a new law within thirty seconds of when it went into effect.   I think of that circumstance from time to time and it has come to my mind more than once of late as the number of mass shootings piles up.  And as one shooting in particular has touched me.

I was still a reporter in the Senate in 2013 when Governor Nixon vetoed a bill that would have exempted Missouri from recognizing any federal gun laws  that “infringe on the people’s right to keep and bear arms.”  Any federal official who tried to enforce such a law could be arrested and charged with a misdemeanor.  AND if made it illegal to make public the names of gun owners.

That meant that I could not publish the names of the legislators who carried guns into the House and Senate Chambers and voted for the bill.  Yes, some did carry guns in the chambers. And to be truthful, there were times when debate got overheated that I did not feel entirely secure.

I don’t know if we have lawmakers packing today. I’m not down amongst them anymore. But a sign on the entrance door to the building indicates they’re allowed to have guns inside.

The Missouri legislature from time to time has tried to say it has the power to declare particular federal laws are not effective here, the United States Constitution notwithstanding. The legislature has at times protected the Second Amendment the way a Doberman would protect his raw steak.

That might be justifiable if all federal constitutional rights are absolute. The Second Amendment is to its most ardent defenders a Doberman Amendment. Touch it and I’ll bite off your arm.

As we’ve noted before, declared rights do not erase personal responsibility.  Free speech still allows lawsuits for libel and slander.  Freedom of Religion does not allow the state to insist that any of us must follow a particular faith to live and prosper.  The right to assemble does not grant a right to smash windows and doors at the United States Capitol and interfere with a mandated role of Congress.

So it is with the Second Amendment. It assumes those with guns will use them to protect the nation’s security (in some interpretations), and that those with guns will be responsible citizens.

As with any right, or any privilege, irresponsibility has its penalties.  The responsible citizen suffers because the irresponsible citizen is allowed free reign (as others might interpret the situation).  In today’s culture, the issue is whether responsible citizens are defending the irresponsible ones to the detriment of the citizenry as a whole.

The mass shooting last weekend in Allen, Texas again raises the question that passionate Second Amendment defenders brush off.  But once again we are told that the answer to mass shootings is the same solution Archie Bunker had in the days when airline hijackings were regular things—issue every passenger  a gun. So it is in these incidents that one answer is to have more people with guns.

Or—instead of limiting access to guns originally designed with one purpose—to kill an enemy on the battlefield using a large magazine of bullets—we are told the answer is better mental health treatment.

The problem seems to be that this corner of our political universe also is one that seems to vehemently oppose providing funding that will pay for those services—-or any of the services the “advocates” say need to be improved.

One of the cable networks covering the shooting in Allen took special note that the shooter might have worn body armor and asked program commentators if there should be limits placed on the sale of body armor, making it available only to law enforcement officers and other first responders.

As this is written, there has been no howl that such a proposal infringes on somebody’s right to shoot and not be shot back.  But it is a serious issue.  The idea that our children should go off to school every morning in their cleaned and pressed body armor, or that the dress code of teachers and administrator requires coat, tie, and bulletproof vest—and a Dirty Harry pistol in the holster that’s in plain view—is absurd.

It is said that money is the life-blood of politics. It has been said that a society is measured by how well it protects its most vulnerable.  One question asked during coverage of the Allen incident is, “Is there anyplace any more where we aren’t vulnerable?”

Political life-blood.  Innocents’ life-blood.  A decision about which is more valuable seems beyond expectation. Death awaits us all but in today’s America, we face uncertainty about whether we shall die in bed surrounded by our loved ones or die on the floor of a mall or a church or a school surrounded by a growing pool of blood.

Getting back to the veto override.   After Governor Nixon vetoed that particular Missouri Secession effort, the legislature had a chance to override it.   And the House did. 109-49, exactly the number needed. It was a stunning event to many, including the person sitting in my chair at the Senate press table.

The bill came over to the Senate and it was 22-10, needing one of the two remaining Senators to vote for the override for that bill to become law.  President Pro Tem Tom Dempsey and Majority Floor Leader Ron Richard had not voted. If one of them voted “yes,” the override would be complete.

I am not taking credit for what happened next. I don’t know if they were aware of what I had told some of my colleagues at the press table. I already had written a piece for the Missourinet blog about that bill.  I had three photographs I was going to use. One was of me, standing in front of an American Flag proudly holding my Daisy BB gun.  Another showed Governor Nixon with Wayne LaPierre, the President of the NRA, and the owner of the Midway Exchange west of Columbia. They were cutting the ribbon on a new gun shop at that complex.

The third picture showed the daughter of Missourinet reporter Jessica Machetta posing with her grandfather. They were with the deer that Macy had shot with her grandfather’s gun. It was her first deer.

Dempsey and Richard both voted “no.”  The override failed by one vote.  I never got to publish that entry on that blog. I really wanted to publish it.  And then tell the legislature, “Come and get me.”

Jessica lives in the Denver area now.  A few days ago, Macy was murdered by her boyfriend, who then shot himself to death.

One dead. Two dead.  Twenty dead.

Say what you want. Make sure you sound sincere.  But don’t do anything to really look for a solution to gun violence.  Don’t mess with the Doberman.

The journalist

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The White House Correspondents’ Dinner was last weekend.  They’re filled with jokes and jabs between those who cover and those who are covered.  And along the way, the people who are covered get to say some good things about journalists. Sometimes, the covered make some pointed comments about journalists.

We pause today to pay our tribute to the fellow ink-stained wretches who daily do their best to tell us about our city, our state, our nation, and our world. There are those who will dismiss this contribution as silly because they already know that reporters are biased against their viewpoint, whatever it might be.  Some of those who dismiss these remarks might, in fact, claim that they know the “media” is biased because their favorite radio or television talk show host or political leader says it is, missing the irony in that position. We hope they will excuse us as we plunge ahead, using words of another written a long time ago when the press was newspapers and reporters really could be called ink-stained wretches—a title many were proud to wear.  The phrase, incidentally, is of uncertain origin but has been used for decades.

In 1922, New York American writer Gene Fowler, one of the great journalists of the first third of the Twentieth Century, asked Arthur Brisbane to write about the one-thousand members of the Newspaper Club of New York. Brisbane was the editor of William Randolph Hearst’s tabloid New York Mirror. When he died in 1936, Brisbane was called “the greatest journalist in his day” by Hearst.  And Damon Runyon, certainly no slouch as a 1920s writer, said, “Journalism has lost its all-time No. 1 genius.” What he wrote then about newspaper reporters rings true today among those who toil not only in newspapers but in the changing world of electronic journalism, often without pay increases for years, to responsibly report about the factors that shape our lives. We found a reprint of Brisbane’s editorial on page nineteen in the October 14, 1922 edition of The Fourth Estate, which billed itself as “a newspaper for the makers of newspapers.”

A thousand newspaper men represent, among other things, disappointment in life. Newspaper work is hard, and it does not get better as you grow older, unless you are among the few very fortunate.

Men in other professions, as they work through the years, build up a firm name professionally or in business they build up a business name. And at the end of years they have created something that goes on earning for them when they are old.

Not so with the newspaper man.

He must do every day the work by which he lives, and do it all over again.

Each day he must create his reputation anew.

His greatest asset is enthusiasm, real interest in what he sees and what he tells.

And the years are the enemies of enthusiasm.

A thousand newspapermen, however, represent something more important than several hundred kinds of disappointment. They are to our civilization what the bulb in the electric lamp is to the big factory grinding out electricity down by the waterfront. The light in the bulb tells what the factory is doing. The reporter in the newspaper tells what civilization is doing, as it works, builds, tears down, cheats, lies, deceives and slowly goes ahead.

“The electric bulb burns out, so does the newspaperman. He at least has made it possible for humanity to see more clearly and to advance with knowledge. That means satisfaction.

Newspaper work brings disillusion. After a few years a man starting out full of enthusiasm knows too much about human beings. He must begin with a great supply of hope and optimism, and a good deal of knowledge of the past and of progress in the past to avoid pessimism and gloom.

Young reporters learn that the words of great men is often unreliable. One of the best known statesmen and heroes of this country always had two reporters sent to see him by the Associated Press, that one might corroborate the other and discourage denial of what the hero had actually said.

Reporters in the very beginning learn the pitiful craving for notoriety, eagerness for publicity that obsesses their fellow citizens and that diminishes their opinion of them.

Reporters learn quite young that politics and the government of this nation are managed to a great extent by the intellectual dregs of the population. They discover that the first step toward public approval is a step down, and that discourages them,

However, newspaper work is an education. It enlightens reporter as the reporter enlightens his fellow citizens. If he can stay out of the rut, which is extremely difficult and unusual, or if he can stay in long enough to get the information he wants, then get out and try something else, the reporter usually can thank his newspaper experience.

If he stays too long and is not exceptionally fortunate, time and the current of news running through him burn him out, as the electric current burns out the bulb, and like that bulb he goes into the scrap heap.

This is written after thirty-nine years of reporting and other newspaper work, and therefore with some slight authority.

Without the work of good reporters our government, our grafters, our hypocrites, big and little, our crooks in politics, and our politics in crime would be a thousand times worse than they are. Let that repay the 1,000 newspaper men.

We often have said that being a reporter is the most exciting thing to do because reporters do something that scientists say is impossible and they do it every day.  Each day reporters walk into their newsrooms not knowing what events will challenge their skills and their principles during the day.  At the end of that day—and passionate reporters know a “day” for them is not measured in a fixed number of hours—they have created something out of nothing, a product known as “news.”  It happens every day in newspaper, radio, and television newsrooms throughout America.  Critics blast television for the “if it bleeds, it leads” attitude, or bemoan the shrinking commitment to solid local news reporting on radio, and mourn the passing of competition in local newspaper markets.  But in hundreds of newsrooms of those organizations are those who consciously work to tell the story straight.  But even if you believe the “media” are biased, believe Brisbane’s last paragraph:

Without the work of good reporters our government, our grafters, our hypocrites, big and little, our crooks in politics, and our politics in crime would be a thousand times worse than they are

Brisbane also wrote something else—advice that is good for reporters and non-reporters alike—that we’ll pass along in another entry.

SPORTS:  Look for a Long, Hot, Depressing Summer, Baseball Fans; Maybe You Should Go to a Race

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(BASEBALL)—We are left to recall a man who lived and died baseball, who passed up a potential Heisman Trophy college career to play the game of baseball, and who gave us some memorable thoughts and calls during fifty years in the broadcast booth as Jack Buck’s sidekick and later as the number one play-by-play guy with the Missourinet’s first sports director, John Rooney.

Mike Shannon is gone. He was 83. He was a multi-star athlete in high school who went to the University of Missouri on a football scholarship. In the days when freshmen could not play varsity football, Shannon so impressed Missouri coach Frank Broyles that Broyles thought he could have won the Heisman Trophy if he had stayed with football.

Instead, Shannon got a $50,000 signing bonus from the Cardinals and played baseball.

He gave us a lot of things on the field and in the booth. His Shannon-isms might be rivalled in all of baseball history (at least in our experience) only by the colorful phrasing of another native Missourian, Casey Stengel:

“It’s Mothers Day, so a big happy birthday to all you mothers out there.”

“Back in the day when I played, a pitcher had three pitches: a fastball, a curveball, a slider, a changeup and a good sinker pitch.”

(During a game in New York): “I wish you folks back in St. Louis could see this moon.”

“Ol’ Abner has done it again.”  (a late-game observation when the game is tight going into the last innings.)

“He’s faster than a chicken being chased by Ronald McDonald.”

“Our next home stand follows this road trip.”

“The wind has switched 360 degrees.”

“The crowd (is) on their feet for the Canadian Star Spangled Banner.”

And there were many more. Mike Shannon was Mike Shannon. Nice guy.  Good ball player. One of those guys who made a baseball broadcast booth much more than calling balls and strikes.  They don’t come along often and their enthusiasm for the game can’t be faked or scripted.

And we really need him these days.   His beloved Cardinals are in the pits. There’s no sugar-coating it.

They haven’t won a series since April 10-12 and were 10-19 after their weekend series against the Dodgers, wrapping up a road trip in which they went 2-8. They haven’t been this far under .500 in at least 16 years, 2007, the last time the cardinals finished below .500.  They have to go 80-53 if they’re going to win 90 games and compete for a wild card slot.

The Cardinals had never finished the first month of the season in last place in the National League Central—-and it was formed in 1994.

This weeks’ USA TODAY power rankings put the Cardinals 23rd out of the 30 teams.  The team started the year with fairly low expectations from the newspaper. They were ranked 11th.

And they’re expecting a 41-year old pitcher who has had a mediocre rehab assignments in Springfield and Memphis to lead a turnaround?   Wainwright had an ERA of 6.14 in Springfield and 6.35 at Memphis, 13 strikeouts in 12.2 innings in which he gave up 18 hits and nine runs.

Doesn’t me he can come up to the big club and do better—-rehab assignments aren’t necessarily about winning and losing.

But still…..

The Cardinals could be worse.  They could be the Kansas City Royals and ranked 29th by USA TODAY.  Only Oakland (soon to be Las Vegas, perhaps) is below them.

Where’s Mike Matheny when the Cardinals need him?

He’s in Kansas City where he is 172-242 in his three-plus seasons after going 591-474 in seven seasons in St. Louis and never having a losing record. The Royals went 7-22 in the first month of the season.

(MIZ-WHO?)—We confess that we’ve lost track of what the Missouri basketball team has won or lost since the season ended.  I think we’re suffering from portal fatigue.  They still lack a horse in the middle, a big one.

We’ll root for whatever Dennis Gates puts on the floor next year. But the era of carpet bagger-players the NCAA has ushered in with the portal and the NIL business has been a huge mess we prefer not to try to follow.

Pretty much the same for the football team.  We hope coach Drinkwitz is able to put together an outstanding team.  But by and large it’s going to be a bunch of strangers on Faurot field next fall.

It’s tempting to say that the NCAA has really screwed up collegiate sports.

(RACING)—All three major series were on track during the weekend—although the weekend stretched to an extra day for one of them.

(INDYCAR)—Close, but no cigar—again—for Romain Grosjean who led 57 of the first 66 laps before Scott McLaughlin fought his way past on lap 71 and held on to beat Grosjean to the line by about 1.8 seconds at Barber Motorsports Park at Birmingham, Alabama.

Grosjean, who started the race on the pole,  admits that he’s headed to Indianapolis for the two races in May—on the road course on May 14 and the Indianapolis 500 on the 28th.

McLaughlin’s win, his fourth in the INDYCAR series, was the product of race strategy.  His team planned on three pit stops. Grosjean’s team hoped to win the race on two stops.  But the three-stop strategy eliminated any fuel concerns for McLaughlin, who called it a “happy driver strategy.”

McLaughlin is the fourth driver to win in the four races run this year in INDYCAR.

Two-time series champion Will Power challenged Grosjean in the final laps but couldn’t get close enough to make a pass attempt.  Pato O’Ward and Alex Palou made up the rest of the top five.

(NASCAR)—The long dry spell for Martin Truex Jr., has come to an end after 54 races and 597 days.  Truex, opting for two tires on his last pit stop, held off Ross Chastain, who went with four, for the final fourteen laps.  Truex crossed the stripe a half-second ahead of Chastain.

The race was run yesterday (Monday) because it was rained out on Sunday. The win made the long weekend a family affair. His younger brother, Ryan, won the Xfinity race on Saturday.

Ryan Blaney, William Byron, and Denny Hamlin completed the top five. Byron led almost half of the 400 laps (193 of them) but couldn’t keep up with the top three in the closing laps.

Chastain’s run has put him on top of the points standings.

Chase Elliott, in his third race after returning from a broken leg was 11th and is now within the top thirty in points.  NASCAR rules say a driver must be in the top thirty in points and must have at least one victory if they’re not 16th or better in points at the start of playoffs.  Elliott is still looking for his first win of the year.

Josh Berry, who filled in for Elliott while he was recovering, was driving Alex Bowman’s car at Dover because Bowman suffered some compression back fractures in a sprint car wreck last week. He’s out indefinitely.  Berry finished 11th.

(FORMULA 1)—Sergio Perez is the first driver to win twice at the Grand Prix of Azerbain.

He beat teammate Max Verstappen, the defending f1 champion, by 2.1 seconds. Ferrari’s Charles LeClerc claimed the other podium spot.

Perez’s victory moves him to within six points of Verstappen in the standings. Both drivers have won twice this year. Two-time F1 champion Fernando Alonso, who seems to have found a new life in his career driving for Aston Martin, is third.

(Photo Credits; MLB Tonight (Rooney and Shannon) and Bob Priddy)

 

 

George and Bob, Part I

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The far right’s obsession with George Soros as some kind of leftist boogeyman funding every supposedly un-American conspiracy it can think of shows a lack of creativity, reality, and intellect we should expect in discussions of our political system.

To some of these folks, the mention of the words “George” and “Soros” provokes the same reaction that Pavlov got from a dog when he rang a bell.

Soros bashing emerged again last week with the indictment of Donald Trump.  Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, attacking Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as “a Soros-funded prosecutor who refuses to prosecute violent crimes…” A New York Times fact-checker has found no direct Soros funding link to Bragg’s campaign although he did give a million dollars to a political action committee that put a half-million dollars into the Bragg campaign.

Our former Attorney General and Trump acolyte, Eric Schmitt, accuses Bragg of ignoring “violent crime (that) rages on & violent criminals walk free.”  Too bad he never criticized prosecutors here at home where our two biggest cities have had high murder rates for years, including time when Schmitt was AG or was in the legislature making state policy.

Current AG Andrew Bailey accused Bragg of being “another Soros-funded prosecutor with misplaced priorities.

Governor Parson says it’s a matter of “another Soros-backed prosecutor [who] uses the rule of law to serve his own political agenda, not justice.

My defense of Soros should not be unexpected because I have been a beneficiary of Mr. Soros.

Or maybe I was a Soros enabler and others benefitted—-although his critics will say nobody has benefitted from the distribution of his wealth as he sees fit to distribute it—-a reverse reflection of how the people on the Left feel about the Koch brothers and their support of right-wing activities.

In such discussions we should acknowledge some things:

The Golden Rule in politics has been expressed as, “He who has the gold, rules.”

That’s not exactly correct. There are a lot of instances in which wealthy patrons have invested in this or that candidate only to see that candidate lose.  But the super-wealthy can afford to just shrug and see who else or what else they can buy, confident they will prevail eventually—although most of us wonder why the super-rich feel a need to keep prevailing.

Why can’t they just be like Scrooge McDuck and go down in their basement and take a bath in their money?

Why should they?

Soros faced his wealth and the freedom it gives him to be involved not only in politics but in other causes this way in a 2016 essay in The New York Review of Books: “My success in the financial markets has given me a greater degree of independence than most other people. This obliges me to take stands on controversial issues when others cannot, and taking such positions has itself been a source of satisfaction. In short, my philanthropy has made me happy.”

One of the things that makes him happy is the project that involved me.

Before I tell the story, let me tell you some things about George Soros that his critics never talk about but they’re things that help understand some of the man.

George, if I may speak of him with a familiarity I have not earned, is about 92, the son of a man who escaped from a Soviet prison camp and made his way back to Nazi-occupied Budapest where his family—Jewish family—was living. He says his father printed fake identity documents for other Jewish families.  Those years living as a Jew in Nazi Hungary shaped his life.

He went to England after escaping from Hungary, studied economics and developed his philosophy of investing. He came to America, became a naturalized citizen in 1961and began a career as a financial analyst before he later moved into hedge fund management and a career that led him to be what he calls a “political philanthropist.”

This article from The Street  includes Soros’s Wall Street Journal article in 2016 explaining, “Why I Support Reform Prosecutors.”

Billionaire George Soros Hits Back at Donald Trump – TheStreet

It might be educational for some of his critics whose knees jerk and whose saliva glands gush at the mere mention of his name to read—-although I doubt that few will.  He seems to be right on the money, however, when he wrote, “Many of the same people who call for more punitive civil justice policies also support looser gun laws.”

As for supporting Bragg, Soros says he has never met him and has never directly contributed to his campaign although his political action committee has constributed money to a group that has given some funds to Bragg’s campaigns.  To assert that Soros owns Bragg is a big leap.

In the early 80s, Soros created the Open Society Foundations to promote democracy and financial prosperity in nations that were falling away from the Soviet Union as the USSR crumbled.

And that is when George Soros and Bob Priddy came together.

Now, to be clear—I have never met George.  But the opportunity he gave me to be part of his program to bring freedom to the newly-independent countries that had been Soviet territories for decades turned out to be one of the most rewarding experiences of my career as a journalist.

George Soros is not always correct in backing the causes he backs. The history of his involvements makes that clear. Some of his assessments of this country’s present and this country’s future anger those on the right who see this country as the world’s dominant nation during a time when there are challenges to that idea and that reality every day.

His wealth and his world life-experience allow him the freedom to challenge those who have trouble thinking outside the box that constitutes the boundaries of the United States. But he does not have a corner on international geopolitical wisdom.  His ideas are open to challenge.  But such challenges are not beneficial if all they do is call him a name or vaguely blame him for everything that is wrong for this country and this world by merely beeathing the word “Soros.”

It is his right, as it is the right of wealthy others on the other side, to use his wealth to disseminate his opinions and to shape societies as he thinks they should be shaped.

The great broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow once said something that brings up a problem with the ability of the super-rich to influence our political system. Murrow told fellow broadcasters, “Just because the microphone in front of you amplifies  your voice around the world is no reason to think we have any more wisdom than we had when our voices could reach only from one of the bar to the other.”

So the super-rich on both sides of the aisle can afford a much bigger microphone than you or I can afford.  Finding a way to equalize the voices of the average American and the billionaire American is an important quest, but one unlikely to succeed in the foreseeable future.

My experience with George Soros leads me to defend him as something other than a leftist boogeyman. And I am naturally inclined against finding validity in those who only parrot cheap-shot party line character assassinations in place of intelligent discussion.

I’ll tell you about George and me in the next entry.