In a certain plot contrivance in television serials and films the conscientious subaltern makes a fool of his pretentious jerk of a supervisor. The gimmick is overused to a fare-thee-well in such productions as the three CSI shows. What intrigues me about it is that, as so often in television scripting, it seems to appeal to a yearning in viewers to triumph over the stuffed asses who run our affairs.

Certain actors, even young ones, seem to enjoy careers playing the jerks we love to trump. My wife and I when watching television often say, We don’t like him, do we? We’re like the cop who can’t resist chasing a red Corvette. (more…)

Sometimes I think the all news all day formula is traumatizing society. The news—if you can call that weird concoction of anchor bonhomie and drivel news—is surpassingly negative, and in the interest of ratings the media rarely lose an opportunity to exaggerate the negative side of the news. News or what passes for it is about bad behavior, disaster, crime, nasty mouths, lies, spin, malfeasance—and a little upbeat story here and there as condiment. (more…)

(This is the transcript of Hot Copy No. 43, one of my regular pod casts for The Student Operated Press)

There’s a crucial difference between balanced reporting and insightful reporting. You can listen to this difference by tuning into the Yes Network and listening to color commentator David Cone, the famously versatile former pitcher who once considered a career in journalism.

You can describe the game and gin up excitement with personal mannerisms the way television anchors increasingly do, or you can quietly shed light on the science of the game the way Cone (inset) does. He represents the difference between reporting as theater and reporting as insight.

When Cone tells you wrist and elbow action is as important as finger location in throwing strikes, you know a lot more than when another reporter tells you that you’ve just seen a changeup, which the camera has probably already told you. (more…)

Sexism, racism, agism, smoothies, bumblers, swift-boaters, dreamers—all  flavors in the great American apple pie. As we learn to avoid trans fats so we learn, ever so slowly, to wean ourselves from misogyny, racism, agism and all those other nasties.

The late Democratic primary had plenty of misogyny and racism to go around. It arose among the pundits, the voters and the candidates. But there were triumphs. As Senator Hillary Clinton said in graciously conceding the fight to Senator Barack Obama, there are now eighteen million cracks in the glass ceiling, and none of us will forget it. Bless you, Senator. (more…)

(This is the transcript of Hot Copy No. 42, my regular pod cast for The Student Operated Press).

Scott McClellan, the former White House spokesman, has written a book confirming some of the public’s worst suspicions about the presidency of George W. Bush. McClellan (inset) says, among other things, the White House lied us into the Iraq war and covered up its role in destroying the career of a CIA undercover agent simply because she was married to a critic of President Bush’s war policies.

Self-righteous critics on the left and the right of the political spectrum immediately accused the once adamant Bush loyalist of being a day late and a dollar short. Why didn’t his conscience bother him when he foisted these lies on the public, his critics ask? Well, conscience isn’t always as hair-triggered as John Wayne in the movies. Sometimes it takes a lot of introspection to accept that you have been part of wrongdoing, that you are part of the problem when you have been posing as part of the solution. (more…)

The glory of Christianity is its gospel of love, charity and compassion, so why do condemnatory histrionics from the pulpit about family values, abortion and homosexuality dominate news of Christendom while the pulpit’s deafening silence about a church-going society that allows insurance adjusters to make a mockery of its dearest tenets is met with complimentary silence in the media? (more…)

It’s interesting how eager both the left and the right wings are to pull the trigger on Scott McClellan, the former White House spokesman, who has written a book confirming many of our worst suspicions about the Bush Administration.

If he knew his bosses were lying about Iraq and Valerie Plame, the CIA undercover agent whom they treacherously outed, why didn’t he speak up, save thousands of lives, dollars and damages? That’s what many of his critics of the left and right are yowling. (more…)

Do you remember The Gates (inset) in Central Park in 2005, that hydrology of orange banners installed by Christos and Jeanne-Claude? I don’t think anybody mentioned it at the time but it had a precedent among the Arabs. They used to hold great poetry competitions in which the poems were painted on vast banners. The banners were then carried onto fields, turning them into seas of calligraphy. (more…)

Noah Eli Gordon in an end paper in the Spring issue of Rain Taxi says he recently began to read page twenty-six of every book he owns. The more I thought about this quixotic adventure the more it enchanted me. As I compared it to the evening news, it seemed to me infinitely more intellectually adventurous.

News organizations are like fastball hitters; they fear curve balls and knuckle balls, exactly the kind of pitches Noah Gordon is likely finding on all those twenty-sixth pages. For the average news anchor there’s ping and then there’s pong. There’s ho and then there’s hum. But lord knows what glories, temptations and recognitions are in those books. (more…)

We talk from time to time in our society about racial profiling, but where is Frank Gorshin now that we need him so much? Impersonators tell us more about our leaders and wannabes than all the pundits and reporters together.

Watch John McCain walking arthritically with his fists held rigidly in front of him like bumpers. Consider Hillary Clinton pointing angrily from the stump at Saudi Arabia. Notice Barack Obama tapping someone on the arm as he passes. (more…)