Shared misery
An excerpted transcript from the last phone call I took tonight at work:
STUDENT LOAN BORROWER: Hey, how are things going in Des Moines?
MOELLER: Not too bad. It feels like things are kind of on an upswing.
BORROWER: I used to work in Des Moines.
MOELLER: I'm familiar with your town, too. (Canton, Missouri) I see the signs for it when I drive down to Cardinals ballgames.
BORROWER: (Suddenly exasperated) Did you know they're losing again
tonight? It's already 4-0 in the third.
MOELLER: Yeah. But this'll probably be the last time Marquis ever pitches.
BORROWER: That guy's terrible! I was just telling my parents that on the phone.
A couple feel-good stories while the Cardinals collapse
Who says watching the Devil Rays takes years off your life?
A ballplayer who predates the organized Negro Leagues turns 111 next month.
Still detoxing from the Late Show's historic "Ventriloquist Week?" Then
enjoy!One more.
Wake up call
Is it the last week of September already?!
It is. That means it's crunchtime in baseball and I damn near missed it. OK, I'm exaggerating. I watched the Cardinals games most nights during the summer, and each day I was tuned to the size of their lead in the National League Central Division, but I wasn't investing myself emotionally, you see. Gone this year was old Busch Stadium. Gone were the team's broadcasts on KMOX Radio. Gone were four favorites (and vital clogs on the field)-- Matt Morris, Reggie Sanders, Larry Walker, and Ray King. And gone was the Benton County connection-- Cal Eldred.
The team owners fleeced taxpayers for a significant chunk of a new ballpark that didn't improve on its predecessor. They auctioned everything from the old yard down to the urinal in the home clubhouse, and then neglected to increase the payroll. (Their best free agent acquisition in the offseason was a broadcaster-- John Rooney.) Mark Mulder came up limp in June, followed by Jim Edmonds, David Eckstein, and Jason Isringhausen. The projected everyday secondbaseman, Junior Spivey, never came up at all. The starting rotation imploded, save for Chris Carpenter and half a season of Jeff Suppan, and the mid-season pickups raised more eyebrows than post-season expectations.
Above all, the season's outcome seemed predetermined: skate past an uninspired collection of division contenders, and then get embarassed on national television by the backend of your pitching rotation en route to a hasty playoff exit.
Predetermined that is, until last Thursday, when the Astros' Lance Berkman launched a game-winning home run off Carpenter in Houston, launching a four game sweep and highlighting a seven-day period in which the long-moribund Astros cut the Cards' division lead from 8 1/2 to 1 1/2 games.
And that's where it sits tonight just after 10:30pm central time. The Cards- losers of seven in a row-- are attempting to avoid their third eight-game losing streak of the season and save their Alka-Seltzer season. The Astros haven't lost in a week and possess the starting rotation that all playoff-bound teams still fear. They lurk two games behind in the loss column with five to play-- and the Reds, hoping to mimick the '64 Cardinals, reside just a game behind them.
Cards fans no longer think first of Albert Pujols when they hear spoken of the number five, they think of the magic number their team's been stuck on since September 20th. If you presumed, like I did, that the team was planning to wait until October to embarrass itself, you just may be in for a big surprise. They've got
my attention.
Moeller TV Listings 9/25/06
"Wait 'Til Next Year: The Saga of the Chicago Cubs" premieres Tuesday night at 9pm on HBO. The Sun-Times
reviews.
For a warmup to the tragic narrative, catch up on
today's Cubs action.
Mr. Conservative
HBO's latest documentary, "Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater," is a thought-provoking delight. Produced and narrated by the late Senator Barry Goldwater's granddaughter, CC, the profile of the long-time Arizona Senator and 1964 Republican presidential nominee is deeply affectionate, but also surprisingly wide-eyed.
Barry Goldwater is thought by most political observers today to be the grandfather of the dominant conservative political philosophy in America. (In the film, James Carville remarks that if Ronald Reagan was the Messiah of the movement, then Goldwater was John the Baptist.) His legacy in the Senate and on the presidential stump is one of severe tarnish from a liberal or even moderate perspective. All of the Cold War hawks, like Goldwater, have blood on their hands for the slaughters in Southeast Asia, and the senator's opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 still gnaws away diligently at his legacy; but in his later years in the Senate in the 1980s and then in retirement, Goldwater became a rather heroic public figure, demonstrating that even his faulty political ideas had assuredly been born and nourished of strong personal conviction.
In '64, Goldwater, the candidate, was the conservatives' alternative to the northeastern liberal Nelson Rockefeller at his party's summer convention. He was a staunch anti-communist, and his contempt for the East Coast center-left media would also have everlasting resonance within his party. But by the early 1980s, Goldwater had become a voice of moderation in the Republican party, one of a decreasing number of tentpoles for its floundering libertarian wing.
He publicly chided the social conservatives in the camp, such as the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who held disdain for the Separation of Church and State. Goldwater believed that their moral piety and social overreach would wreak as much damage to the Republican party as he believed corrupt labor bosses had wrought for Democrats a generation previous. Though it had not yet become a hot button issue during the height of his power, Goldwater always supported a woman's right to choose and supported his own daughter's decision to abort a child. He championed the Supreme Court nomination of fellow Arizonan Sandra Day O'Connor against a tide of anti-abortion opposition, and he later publicly recanted his opposition to gays serving in the military.
Today, Goldwater's legacy seems more instructive for the tepid liberals than for conservatives. With massive public debt under Republican leadership, an increasingly faith-based government, and a business culture that speaks more to corporate Socialism than free enterprise, Republicans are evidently no longer taking the political lessons of Barry Goldwater (even "Goldwater conservatives," such as John McCain, are anti-choice,) but liberals can still learn from his independence and political courage.
I may have pointed out on this blog before the political lessons I feel can be taken from the '64 and '72 Presidential elections. In '64, Goldwater took defiant, unpopular positions on the stump and was trounced by a greater margin than any other presidential runner-up in the 20th Century before or after. His opponent, Lyndon Johnson, netted an overwhelming 63 percent of the popular vote. But Goldwater's philosophy of government became a sort of manual to be studied that would pay remarkable future dividends at the ballot box after his devotees picked up the gauntlet and carried it to the grassroots level.
By '72, that electoral tide had already reversed and it was the anti-war Democrat George McGovern that took the whipping at the polls, but Democrats, instead of rallying behind McGovern's message, scattered like rats. They should have adopted an emboldened "I told you so" position in the wake of Richard Nixon's proceeding moral and public destruction, but instead, they turned the courageous McGovern into the party's boogeyman, allowing his principles to be mocked and legacy to be destroyed, and then they trudged off without compass into the political wilderness.
When will Democrats take back the power from the corporate consultants and "spin doctors" and tune to the fact that American voters still thirst for the courage and straightforwardness they received from Presidents Roosevelt and Truman? Voters abhor word-parsing dilettantes and triangulating bullshit-artists, and the true believers within the party nucleus will scratch and crawl for you if you only give them first a cause for which to fight. That's the greatest political legacy of Barry Goldwater.
And perhaps also that-- like the proverbial ugly buildings and whores-- even a conservative can grow respectable with age.
Pep rally
I clicked on an on-line football headline today that read, "President Bush offers advice to beleaguered Tampa QB." I asked myself-- what does George W. Bush know about playing quarterback in the NFL? Turns out the sum of the President's advice to the Buccaneers' punch-drunk Chris Simms was "Never give up."
Never give up? Was that the best hollow platitude Bush could muster at the fundraiser at Tampa's Raymond James Stadium? And does it really amount to a newsworthy anecdote? "Never give up" is no more meaningful advice to a football player than "Stay the course" is a military strategy.
The expression is about as compelling as this chestnut laid on us today by Yankees owner George Steinbrenner-- "I hate to lose. To lose is a failure in my book." No shit losing is a failure.
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Still skirt-chasing: Former President Clinton, to paraphrase Senator Thomas Jordan in "The Manchurian Candidate," could not do more damage to the Democratic party if he were a paid Republican agent. While the progressive leadership of his party is busting tail to sell voters an alternative to a president with a 37 percent approval rating seven weeks before a mid-term election, Bill's playing kissy-face with the president's wife-- inviting her to deliver the keynote address at his Global Initiative Conference, and by extension then, providing cover for the White House on key global diplomatic differences between the two parties. Meanwhile, his new best buddy (behind George H.W. Bush,) and the latest chief Hillary fundraiser, Rupert Murdoch, announced this week his plans for a new Fox TV network aimed at organizing evangelicals so they can bolster their ever-so-calculated and
tax-free assault on Democrats. The "Bush/Clinton" cabal must be stopped before it threatens the "Bush/House of Saud" cabal for world domination.
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Here's an electoral strategy I can get behind: White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen is a stark-mad lunatic, but he's stumbled upon a slick idea over how to help his team's thirdbaseman, Joe Crede, win that position's Gold Glove award in the American League, a prize selected by the pool of circuit field managers. Guillen's not allowed to vote for his own man so he's planning to vote for the worst player in the field and avoid the risk of helping someone deserving win the award. He even told us who he believes that worst player is-- "What's the guy that plays for Minnesota, the Latino guy? [Tony] Batista? I will vote for him just so [Oakland's Eric] Chavez doesn't win."
This is the same strategy I employ in All-Star voting. I vote for all Mariners and Royals in the American League to help the Nationals win. Who cares about seeing Joe Mauer in mid-summer's spotlight when you can see... John Buck?
Their prison without bars
Pete Rose has some gall selling autographed baseballs inscribed with the words "I'm sorry I bet on baseball." He says he's not making any money on the 30 balls that showed up at an auction house in New York, but I don't believe him. Rose is always out to make a buck. Everything he signs, every appearance he makes, it's all plotted with one thing in mind-- the almighty dollar. And Rose reveals no shame about it whatsoever. He'll pimp himself out for any cash he can get his hands on. Baseball and its Hall of Fame should be for real heroes of the Major Leagues. No more chances for Rose-- he's just sleaze. He'll never learn.We'll return with the DHL Delivery of the Day and the results of the Mastercard Hometown Heroes promotion as the Ameritrade Pre-game show rolls on from AT&T Park. First, a word from Holiday Inn. Holiday Inn. Look again.---
Did the Mets just win the World Series?
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If Ford and General Motors merge, what will become of all the bumper stickers depicting Calvin urinating on their emblems? They'll be out of date quicker than my Fallon for Governor sticker.
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Quote of the day: Democratic candidate for President Mark Warner, former Virginia governor, to members of the Greater Des Moines Partnership on his party's alienation of the wealthy, "I think the Kerry campaign missed something. Even though the Bush tax cuts only applied to 2% of Americans, what I think the Kerry campaign missed was that the other 98 percent of Americans still aspired to get to the point in their life where they could qualify for the tax cuts."
Paging Mr. Nader. Counselor Nader, report to the scorer's table.
Black cinema
I trekked to "The Black Dahlia" last night-- in theaters near you beginning this weekend. You'll get a lot of bang for your buck if you choose to attend-- every actor in it seems to be starring in his or her own movie. I feel like I watched about eight in all.
Like
Kenneth Turan of the LA Times, I'll turn out to see anything
noir-ish, especially if the film is set in the golden era and location of that genre itself-- 1940s & '50s Hollywood. (The CM Top 50 films, posted on this blog 12/05-2/06, include "Double Indemnity," "The Big Sleep," "White Heat," "Chinatown," and "L.A. Confidential.") I love that Mitchum line quoted by Turan, "Cary Grant and all the big stars at RKO (Studios) got all the lights. We lit our sets with cigarettes."
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Still with the LA times, they got "Deadwood" creator David Milch together with Sean Penn to
talk about the legacy of author Robert Penn Warren and his play, "All the King's Men."
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Sprinkling some fairy dust: Like Warren and Milch, one of our contributors, Aaron Moeller, is a product of the writing programs of the University of Iowa. Aaron's been published
elsewhere this week,having begun submitting concert reviews to music-nerd websites.
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My stepmother, Ksenia Nosikova, has been added to the prestigious roster of
Steinway Artists, by that premier manufacturer of pianos.
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I've been blithering on this week about these and other family members, but I've avoided telling you about my 2-year-old sister, Katya. We're not on speaking terms right now due to her plans for a Halloween costume this year. I think a pumpkin outfit would be cute, but she plans to go dressed as one of the Pussycat Dolls. They grow up so fast.
This is only a test
The Cincinnati Reds are giving their fans a unique opportunity to score free tickets to a ballgame at Great American Ballpark next year. On September 30th of this year, U.S. Homeland Security and Cincinnati area disaster response teams will conduct a full-scale simulated terrorist attack training exercise inside the stadium, and they're asking volunteers to come act as fans and be evacuated from the building. Each participant in the simulation will receive a voucher for two tickets to a 2007 Reds game.
... That's your setup for the CM Blog's first-ever "Write your own Reds joke" contest. The joke could be something along the lines of "Simulation? Don't Reds fans already evacuate in mass every night after the fifth inning?" Something like that. Punch lines might incorporate such elements as: the team's fading 2006 pennant chances, Pete Rose, Marge Schott, or Marge Schott's dogs. Submit your entries in the comment link below. No limit per person. The man or woman with the best joke submission this week will get zero tickets to a 2007 Reds game. Losers will receive a voucher for two. See, that's another joke.
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Are you like me? Can you never get enough of that geneology fun? If so, then you'll enjoy
this updated account of Annie Moore, the first ever immigrant through Ellis Island back in 1892. Her true story is finally being told.
Another true story:
my grandfather's grandfather, Johannes Georg Moeller (Moller), was processed into America through New York City's preceeding immigration structure in Battery Park-- Castle Garden, during the time of the Civil War. Georg left Lohlbach, Hessen, Germany as a widower with four young children on November 12, 1861. The family arrived at Atkins, Iowa and the farm of Georg's brother, John, on February 1, 1862. (Like his great-great grandsons a century and a half later, Georg was a twin, though his brother, Johannes Heinrich, died at birth, July 18, 1820.) In the new world, Georg would re-marry and sire six more children (Boo-yah!), the youngest of which was my great-grandfather, Peter. In 1881, upon the death of James Garfield, Georg was inaugurated as the 21st President of the United States.
The only-nearly retired
Why do sports reporters
keep trying to convince us that superstars in the twilight of their careers should be required to play for contending teams? Is it really best for Brett Favre that he finish his football career somewhere other than Green Bay? Is that what's best for Packers fans? Is Green Bay's season really over after their week one defeat? Remember when ESPN's Jayson Stark told us
last month that baseball's Roger Clemens should be traded to the Boston Red Sox? Well, tonight, the Red Sox are 10 1/2 games out of first place and eight games back in the American League Wild Card race. Clemens' Houston Astros are 6 games out of first and 4 1/2 games out in the Wild Card.
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Says baseball Hall-of-Famer Reggie Jackson of the Phillies' Ryan Howard and rumors about steroids: "I look at it as a shame, because of what happened in the past with the guys that were taking the chemicals." He said that he had no doubt that Barry Bonds would break Hank Aaron's home run record. "Hopefully the office of the commissioner can find out what happened, but how do you go back?"
I'll go back for you, Reggie. According to the
New York Daily News, you're the one who brought the first juice pusher into the Oakland clubhouse in the late 1980s, your good friend Curtis Wenzlaff, who the newspaper says provided Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire with anabolic steroids, and who stayed at Jackson's house for long stretches during that period.
A final note after re-reading that Daily News piece linked above: Tell me why the reporters bend over backwards to protect Jackson's reputation despite his being smack dab in the middle of the Wenzlaff/Canseco coupling. That should tell you all you need to know about the East Coast Yankees-dominated sports media, the easy redemption of Jason Giambi, the lack of attention towards Gary Sheffield's pharmaceutical history, and the organizing efforts to resurrect Roger Maris' home run record.
Those who attacked and their defenders
The fifth anniversary of the September 11th assault on the United States should bring with it time for sober reflection, and that thoughtful sobriety cannot exist without the acknowledgement of the culpability of the Bush Administration and a political and business culture in the U.S. that served, first, to indirectly finance the assault, and then to intentionally undermine the pursuit of justice for its victims. The monsters who attacked us don't just hide, as best we can guess, in the rugged mountains along the Afghan/Pakistan border. They live among us in the more enlightened secular world, in palatial European estates and chalet-style mansions resting upon the Rocky Mountains. They fund terrorist training camps while allowing the enslavement of their wives, sisters, and daughters, and shuttle our politicians from palace to palace purchasing protection for their unconscionable crimes. They are the Saudi royal family.
The royals live in the lap of Earthen luxury thanks to a planet coked-up on petroleum. Despite an unpopulist, western-style appetite for excess and middle-eastern-style "sin," they maintain their lavish livestyles appeasing the powerful orthodox clerics of their kingdom with the subjugation of women and the fueling of anti-western and anti-semitic rhetoric. Under their reign, school textbooks teach that Jews drink the blood of children. Women remain physically segregated until marriage, remain covered head to toe in public at all times, are forbidden to marry outside the Muslim faith, and at least in one instance, are stoned to death for the crime of being raped. Homosexuality is punished by beheading.
Leaders in the Bush Administration, though not alone among Washington's power brokers, have always looked the other way on the clerics' female and gay butchering, and one day shortly after September 11th, 2001 agreed to also strengthen their political and financial partnership (read: oil) by taking out Saddam Hussein, dictator of Iraq and the Saudis' greatest regional rival. This new priority for the United States military effectively ended the 9/11 victims' pursuit of justice in the capture of Osama bin Laden. In February 2002, President Bush pulled most of the special operations troops and their CIA counterparts out of the Afghan mountains and away from the hunt for bin Laden in preparation for war with Iraq.
The royals' role in the September 11th attack is indisputable, and the House of Saud is indisputably linked to the Bush family political and business dynasty. Their most-westernized representatives, Prince Bandar and his wife Princess Haifa, before writing checks to Saudi "charities" who were teaching lunatics how to turn airplanes into missiles, invested millions of dollars in the construction of the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas. Pappy Bush's family, friends, and business connections had already taken to calling the Prince "Bandar Bush," because of their long association and deep affection, and they continue to make low-key house calls to the royals' D.C. townhouse for comfort and support.
The widows of 9/11 have been denied by their government the right to sue the House of Saud for losses despite evidence (bank statements) of direct funding of the attack, and the entire section of the 9/11 Report dealing with Saudi involvement remains classified indefinitely. The Bushies have attempted to re-cast Hussein and Iraq as partners in the hijacking plot, even though Osama bin Laden was a Saudi citizen and so were 15 of the other murderers buried among the innocent at the site of this morning's memorial in lower Manhattan.
Pakistan, hailed by the Bush administration as another ally in the war on terror, and a country in which female rape victims have to produce four male witnesses to avoid being charged with adultery, continues its obstruction of 9/11 justice, announcing last week that a peace deal and amnesty agreement had been struck with tribes in its northern mountain region long suspected of harboring bin Laden and his lieutenants.
These facts should be on everyone's mind on this solemn anniversary. Our president, speaking to the nation tonight from the Oval Office will continue to talk about justice for the 9/11 victims and fighting terrorism around the world, but his words betray the dead. Not only did he and his co-horts help to fund and legitimatize the tyrannical, and, at best, blisteringly negligent Saudi royals before the attacks, they then sold out the victims of September 11th after the fact by continuing to protect their personal and lucrative business interests above all other pursuits. It goes beyond hypocrisy past vicious insult into the realm of criminal activity. You can't fight the "Islamo-fascists" while simultaneously lining their pockets.
Charles and Gnarls Barkley
Today I simultaneously endorse a
political candidate and a
pop tune.
I also approve
this unrelated policy. Leave the nursery at home.
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The NFL season kicks off tonight in Pittsburgh. Last week I bookmarked
this article about professional football franchise values. Notice anything peculiar about the list? If you're a baseball fan, you probably noticed that there's virtually no correlation to franchise value and team dominance. This is because football's pro teams, unlike baseball's, share their television profits evenly and don't bogart local money like a three-year-old with a favorite stuffed animal.
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Four more years of sleepless nights. No, not a third Bush term--
Letterman re-ups with CBS. I'm thrilled for the King of Late Night. His extension assures that his nearly three-year-old son will always have a recollection of the time his father was on the air. My mother died when I was seven and I'm grateful for the memories of watching her at her profession.
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The football game's on tonight, but I got hooked earlier in the evening on U.S. Open action on USA Network. I'm convinced that Martina Navratilova is the most underrated athlete in world history. She's still competing in doubles and mixed doubles competition this year, but has said the Open will be her final professional tournament. (She turns 50 next month.) It goes without saying that Martina's coming out as a lesbian has cost her fame and a sizeable fortune, but her records speak for themselves. (It's easier to just create a
link.)
For a little perspective on the remarkable time span of her career: the first year Martina played in the U.S. Open-- 1973, "The Sting" was in movie theaters. When she first reached #1 in the world rankings-- 1978, Thurman Munson was still alive and catching for the New York Yankees. Extraordinary.
For your consideration 2006...
Are we setting up for another Cardinals' sweep of the Cy Young and MVP Awards in the National League this year? Chris Carpenter took a no-decision today in Washington, but his 13 wins are just two off the league lead and his 2.97 ERA tops the circuit. Albert Pujols trails Philly's Ryan Howard by nine home runs (53 to 44) and 17 RBI's (134 to 117, Pujols is 2nd in both categories,) but he's outhitting the St. Louis native Howard .322 to .309, has nine more doubles, 13 more runs scored, higher on-base and slugging percentages, and his team is four games better. Howard has 78 walks to Pujols' 77, but Pujols has struck out only 40 times to Howard's 154. Looking for some historic perspective? Eighteen of Pujols' 44 home runs this year (40.9 percent) have put the Cardinals ahead in a game to stay, compared with Howard's nine. The Pujols total is the highest in baseball since Willie Mays hit 19 for the Giants in 1962.
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On-line passage of the day: Salon's King Kauffman--
"The 2006 NFL season opens Thursday under a cloud of doubt and steroid suspicion. Oh, wait. No it doesn't. That's just baseball. The same fan culture and media that are ready to rewrite the record books and pillory any slugger who looks good in Under Armour or hits four home runs in a week as a probable juicer, the same Congress that drags baseball in for regular show trials and admonishments about the youth of our nation: A group shrug at men the size of buildings running 4.5 40s and NFL team doctors
going to the pokey for handing out steroid prescriptions like aspirin samples to active players."
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If moving left is so damaging to Democrats, why is the right-wing Washington Times' magazine
reporting that Karl Rove funneled millions of dollars into the Joe Lieberman primary campaign?
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Is
Tom Cruise's baby wearing a toupee?
Katie and the News
It was difficult to judge Katie Couric's debut tonight on "The CBS Evening News" if you've drifted as far away from the networks' nightly newscasts as I have. What changes can be attributed to her presence, and which were made months, if not years, ago? Beats me. I've been either working, playing, or watching "Simpsons" re-runs. Same as you.
I can tell you what I saw tonight, though. I saw a lot of elements that reminded me of "CBS Sunday Morning." A light report by "humorist" Steve Hartman, a brief in-studio interview with NY Times columnist Thomas Freidman, and a commentary delivered in front of a black backdrop-- the twist on the latter, a recurring segment-to-be called "Free Speech" that will be produced and orated by a different person each night, not always famous. (Tonight, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock; on Thursday, Rush Limbaugh.)
Ultimately, does it matter who hosts the news anyway? The half-hour nightly news is a relic of another time. And despite aspersions to the contrary, cable television news is just as passe. Even the most popular of the cable news commentators would murder for the ratings that CBS Late Late Show variety host Craig Ferguson commands in the wee small hours. The only thing that matters is the collective reaction of their herd of talking heads; and more and more, that herd is simply reacting to the blogosphere. The net is providing the persistence of focus that used to be common in the network news. Collectively, the bloggers are the ones keeping our leaders' feet to the fire while the TV and radio stations appease the corporate paymasters. It's the bloggers that did in Dan Rather, Trent Lott, Joe Lieberman, George Allen, and quite possibly yet, Hillary Clinton.
Two or three newspapers still lead the parade for Washington decision-makers, and even the on-line pundits, when it comes to establishing news priorities, but television outlets haven't taken those cues for a generation. They're simply on the lookout for interesting pictures.
Couric had but 22 minutes to recap the world events of the day, and her producers devoted three of those to the croc hunter and Tom Cruise's baby. (Combine them, pallie, then you've got yourself a story!) As anchor, Couric is really just directing traffic. The meat of the broadcast each day will be in stories like Anthony Mason's piece tonight on Shell Oil's presence in the Gulf of Mexico on a day when Chevron struck for what may be as much as 15 billion barrels of oil and natural gas liquids. Important story, but time evidently didn't allow for further pursuit of the intriguing report that Shell lost hundreds of millions in damage from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, but still managed a $25 billion profit for fiscal 2005.
I'm rooting for Katie Couric for a number of reasons. Nostalgia, for one. CBS' news division has really been the only one on television capable of effecting significant change in the culture during its history. Reason #2: that it would put the final nail in the coffin of the idea that phony gravitas, a la Tom Brokaw, is a requirement of a network news anchor. For Couric's critics, "gravitas" has been simply a codeword to really mean that she has too feminine of sensibilities to sit in the big chair, and that she comes up one penis short on her resume. Finally, three, and the reason that marks me a hypocrite on reason number two, that I find Couric as pleasant to look at following an eight hour work day as I do before that day begins.
The program, other than that, will remain as inconsequential in my life as it has been since I was in grade school. By perusing my favorite websites during work, I can already know the stories I will see on Couric's newscasts, plus I've seen the first national reports that Karl Rove's father was gay, that Condoleeza Rice likened the Iraqi War to the U.S. Civil War in the latest issue of Essence magazine, that a missile was fired last week at a helicopter carrying John McCain in the Republic of Georgia, and that the chief war critic in the Congress, Jack Murtha, believes we need "to either change the course in Iraq... or reinstitute the draft."
Oh, and one more thing, I'm pissed that CBS didn't take one of my all-time great ideas. Their ratings, and their news and network reputations, would go through the roof if they went commercial free during the half-hour nightly report. Eight minutes of relevance and depth could be added to the content, and the boner pill ads would find empty commercial slots elsewhere.
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Another story on "The CBS Evening News" was the stepping down of Bill Ford as the head of the Ford Motor Company. As usual, business and investor news gets high priority on these broadcasts. But what about labor news? Usually nothing. All we've been getting lately are some vague reports of economic growth. But
these numbers tell a starkly different tale. President Bush must have been talking through his ass yesterday when he said his tax cuts were helping American laborers.
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The network entertainment divisions give us "It's a Wonderful Life" every Christmas and "The Ten Commandments" each Easter Sunday. Why not "The Grapes of Wrath" on Labor Day?
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This is the
feature story of the day.
9/6/06 correction: Couric's producers did not designate three minutes of on-air time to TomKat's baby ("KittyCat") and the crocodile hunter. Couric is serving as her own editor and made the decision to report those stories.
