I often talk about and post articles by my friend Nell Minow, the combination corporate governance world expert and Movie Mom film critic. But sometimes it's good to know from whence they came.
This is a terrific article here from the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin about Nell's father, Newton Minow. Newton Minow has the rare distinction of being probably the only FCC Chairman in the history of the department who anyone can name -- this includes the current head -- and what makes it all the more impressive is that he was FCC Chairman over a half a century ago, 54 years, That's because of his famous speech, still remembered today, calling television a "vast wasteland." Oddly, as the article points out, Minow had never thought of his speech that way when he was preparing it, but rather as his "public interest" speech, the topic he felt was of most critical concern. (I particularly loved reading that. Some of you may recall that just last week I wrote a piece here about the sports radio host who went on a ranting sexist smear, and I noted specifically -- because it's always struck me as critical -- that radio stations are licensed to do only three things -- broadcast in the “public interest, convenience and necessity.”) Left out of the article (understandably, I guess, for a law journal...) is that TV producer Sherwood Schwartz was so bothered by the FCC Chairman daring to call his industry a "vast wasteland" that when Schwartz needed a name for a boat on his new show, he called it, 'the S.S. Minnow.' And so it was that the Captain and his little buddy Gilligan took their passengers on the ill-fated three hour cruise. Beyond being immortalized on Gilligan's Island, Newton Minow has had an actually-illustrious career, dating back to working with Adlai Stevenson in his runs for the presidency, and then JFK, to being a senior partner and early political adviser to Barack Obama, and being one of the leading organizers of all presidential debates, including the first one with Kennedy and Nixon. And much else politically in between. That and, of course, being poker-playing buddy with my dad. Actually, one of my dad's favorite stories concerns when Minow had left Glencoe and gone to Washington and the FCC. He had to go on a trip overseas, and so called my father (who had been his doctor) to find out about what shots he needed. "Newt," my dad said with a bit of surprise, "you do know you have the Surgeon General of the United States just down the hall, and the Bethesda Medical Center to check with." But Newt wanted to stick with what he knew and felt comfortable with. My dad liked that. (And it's from Newton Minow that I was given -- and still have -- two prize possessions. Old 45 RPM singles of campaign songs for Adlai Stevenson running for the White House in 1956 and for John F. Kennedy four years later.) Anyway, take a look at the article here about a interesting man, who continues to practice law at the age of 88.
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I was just watching ESPN, and they were doing a story about Lance Stephenson of the Indiana Pacers popping off about how well he was doing in the playoffs against LeBron James of the Miami Heat. At the end, the host, Linda Cohn, said to analyst P.J. Carlessimo -- "Okay, it's really interesting. If Lance Stephenson is so great, why does he have to tell us he's getting under Lebron's skin?"
Well...hmm, here's one possible answer: because he's egotistical. I mean, what a concept, a star athlete with an ego. Who would imagine? A star athlete who brags and postures. I mean, one day we may even see an athlete who scores a touchdown or tackles a player or breaks up a pass and then dances around for the crowd. A player who slam dunks and then pounds his chest as he runs down the court. A ballplayer who hits a home run and stands at the plate making sure the crowd sees him admiring it. An athlete who has a microphone jammed in his face and asked, "Tell us how you did so great and won the game with that play?" Yes, yes, I know this is not likely, but just imagine it happening one day. Imagine! "If Lance Stephenson is so great," she asks, "why does he have to tell us?" I should note that this is the same host who literally five minutes later led off a segment, "Let's go to Johnny Manziel. A man who likes attention" -- and then put on screen a photo Manziel tweeted of him at a pool party surrounded by a dozen girls in bikinis and guys in trunks, most preening for the camera holding up drinks. Has ESPN not re-run -- and re-run -- videotape of Rickey Henderson stealing a base to break Ty Cobb's record, ripping out the base, holding it above his head and should, "Now, I am the greatest of all time"??! Has ESPN not endlessly videotape of Muhammad Ali, for goodness sake, relentlessly proclaiming himself, "The Greatest!!!"? Has ESPN already forgotten replaying the Seattle Seahawk's Pro Bowl cornerback Richard Sherman's epic meltdown rant after the last Super Bowl about how great he was and so much better than Michael Crabtree -- "I’m the best corner in the game! When you try me with a sorry receiver like Crabtree, that’s what you’re going to get!" -- and has gone on ESPN to debate Skip Bayless while proclaiming, "I'm better at life than you!"??? Why does he have to tell us? C'mon, he doesn't have to. He chose to. He wants to. He wants the attention. He's posturing. He likes the acclaim. It's entertainment, it's show biz. He draws fans to himself, and that can raise one's value. And besides, you ask him to. You goad him to. You pray to the TV Sports God he does. And maybe, too, it's gamesmanship, where players -- all the time -- try to get into the head of your opponent. Try to get them thinking about you and not about what they're supposed to do. So, you tell reporters how good you're doing against someone, and that they are lost and don't stand a chance against you, because you're so much better.. And yes, maybe he is overcompensating, and he's not actually that great. It happens. Sometimes, after all, players try to build himself up, psyche himself that he can do the job. But maybe not. Especially when you yourself, minutes later, explain how so much of it all is show biz. Including what you do. In fairness, it's not inherently an unreasonable question, if you're seriously asking and truly want to analyze the motivations behind the statement. What's unreasonable is how it was asked, the suggestion that great athletes don't brag, and the context, most especially given what was said mere minutes later. But sometimes, even when asking questions, you just want controversy. Which sort of answers your own question. Hey, it might even be the funniest story of the year. It's definitely in contention for the Hubris Hall of Fame.
Greta Van Susteren, host on "Fox News", wrote an article here yesteday on the Huffington Post, "Free Legal Advice (and Free Decency Advice) for NBC and CBS." Now, before we get into what she wrote, and whether she had a good point or not, it's hard just to get past that headline. I mean, seriously, a host on "Fox News" giving "Decency Advice" to anyone??? Let alone on the hated Huffington Post! If this was The Onion, they would reject it as unbelievable beyond even their own joke standards. Ms. Van Susteren's Free Advice -- which was worth every penny -- took the two networks to tasks for getting the name wrong of the suspected murderer at the Navy Yard, and chastised them to correct their error. She was 100% right. And she was pathetic, disingenuous, empty and meaningless in doing so. The day that Ms. Van Susteren writes a similar, long rant on The Drudge Report slamming her own network for getting dangerously hurtful, indecent facts completely wrong is the day her "outrage" will have substance, rather than coming across like a self-aggrandizing promo for her own TV show, on which she repeatedly makes clear she had the wrongly-accused man on as a guest. The point isn't that what she was saying was right (it was), it's that I don't believe she meant it. "Fox News" regularly gets huge, significant facts of national importance wrong. And rarely am I aware of them correcting them. And never am I aware of her blasting them, let alone so publicly. Perhaps the facts they get wrong aren't of the same, visceral, damaging impact as that on this man's life (though, in fairness, maybe they have, but as someone who rarely watches "Fox News," I simply have no way of knowing all the great many things they get wrong) -- but I do know that the major facts they do get wrong, regularly and indecently -- and don't ever correct -- have a far, far far, far, far, far greater impact on the nation. "Fox News" gets important facts SO deeply and indecently wrong that a poll here by Fairleigh Dickinson University showed that people who watched no news at all were more informed that people who watched "Fox News"!! And I do know that after the Boston Marathon bombing, Fox News" did wrongly report that an arrest had been made. (Though in fairness they didn't give wrong names.) And I know, too, that when the Supreme Court handed down its vastly-important ruling on health care, "Fox News" not only got the ruling wrong for its misinformed viewers, but "stonewalled" its error. I've reported in the past how Glenn Beck reported on "Fox News" that his 9/12 Anti-Everything March on Washington had gotten 1.5 million people to attend -- something it was in his and Fox's best interest for their viewers to believe in their damning criticism of the Obama Administration...though official reports were actually just 30,000 to 70,000. (To support his outlandishly false number, Mr. Beck infamously said, "We had a university, the university, I think it's the University of -- I don't remember which university it is -- um, look at the pictures.") There was a liberal march in Washington where Fox showed a picture to demonstrate how poorly attended it was -- except that it was a totally different rally, using a photo from years before that didn't have buildings that should have existed today. What also didn't exist was Ms. Van Susteren's outrage. There was the time that "Fox News" was trying to make a point for their mis-led viewing public to believe about Bill Clinton and his supposed involvement with 9/11, and aired deleted footage from a fictional ABC TV docu-drama movie, The Path to 9/11, to prove their supposedly factual case. And you had Brian Kilmeade saying on "Fox News" that "Every terrorist is a Muslim" -- while adding to emphasize his indecent point: "You can't avoid that fact." I'm going to guess that that egregiously false "fact" caused great, lasting pain to an entire people. Though not enough to register on the Greta Van Susteren Outrage-o-Meter. "Fox News" is the network which has systematically gone out of its way to make its viewing public believe that Barack Obama is a traitor, Muslim, terrorist, Nazi, dictator, socialist -- a man their chief Roger Ailes, to foster national mistrust, has said "has a different belief system than most Americans." (And he has said, as well, that NPR executives are, "of course Nazis.") Is the U.S. President fair public game to such attack, and is it much less damaging to him personally than the damage to the mis-identified shooter? Absolutely, no question, worlds apart. But -- when your facts are wrong...they're wrong, and where is Greta Van Susteren slamming them? And further, once again, I would suggest that unrelenting, indecent lies against the President of the United States purely to foment national dissent and discord does worlds more damage. It doesn't justify the terrible problems of others -- but it puts it in perspective. And on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on... None of this lets CBS and NBC off the hook. None. They were wrong, egregiously wrong, and they should do everything they possibly can to rectify the damage they caused. They made a mistake. Even if "Fox News" makes indecent mistakes on a near-daily basis, that doesn't justify a single one of your own. But Greta Van Susteren's faux-outrage is empty, meaningless and hilarious. And no more hilarious than when she offered her "free legal advice" in capital letters for emphasis -- "It is LIBEL PER SE TO FALSELY ACCUSE SOMEONE OF A CRIME. Bingo! They did it." Except that...well, you see, she's wrong. They didn't do it. Libel is for the written word. What she's probably trying to refer to is slander, or perhaps defamation. Who knows? What difference does it make, it was free! And worth every penny. We await her equally slamming her own beloved "Fox News" for all its lies, slander, falsehoods and defamation and factual errors. We just won't wait very long... Carson Daly was just named a new host for the Today Show. The news brought back to mind my encounter with him about five years. At the time, in January, 2008, it was during the Writers Guild Strike against the studios and networks in the AMPTP. Carson Daly had been the first TV host to cross the picket line and he became a lightning rod of anger for Guild members. The article below goes into more detail about that, and the reasons that caused his actions. But what happened by pure chance is that I ran into him when covering the Consumer Electronics Show -- and was wearing my WGA On Strike t-shirt at the time. This was the Huffington Post article I wrote about the encounter. As you'll see, as divisive as the issue was, I came away with a reasonably positive reaction, though I also came to the encounter with a less-visceral reaction than some. What I found particularly fascinated in revisiting the article, though, was reading the comments at the end from readers, most of whom were WGA members. If you're interested in seeing those responses from a perspective of five years, you can check them out here, WGA Srike Primer: Crossing Paths with Carson Daly Wandering the Consumer Electronics Show circus brings many surprises. That's largely its point, but the surprises are usually technological. This one was otherwise. And a well-known Hollywood strike story turned out to be very different.
The night before the show officially opened, I went to an event of vendors. One company there had a celebrity promoting its product - it was Carson Daly. To anyone in the Writers Guild, a hot button has just been pushed. Not long ago, Daly became arguably the WGA's Most Hated Person Not in the AMPTP. He was the first late-night TV host who crossed the picket line, and talked about having people call his answering machine to provide jokes. His car was hounded by striking writers each day he tried to enter the studio, and his name taken in vain almost more than that of Nick Counter, the AMPTP negotiator. I must note that my own perspective is different from the outrage. I greatly wish he hadn't crossed the picket line, but think he got a raw deal. Others may understandably disagree, though as the story later came out, he was told by his network bosses he'd be fired if he didn't do the show. Carson Daly is not in the Writers Guild of America, and it's not anyone's place to lose his job over another union. While picketing the show and network was absolutely appropriate, the outraged focus on Daly is another matter. After all, Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are today doing the exact same thing -- their shows are rightly-picketed, but the Guild makes clear they're picketing the networks, not the individuals. That wasn't the case with Carson Daly, whose name still can bring a twitch to many a Writers Guild member. He had the bad fortune to be first. And so there was Carson Daly, five feet away. It isn't often one is presented with such an opportunity. Keep in mind that I was wearing my WGA On Strike t-shirt, something which had the likely potential of blaring out like a warning beacon. I walked over -- and with my best attempt at a charmingly whimsical voice, said, "I just want to let you know that I'm not here to picket you." Looking up in surprise, his initial imperceptible twitch turned into relief. To be clear, despite my larger-issue feelings, I had no intention of 'absolving' him. I began, "I really wish you hadn't done what you did" -- but before I could say anything else, he interrupted me and said, with a look of sadness covering his face, "I do, too." We spoke for a few minutes, and it was clear from our conversation that he felt absolutely horrible about the whole situation, not a hint of bravado or anger at the protests, no "in your face" petulance towards me and my On Strike shirt, just profound disappointment by it all. And he said that the whole controversy over his answering machine was blown far out of proportion. "It was just meant to be a bit," he said quietly, "just a bit," not that he was actually soliciting material. I don't have the words to describe his expression when I mentioned my personal thought that he'd gotten a raw deal. It wasn't relief, or gratitude, or a weight being lifted off his shoulders, but sort of a combination of all that and other things swirling around. He kept repeating, "Thank you," as if so pleased just to have someone from the Writers Guild actually listening to him. Even if it was only some guy he didn't know from Adam who had cornered him. And as I prepared to leave, he ended by saying, "I wish this strike was over." This isn't to debate whether he got a raw deal or not. That's just my opinion that he did. I've only wanted to make clear that he wasn't blasting writers for making his life hell or holding a grudge, and that he came across as deeply sad by it all. And there were no cameras on him, no handlers, it wasn't posturing for an audience. Just the two of us talking quietly, alone. I repeated a few times, "I wish you hadn't done what you did," and not once did he get upset or ever try to even contradict me. He never snapped back, "Yeah, yeah, I know, you said that, I get it." He just talked. Reasonably, sensibly, fairly, quietly, feeling terrible. And listening just as politely. It was very impressive. As has been mentioned elsewhere, strikes are full of victims -- those striking, those out of work with nothing to gain, and even those on top, and it's often easy to lose track when dealing with one's own very real problems. A strike paints everything with wide brush strokes of general issues, and we usually lose sight of the details, the personal. But anyone can get caught between forces not of their doing. When one side intentionally creates conditions that force a strike and then twice callously walks away from resolving it, there's much collateral damage. And sometimes, all anyone wants is a chance for another person to listen to them. And to express their own hurt. And regret. Whatever happens next, that's a face at the heart of this strike. It's a face of countless people hurt by all the wide range of damage that could have, should have been resolved early. It's the face of any strike. A highly-visible Tweet has been making the rounds since yesterday, and causing quite a stir in the news, relating to John Kerry being on his boat during the crisis in Egypt. Possible reasons there was no response when she shouted "Morsi."
1. They didn’t hear her, because her voice didn’t carry over the ocean, across other boats, above other shouting and mixed with general noise. 2. They heard her. But didn’t know what in the world she was saying. Someone thought she was shouting, “Morrie!”, but there was no one there named Morrie. 3. John Kerry doesn’t generally respond to being shouted at. Like most people. 4. John Kerry heard, but didn’t want to shout back over the ocean and probably be misinterpreted during an international crisis. 5. John Kerry heard, but…well, was busy on the phone dealing with the crisis in Egypt. 6. John Kerry heard, and wanted to respond, but didn’t know what the proper reply was to, “Morsi.” 7. They heard her, but didn't have a proper answer ready to give yet, in the midst of an international crisis.. 8. They heard her, but didn't know who she was. 9. They heard her, had a good answer, but just didn't want to say anything from the deck of a boat. 10. They heard her, but thought she was identifying herself. 11. Shouting "Morsi" isn't a question, and they were waiting for one. A headline story on Wednesday's Huffington Post homepage read --
"PHOTOS: Porn Stars Go Makeup-Free" Yes, because makeup, after all, is what you think of first when it comes to what made them porn stars, as opposed to being mere supporting cast. For what it's worth, although this was on the homepage of the Huffington Post, for some reason (though guessing the reason isn't terribly difficult...) the website at least didn't feel this was a major homepage story. It was relegated to a slot two whole spaces under a photo and story headlined -- "George Clooney's Ex Shares Racy Photo." As the saying goes, thanks for sharing. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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