We witnessed amazing television tonight. The good folks at CNN did a nice job, specifically Anderson Cooper, Gary Tuchman, and Karl Penhaul. At this time, four of the Chilean miners have been rescued. Prayers that the others soon join them without incident.
Video of the rescue capsule reaching the miners for the first time:
Rich Iott Does Himself No Favors, Sharron Angle Still Nutty, Update From Chile, And Allegations Against Sheriff Joe Arpaio
Hi everybody. A new week is upon us! Do you have election fever yet? Yeah, me neither. I must have fallen in the enthusiasm gap. But some of the candidates keep doing/saying completely ridiculous things, so there's that! God bless America. All aboard the Crazy Train:
So! There is this Tea Partier, Rich Iott, who is the Republican candidate for Ohio's 9th Congressional District and it seems he has a hobby. See, he's one of those war re-enactors. You know, the guys who live out their boyhood fantasies all under the guise of being history buffs? That alone, not something to get all that judge-y about. But Iott here decided to expand beyond the norm and joined himself a group that involved donning an S.S. uniform. Yes, this was an idea he had! And...now there's a picture on the interwebs of him dressed up like a Nazi. Score.
Anderson Cooper, who has been carving himself a niche lately as a combater of Crazy (and we love him for it!), tells us all about the recruitment video of Iott's group. Hey guess what it doesn't mention? That whole Holocaust thing! A minor oversight.
Iott apparently thinks he can defend this because he has decided to go toe-to-toe with our anchor. Live. The interview begins with a whole lot of spinning. The candidate tries to claim that re-enactments are about education AND that it's perfectly okay that the website doesn't have the whole story because that's about recruitment. Does not compute. I guess people need to be sucked in with sanitized information before they can really get the full impact of the education.
Our anchor then tries to get Iott to characterize the men he played as Nazi collaborators, and he hedges: "I don't know if you would call them collaborators. They were volunteers." This leads Anderson to note that, um, these guys left their own countries to join up with the Nazis, so...
Anderson goes on to note atrocities committed by the very unit that Iott portrayed. Says the candidate: "This particular unit was one that was never charged with war crimes." Well! I guess it's all okay then. Oh. My. God. My favorite part? Our anchor's sleeves may be opinionless, but sometimes his face totally says, "Oh, WTF?"
Anderson then asks if they were valiant men. Iott: "I think that they thought they were fighting for their homeland." Our anchor: "Well, I'm sure Nazis in the concentration camps thought they were doing a good thing, too. But that doesn't make it so. Do you think these were valiant men?" Oh, snap. Just a reminder, this man is running for Congress. I bet he is very glad he did this interview. Some of it can viewed below, though not, unfortunately the best parts. You're killing me, CNN.
Anderson: "You know, I say it a lot on this program, but it bears repeating. Who you vote for is between you, your conscience, and the voting machine. We don't take political sides on 360. We really try not to. We don't want to be a liberal newscast or conservative newscast. We just want facts." Actually, I don't think it bears repeating. I think it makes you sound really defensive. But hey, knock yourself out.
Iott has apparently handed the nuttiness baton to Sharron Angle, who has a warning for these here United States: beware Sharia law. ZOMG y'all, they got Dearborn, Michigan, and Frankford, Texas!
Dearborn's mayor, John O'Reilly, is none too pleased with this accusation and he joins us for some smacking down. He points out that not only does the U.S. not have any Sharia law, there's not even much in the Middle East, which really emphasizes the utter ridiculousness of the situation.
Anderson then shows us a video that is allegedly of four Christian missionaries getting arrested while trying to share their faith. This is supposedly evidence of the scary Sharia law takeover. O'Reilly notes that it wasn't a city-sponsored event and Christians were welcome. I would like to point out that if you switched the Christians with a group of protesters for any progressive cause, I have seen this video about 500 times. Two wrongs don't make a right, obviously (if there's even a wrong here), but c'mon. Welcome to the world of being treated like crap by those in authority! You don't need Sharia law for that.
The Crazy just keeps coming tonight. Let's see, we haven't covered homophobia yet. Carl Paladino, can you help us out with that? His recent quote below:
Young children should not be exposed to [homosexuality] at a young age. They don't understand this. And it's a very difficult thing. And exposing them to homosexuality, especially at a gay pride parade -- and I don't know if you have ever been to one, but they wear these little Speedos and they grind against each other. And it's just a terrible thing.
So yeah...that was fun. And before he said that he read comments someone else wrote for him (weird) that said he didn't want kids "brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid or successful option." Awesome.
But what would Parker and Spitzer think about this? Yes, it's about that time again. This is when CNN basically says, "hello AC360 viewer. We're very happy you're watching this show. But we would also be happy if you watched our new show. Because, see, we kinda banked much of our primetime ratings on this, and, well, so far it's not going that great. Some of us are getting scared and stressed out. We're not saying we're going to cry if we get one more bad review, but you know. We're really not begging or anything. Hey, remember when we fired Rick Sanchez? You liked that, right? So yeah, um, anyway, if you could just please, please watch. Like seriously, we still have therapy bills from when Lou Dobbs worked here." It's all about reading between the lines, people.
Anyhoo, for those keeping score at home, the Republican pool for the 2010 election now contains a witchcraft-dabbler, Nazi uniform-wearer, Sharia law-accuser, and, well, a stone-cold homophobe. And people say the GOP doesn't have a big tent...
On now to Gary Tuchman live from Chile to report on the trapped miners. Hopefully their long (68 days!) and horrible ordeal is just about over. The rescues are scheduled to begin in 24 hours. And you know what that means. The media, oh they have come! In a piece, our correspondent shows us around what is basically a tent city. Prior to the incident, the mine was pretty much it for the area, so people have been making do. They even constructed a little schoolhouse for the children of the miners. Plus? There are clowns. Because you gotta have clowns. It sounds like everyone is pretty excited. C'mon universe, let's have a happy ending.
Isha Sesay is back! I shall resume my girl crush. One of the headlines she reads involves someone throwing a book at Obama...because he wanted him to read it. Ha! Not quite the same as the whole Bush shoe incident, huh? Ah, memories. Says Isha: "Now, I'm no expert in these matters, although you're not going to hear me say that too often, but you got to be a couple sandwiches short of a picnic to throw a book at the president." Indeed.
Drew Griffin had an investigative piece on Sheriff Joe Arpaio, which you can watch below. Also, check out producer Ismael Estrada's blog post.
Finally, Anderson again talked with Tiffany Hartley.
I'm going to skip the "shot" since it's a picture, but let's do another headline with Isha, shall we? Apparently Snooki (yes, the one and only!) was arrested for drunkenness (no!) and was ordered to do community service. And what community service will she be doing? Signing autographs. Oh, WTF? I can't even. Isha asks Anderson if he knows what GTL stands for. I know! Gym, tan, laundry. Yes, the fact that I know that makes me want to cry sad tears. This is not my fault, people. Our anchor: "GTL, is that something to do with grenades?" And then, "Well, grenades is their term for -- I wouldn't go into it." Having no idea what the the Silver Fox was talking about, I took to the Google (yeah, I'm shame-faced). So now I know. I gotta say, this show just keeps sounding classier and classier.
The broadcast was good. Lots of variety. Even a variety of craziness. That'll do it.
Nepotism In Congress, Glenn Beck Decides To Do His Weeping Outside For A Change, And An Update From Pakistan
Hi everyone. Since I neglected to blog Friday's show, I have deprived you of my overall thoughts on the 360 kids New Orleans coverage (you poor, poor things!). Obviously this cannot stand! Don't worry, the matter will be rectified, well, now. Honestly, I'm a little torn. As a hard news junkie, my first instinct is to deem it shallow. Soledad O'Brien had a good look at the trailer situation, but there really wasn't that much honesty-keeping going on.
As I stated before, the lack of focus on the levees was rather ridiculous. Harry Shearer implies (in the comments) that further coverage on this issue was bumped. If true, that's a pretty big shame. It means they shirked their journalistic integrity for good video.
Bumpings like that wouldn't bother me much if I had confidence they would address the subject later. I do not. One thing that's always driven me crazy about this show is that they seem incapable of covering stories like Katrina's aftermath unless they are physically broadcasting from the region. Highlighting charity work or the city's restaurant situation is absolutely warranted and it is news. In fact, it seems like the most appropriate coverage to air while actually in the region. I just wish it didn't feel like a competition for airtime: accountability versus human interest.
Speaking of human interest, if they were going that route, where were the follow-ups with the people they met five years ago? Herbert Gettridge? Ms. Connie? The Kearneys? I think Dr. Henderson might have been the only one we got. For what it's worth, Tom Foreman caught up with the Kearneys, though I'm not sure when exactly this aired. In this podcast, Anderson Cooper says he keeps in contact with them by texting. Even if 360 couldn't fit them in the show, it seems like the perfect subject to blog/tweet about, don't you think? C'mon Silver Fox, you can't possibly be too busy to type a 140 character update.
Anyway. Like I said, I'm torn. It was good coverage--much of it enjoyable to watch. But as always, I would have liked to see more investigation. So, those are my thoughts. Your mileage may vary. Now let's zip back to the present day and churn out a few bullet point, mmkay?
Why won't Anderson operate the Magic Wall live? This dude will dodge bullets and swim with sharks, but he cowers in the face of multi-touch technology? Yeah, that sounds about right.
Admittedly, I was a little suspicious as to the origin of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation story. Right wing meme? Doesn't sound like it. That wouldn't necessary make it a non story anyway--it would just make me wonder the context. It looks like Representative Eddie Johnson has committed some stone-cold nepotism--a very big no-no. Our anchor's interview with Muriel Cooper, the senior media manager for the CBC Foundation is below.
Anderson: "If multiple kids who are relatives of members of the CBC are signing off on this, I mean, it's pretty gutsy for a kid to lie like that. I would assume that they must have asked their family member who is in the CBC or who works for the congresswoman, you know, what should I do here? I'm assuming somebody told them, yes, just go ahead and say you're not a family member." Though he's probably right, you know what they say about people who assume. Let's just stick with the facts.
Overall I thought our anchor did a nice job with that interview.
This is possibly neither here nor there, but the presence of Melanie Sloan instantly upped this story's newsy cred.
While I am pondering as to why this nepotism thing was the lede, I'm glad it's getting the coverage--even if some think it's not a big deal. This kind of crap is the root of the beltway rot. Keep it in context and I'll be a happy camper.
Anderson: "Two men on a United Airlines flight from Chicago taken into custody after landing in Amsterdam. Who they are, what they tried to get on board and what authorities say they believe they were up to is raising some pretty chilling questions." Gotta say, I am decidedly unchilled. Look, we know terrorists want to commit terror. If we've gotten to the point where we catch them during a dry run and not when they're lighting their crotches on fire, I say go us! We don't even know what happened yet (and NBC News actually implied this is probably nothing). I'm going to wait a couple days to pay this story mind--if it's even still a story.
Did you hear? This weekend former shock jock Glenn Beck decided to get all Jesus-y up in D.C. and restore America's virginity. Or something like that. What is there to say about Beck, really? He's either a man who legitimately needs psychological help...or he's a soulless cynic who is a master at exploiting the fears of a group of people who rightly or wrongly feel disenfranchised. Pick your poison!
I don't even understand this rally. Restoring America's honor? Where did it go? Who took it? (I have a guess!) Beck seems to think his little gathering is going to change history. You know, just like all those protesters totally stopped the Iraq war from happening. Oh, wait.
Though I like Matt Taibbi, the debate between him and Dana Loesch was fairly irrelevant. If you like Beck, you will think Dana destroyed Matt. If you don't, flip it around. You get the picture. FYI, Loesch is from St. Louis. So proud!
I can't believe that they spent the whole first part of that segment arguing about whether or not the rally was political and no one mentioned that the whole thing was organized through a charity and therefore they had to be mindful of their tax exempt status. Also, as Matt said, of course it was political.
Taibbi: "This is like one of those things when you see your crazy uncle taking his pants off at Thanksgiving. You don't know whether to laugh or cry. It's so incredibly offensive, this whole business." Ha! This is pretty much where I am right now with politics. It's like, oh look, more people being crazy.
Anderson: "Dana, I should just point out, just for accuracy's sake, Dr. Alveda King, she's not an actual doctor. It's an honorary degree." It's kind of funny that after all that, this is what he decides to call out. But ok, I'll take it. Annnnnd cue the tea party hysterics. Segment below:
Claustrophobics leave the room. Gary Tuchman's piece is scary. Those poor Chilean miners. I cannot imagine being down there for months. They're basically entombed in rock.
As for the reenactment, with these kind of things I'm always conscious of the fact that it's TV. The leader guy's all, "I'll be the last one," and I'm like, um, yeah, there's a camera person behind you. Poor camera person--never counted. Heh.
Sanjay Gupta continues to bring us great reporting from Pakistan. Horrible situation. His piece is below:
