Get Ready For Election Day News Coverage

Too Much Politics Can Make Anyone Ill

For the last two years – it seems like an eternity – our news shows have been filled with election talk. It started even before the primaries, but it went into high gear as the primaries progressed, and has continued to escalate to the degree that one almost can’t escape it. Even for news and politics junkies like me, I think I’ve reached the limit.

But wait, there’s more. Election Day. It all leads up to this, and many of the networks are touting full day coverage, either on their main broadcast channels, or their cable equivalents. I think NBC Universal may have the most chance to grab viewers, with coverage on NBC, MSNBC, and probably even some coverage on CNBC. Usually on election night I find myself flipping channels, desperate to find something non-political to watch. This year, though, I think I will probably remain glued to the television, especially after the polls close here in the Eastern Time zone. My network of choice – NBC. They always seem to have the best coverage across the country, and I like their on-air people like Brian Williams. The fact that Tim Russert had passed away makes no difference to me as I wasn’t all that taken by his political analysis anyway. His political replacement, Chuck Todd, seems to do just fine. In fact, Chuck seems to have more easily embraced the new technology available for graphics, and I think this helps him explain things a little more clearly than Russert.
But, even I have limits with political coverage and unless there is some big surprise coming when the results come in, I’m content to go to bed like normal and wake up and find out who will be the new Big Man on the White House campus.

And speaking of political coverage, for the first time in a long time, I watched the Fox News (AKA “Faux) “Cost of Freedom” two-hour block of business shows on Saturday. I was appalled at their lame attempts to paint the Democrats, and Barack Obama, in the worst light possible. They should be ashamed of themselves. When they refer to themselves as fair and balanced, they’re kidding, right? Come to think of it, I haven’t heard the fair and balanced tag line from them in a while; maybe they dropped it because the FCC would go after them for false or fraudulent advertising? If the apparent shift in political power in the presidency and the Congress takes places as projected and the country is in fact leaning democratic, this may begin to put a few nails in the Fox coffin. We can only hope, because their kind of political coverage – or their “news” coverage - is simply poison.


Check out my blog home page for the latest information, here.

The TV News Media: Friend or Foe?

It’s hard to get away from politics these days. With the both the Democratic and Republican conventions occurring in the past two weeks, television viewers have been inundated with news about the candidates and their running mates. I am somewhat of a news junkie, and while I don’t sit glued to CNN or MSNBC or Fox news as a rule, I do make sure that I check news sites many times during the day for updates. And I for one am grateful not only for the Internet to deliver timely news, but also for the TV media's dogged coverage of politics. Sure, sometimes when there isn’t much news to report, they tend to throw in celebrity news that really isn’t news at all, but I suppose one must sometimes take the bad with the good.

With the announcement of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate, the Republicans got what they wanted – to knock the news of Barack Obama’s DNC speech off the air and put the Republicans back on top of the news. The problem is, they got too much of what they wanted when the media took Governor Sarah Palin and put her under their microscope. This is the double-edged sword that politicians must deal with. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember, and it won’t change any time soon.

The extensive television coverage that Palin received resulted in a jab being thrown, by her, at the media during her acceptance speech to the Republican National Convention, when she said (quoted from the transcript) “But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion. I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country. Americans expect us to go to Washington for the right reasons, and not just to mingle with the right people.” Other republican pundits have been crying foul over what they perceive is harsh treatment of Sarah Palin and her family by the media.

I am not quite sure what their problem is – they wanted coverage, and they got it. Sure, it wasn’t the coverage they needed, but they got it just the same. I had already gone on record on one of my other blogs (here) that children should be off limits (unless they chose to be involved) in a parent’s political campaign. But, that doesn’t mean that the media doesn’t have the right to question and grill the candidate themselves on the issues that are important and relevant to the job.

It seems that now the McCain campaign is using the extensive media coverage of Palin’s family as an excuse to keep her under a proverbial lock and key. It seems that there has been virtually no media access to Palin at all since she was announced as McCain's running mate. And after her swipe at the media during her speech, the media may be showing its annoyance. For example, on MSNBC, Nicole Wallace (insert chuckle from Law & Order Criminal Intent fans here) of the McCain campaign was on MSNBC. She was in a discussion with Time Magazine’s Jay Carney on Palin’s speech and we get this dialog (video also below):

CARNEY: We don't know yet and we won't know until you guys allow her to take questions, you know, can she answer tough questions, you know, domestic policy, foreign policy--

WALLACE: But I mean like from who? From you? Who cares?!

CARNEY: Who cares? I think the American people care.

WALLACE: I think the American people want to see her -- I mean who cares if she can talk to Time Magazine? She talked to the American people. The American people want to say, "How am I going to save my home?" She can answer that question. ... She took the stage and talked to the American people about things they care about: How they're gonna save their homes.

It is clear that Carney is frustrated that Palin is not being made accessible, and he wrote about it (full text below), saying that “According to Wallace…the American people will learn all they need to know (and all they deserve to know) from Palin's scripted speeches and choreographed appearances on the campaign trail and in campaign ads.”

At this point, I am sure both television media and print media are like sharks who smell blood in the water. If anything, this apparent sequestering of Palin only makes the media more curious that she has something to hide, or is weak on certain issues and requires extensive preparation for her to be able to talk intelligently on issues, such as the economy. And with television news outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox who have 24 hours of television time to fill, if they can’t fill it with anything they get directly from Palin, they will go out and dig it up for themselves via other sources. In a way, that is what makes the television news media so great, at the same time making them something to fear.

I for one am grateful for the service that the news media performs. And while the 24-hour TV coverage sometimes means that they have to fill holes will things that really aren’t meaningful, I may not like it, but there’s nothing preventing me from changing the channel. In the case of political coverage, though, television news is invaluable, in that it is the equivalent of having thousands of eyes and ears looking at what is happening in politics all around the country at all times. It’s a great improvement over what I experienced in the 1960s as a kid, when there was only a small time slot for national news in the evening, and everything was carefully choreographed and scripted, and sometimes days late (if it was reported at all). But these days, TV news – as well as the print and Internet media – have the upper hand because they can react and report with virtual lightning speed to millions and millions of viewers. So the lesson is clear: politicians should take great care when they try to manage the media to their own advantage, and they should be careful what they ask for – because they just might get it. And never bits the hand that feeds you.


As I mentioned above, Jay Carney wrote his own piece on the MSNBC matter; here it is:

No Questions, Please. We'll Tell You What You Need To Know.
September 4, 2008 5:07
Posted by Jay Carney

According to Nicole Wallace of the McCain campaign, the American people don't care whether Sarah Palin can answer specific questions about foreign and domestic policy. According to Wallace -- in an appearance I did with her this morning on Joe Scarborough's show -- the American people will learn all they need to know (and all they deserve to know) from Palin's scripted speeches and choreographed appearances on the campaign trail and in campaign ads. Here's the exchange:




Wallace's bash-the-media exercise has its merits as a campaign tactic. It certainly rallies the base. But the base won't lift McCain to 50% in November. More importantly, in her smug dismissal of the media's role in asking questions of the candidates, Wallace was really showing contempt not for reporters, but for voters. I bet there are a lot of undecided voters out there who were intrigued by Sarah Palin last night, but who don't yet know enough about her -- what she believes, what she knows -- to be comfortable with the idea of her as vice president of the United States. It's important to them to know if Palin can handle herself in an environment that isn't controlled and sanitized by campaign image makers and message mavens. Maybe she can, maybe she can't. As far as Wallace is concerned, it's none of their -- or your -- business.





Check out my blog home page for the latest information, here.

CSI Miami’s David Caruso – Unbearable?!

Who would believe that people would say David Caruso is unbearable on the set of CSI Miami? Ummmm, well, how about everybody? The following story featured by MSNBC shouldn’t be of any surprise to anyone who knows Caruso back from his NYPD Blue days. But it made me snicker, just the same. Oh yeah, the extra bonus piece from the Defamer below was just icing on the cake for me. Funny thing is, the campy and over the top Caruso is one of the reasons why I watch CSI Miami. It’s certainly not for the quality of the stories or the acting.


From MSNBC:
Caruso accused of being difficult, demanding

A snitch on the set of "CSI: Miami" says that star David Caruso spits, curses and acts like a "man-child" when filming.

By Ree Hines
MSNBC contributor
updated 10:16 p.m. ET, Mon., March. 17, 2008
Lieutenant Horatio Caine may be Miami’s smoothest lawman, but according to one insider, the actor behind the character is more of a demanding diva. Defamer reports that “CSI: Miami’s” David Caruso stands accused of spitting, cursing and behaving like a tortured “man-child” on set.

“(David) can't walk and talk at the same time (you should see him on stairs), requires dozens of takes for simplest line-readings (which as we all know, he can only do one way) and can't even put his ‘CSI’ gloves on on-camera (always a time cut, just watch),” said a source going by the moniker “OnSetSnitch.”

“Snitch,” who claims to have witnessed production of almost 50 episodes of the hit show, contacted Defamer after the site posted a story about David’s sunglasses-enhanced acting method. (NOTE: The Defamer Info is posted below this MSNBC article)

“Caruso is without a doubt, the most tortured, saddest man-child/ actor I've ever seen in over 15 years of movie and TV-making.” The alleged insider went on to say, “He will cuss uncontrollably (often in front of a child actor) and blame everyone but himself for his inability to act. He used to hack up big loogies on the floor of the set, too, until a producer gently reminded him of sanitation and courtesy.”


Here’s the Defamer piece:

Mannerisms David Caruso Bullies Young Director Into Shooting Umpteenth Sunglasses Removal Scene

By now, seemingly every pop culture pundit worth their weight in punchlines has latched onto the high comedic value of David Caruso's effusive stylings on CSI: Miami. In particular, The Soup's Joel McHale has taken extreme delight in (and created a cottage industry from) Caruso's patented "I'm going to hastily remove my sunglasses while I deliver this one-liner" maneuver. But until we read this insider's account of Caruso's excruciating acting process on Popbitch, the TV viewer in us always just kind of naively assumed that these moments happened semi-serendipitously. But boy oh boy, were we ever wrong:
David Caruso asks [the show's director] when there will be a close up of [his] sunglasses - in every scene.

Here's the full, unedited text of the Popbitch item (typos/Anglo-isms theirs):

Just back from LA and was staying with a friend who's in Jericho. One of the scriptwriters for the show used to work on CSI: Miami and apparently David Caruso r4eally is the arse he appears. A new director was setting up a shot and as he was laying out the scene suggested that Caruso should walk through a door, into a room and pick up a bottle of something and open it etc. The producers took the tyro to one side and pointed out that "David gets a bit lost in props". Reasonably pointing out that it was quite a simple manoeuvre he was told that there was only a limited amount of time for the shoot and David didn't have the time to work out the meaning of the props. Gradually the action was whittled down to him just walking through the door and giving his line. To this the young director is once again taken to one side and it is explained to him that "David isn't very good with thresholds". He also asks when, in the scene, there will be a close up of the sunglasses - in every scene.

While we would never begrudge a star a chance to indulge themselves and their adoring audience with a trademark move or catchphrase, nothing about David Caruso's demeanor or any evidence from the item above indicates to us that he's the type of guy who is in on the joke. Either way, we're just thankful that his painstaking dedication to his craft allows us all to continue 'avin a laff at his expense, Extras style.



And just because it’s funny, and of course relevant, here’s the YouTube video of endless Horatio Caine one liners. I’ve posted this on my blog before, but this is one of those times where you just can’t get too much of a “good” (snicker) thing.




Check out my blog home page for the latest information,here.