Gimme A Minute

The fifty-eighth season of "60 Minutes" ended this evening, and the reporters for the news-magazine show - and yes, Lesley Stahl will be back - are already working on stories for a fifty-ninth season starting in September.  The most astonishing thing about another season of "60 Minutes" is that there will be one. 

"60 Minutes" has been one of the few news programs on American television which has taken a critical eye to the Trump regime, with stories about Trump's migrant policy and Elon Musk's "Department" of  "Government Efficiency."  Given all that, you'd think "60 Minutes" has the complete trust and confidence of CBS's corporate bosses.

You'd think wrong.  While "60 Minutes" hasn't had any of its stories censored or shelved, Paramount - CBS's current owner - has been keeping a watchful eye on the program's staff and editorial activities the same way a security officer at Bloomingdale's might keep an eye on some dude with green hair and a nose ring.   This was too much for "60 Minutes"'s executive producer Bill Owens (below), who resigned his position.  Owens cited the pressure from Paramount - looking to complete a merger with another media company and wanting to get approval from the Trump regime - not to push Trump too far when speaking truth to power as a reason for his resignation.

What does this mean?  It probably means that when "60 Minutes" returns with all-new stories in September, it will probably mean more celebrity profiles and more nature travelogs from Anderson Cooper.

Meanwhile, CBS's reboot of the old 1980s series "The Equalizer," starring the rapper legally known as Dana Owens (no relation to Bill) in the title role, has been cancelled.  The official reason? Declining ratings, likely.  The real reason?  Airing a series in which a heavy-set black woman beats up a dozen white men in rapid succession at a time when a racist and misogynistic honky is in the White House (also known as the Honky Château) is not a smart thing to do.  For her part, Dana is already promising a new project that she "can't wait to share with" everyone.  Uh, Dana?  Please don't.  Your "projects" in the past thirty-odd years have included two failed daytime talk shows, movies in which you make honky doofuses like even dumber than they already are, and of course your records, which, being rap records, have contributed to the ongoing problem of noise pollution.  Not to mention that Moonie-style mass wedding you officiated on the 2014 Grammy Awards with Madonna as a witness.  Dana, you've made your millions already, now please get thee to a mansion in Short Hills and enjoy your wealth in blissful retirement.

And having just written all that, I think I'd better get myself into hiding.  You know the reason; I won't enunciate it.  😉   

As for CBS's compromised broadcasting standards, the late great Andy Rooney said it best and for all time. CBS, which used to stand for Columbia Broadcasting System, stands for nothing anymore.  They're just corporate initials now. 

 Though they could stand for "compromised broadcasting standards . . ." 😉 

The Notorious MTG

CBS's "60 Minutes" aired a Lesley Stahl interview with U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene this past weekend. Because the reboot of "The Equalizer" was pre-empted by a country-music awards show, that meant that CBS viewers were only subjected to one obnoxious woman on a Sunday night. 

Alas, obnoxiousness is actually one of  Marjorie Taylor Greene's good points.  She has long been a politically reactionary she-beast who is on record as opposing aid to Ukraine, strongly supporting massive cuts in government spending and zeroing out subsidies for environmentally friendly energy, and claiming that "Jewish space lasers" are responsible for the wildfires in California.  And the Georgia congresswoman didn't tone down her rhetoric for Lesley Stahl either, insisting that the Democrats in general and  President Biden in particular are pedophiles.  Taylor Greene told Stahl that Democrats  groom children for sexual purposes by supporting sex-affirming care as proof. 

CBS got a lot of blowback for letting this interview even happen, but pundits have pointed out that, if Stahl had not given the blonde QAnon Republican missing link oxygen, Taylor Greene would have still found a way to get some.  Ignoring a celebrity boor no longer works.  People of Taylor Greene's ilk have learned how to become so popular and so important they can't be ignored; Donald Trump perfected such a modus operandi to an art form long before he even entered politics.   By interviewing MTG - and also contradicting some of her most glib and outrageous statements - Stahl was able to show Americans what they are up against - and how important it is to see just what a dangerous loose cannon she (MTG, not Stahl) is.

Though I'm surprised that Stahl, who, in common with a lot of people of her religion and ethnicity, is Jewish, didn't press MTG about those Jewish space lasers.

Under Water

Last night's "60 Minutes" edition featured a report from Bill Whitaker on rocks at the bottom of the ocean containing precious metals and rare-earth compounds and the race to harvest them.  Though there are environmental concerns, Whitaker's report explained how companies from different countries were trying to stay within environmental parameters in removing the rocks from the ocean floor.  The goal of harvesting and processing these metals is to make the batteries necessary for making electric cars.

As always, though, the United States isn't part of this bold expedition.  It seems that the seabed that is the most ripe for these metals to be harvested is in an area of the eastern Pacific governed by the Law of the Sea treaty, a treaty I've referred to before on this blog and - like so many multilateral treaties - a treaty that the U.S. wants no part of.  Actually, the Senate would ratify it - pro-treaty senators have more votes than they need - but 22 Republicans are preventing it from going through, and you can bet your sweet candy bar that Mitch McConnell is one of them.

Their argument against it? It cedes too much authority to the United Nations, and Americans don't cede authority to anyone.  But we are ceding our economic advantage and what's left of our scientific credibility to everyone by not being able to harvest these rocks for electric-car batteries.  Oh, right - apart from outsider-automaker Tesla, American car companies are paying little more than lip service to developing and selling electric cars.   

It should be noted that American aversion to multilateral treaties managing the planet's affairs and resources go back to long before Trump came along - the Law of the Sea treaty was written in the early 1980s, when Trump was busy destroying the old Bonwit Teller store in Manhattan to build his stupid tower.  And there are several other treaties of similar nature that the United States refuses to ratify.  Since 1945, we Americans have seen ourselves as being so powerful and so omnipotent that we don't need no stinking treaties to tell us how to run the world.  Which is exactly why we don't deserve to run it.  Democratic presidential candidates talk about restoring America's leadership in the world, but I'm not sure that's such a good idea.  We only ended up being the leader of the world after the Second World War for two reasons:

• The U.S. was one of only two industrialized countries not partially or totally destroyed by the war.
• Canada didn't want the job of world leadership.

Forget ratifying the Law of the Sea treaty now.  America is a sinking ship going down for the third time.

So Stormy

My time is brief today, and  I only have one other blog entry on tap for later this week before my next Music Video Of the Week for Friday, so I'm going to be very succinct in my reaction to Anderson Cooper's "60 Minutes" interview with porn actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels.

The cover-up is always worse than the crime.  Everyone knows that Donald Trump is a skank and that having a sexual encounter with anyone - porn actress, Playboy model, Shakespearean actress,  haute couture model (yeah, right - like any woman of the latter two professions would have anything to do with the Donald or that the Donald would have anything to do with them) - when your wife has just given birth to your son is the height of skankishness, but being a skank is not a federal offense.  What is a federal offense is how the Trump team tried to cover it up by covering up the cover-up, assuming the allegations that Clifford and her lawyer enunciated in last night's interview are true.

If this doesn't being Trump down from a legal standpoint, his affair with Clifford will still be his undoing. Because people will be so tired of hearing of his sexual peccadilloes that they'll vote him out of office just so they don't have to hear about him anymore.

Aside: I don't think it's a coincidence that porn actor, professional wrestler, and rapper are three of the most disreputable professions ever conceived and that porn actors, professional wrestlers and rappers go by such outrageously stupid stage names. Stormy Daniels?  Sergeant Slaughter?  Dr. Dre?

No Fake News Here!

This past Sunday I saw a report on "60 Minutes" on fake news and the sites that promote it.  Scott Pelley showed how fake-news sites proliferate across the Internet and how they're designed to get the attention of ideologically charged audiences by using fake Twitter accounts known as "bots" to spread them as far and wide as possible.  They have people on the left and right believing the worst about each other's political opponents - I'll grant that not everything reported about Donald Trump is true - and that's pretty much how that story about a Washington pizzeria that was reported to have been the center of a child sex-slave operation run by Hillary Clinton got started.  That, of course, led to a person who believed the worst about Hillary going there and shooting up the place.

One of those "fake news" purveyors, Mike Cernovich, defended his work in an interview with Pelley, saying that his information about the Clinton campaign and the Democratic left (which, remember, are not one and the same) is a counterpoint to the official line from the Democratic Party, his "facts" based on his own "reporting" - like having a doctor Hillary has never met examine her based on a clip of her showing signs of fatigue (from an illness) and attributing it to Parkinson's disease.

Well, you won't find any fake news here.  Because, apart from a piece on a Swedish Christmas fair that I reported on here because I had no other place to publish it, I don't report news stories on this blog, and I have made it clear that this blog is not meant to be a news source.  It's just social and cultural commentary, essays about personal experiences, and the occasional book or record review.  And my blog "Pictures of Beautiful  Women" is just that and nothing else.

You know, the world would be a whole lot better if those of us who write blogs without any news value remembered that we are just reporting opinions and hearsay without presenting them as the facts.  I merely comment on what I've heard, and if it sounds fishy or fake, I either say so or refuse to even dignify the story with commentary. Look, the Internet is meant to spread free speech, but free speech is a responsibility that has to be taken more seriously.  I am responsible for saying that what you read on this blog is not the gospel, just me mouthing off about whatever happens to be on my mind.

That's why this blog is called "Miscellaneous Musings."

The Interrogator

Mike Wallace, who died earlier this month, was a unique success story. Starting out as what we would now call an "infotainer" - first as a radio announcer, than as a game show host - he only became a full-time newsman after his son Peter died in an accident in 1962.  Mike Wallace subsequently felt the need to commit himself to more meaningful work as a result. For the next four decades and change - mostly as a "60 Minutes" correspondent - Wallace did just that, doing probing interviews and serious investigative journalism.  His "60 Minutes" reports left people talking every Monday morning about (and probably inspiring a few to do something about) the scandals and scams Wallace uncovered.

Wallace's interviews with prominent figures could also be revealing, from his interview with Johnny Carson about his personal life to his interview with Shirley MacLaine about pre-existence. Ever the skeptic, Wallace would humanize his subjects and divine the attitudes of world leaders as diverse as Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. You could see the burning hatred, for example, in the Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's eyes when Wallace quoted Egyptian President Anwar Sadat as calling the Supreme Leader of Iran a "lunatic."

For my money, the most deftly handled interview Wallace ever conducted on "60 Minutes" was with Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints President Gordon Hinckley, which aired in April 1996. Wallace asked Hinckley, the Mormon equivalent of the pope, some fair and tough questions about the Mormon church without sounding oft-putting or disrespectful. The interview, as well as the story on the Mormons that included it, was a major feat for both men; Wallace proved that religion could be handled in a dignified manner, and Hinckley was able to present a contemporary image of a once fringe-based church still working its way into the mainstream in 1996 (and Mitt Romney's presidential campaign has pretty much completed the transition, whether he wins in November or not).

Wallace did have his share of embarrassments - notably the libel suit brought by General William Westmoreland as a result of Wallace's special report on the Vietnam  War after it ended - but he was mostly on target with his reporting.  A couple of today's "60 Minutes" correspondents - especially Steve Kroft - have tried to follow in Wallace's footsteps with their own investigative reporting, and they've done a good job at it, but there will never be another Mike Wallace. R.I.P.

Goodbye, Andy, Mark Two

Over a month ago, I wrote about Andy Rooney's retirement from "60 Minutes," and I summed up his long and incredible career. I concluded by saying that Rooney is "not retiring from writing, because even at 92 years of age, he's a writer and he always will be, and he thanked viewers for listening to what he had to say for 33 years. He's sure to be around in some capacity after tonight, and I'm sure he'll have something to say about it."

Ironically, his parting comments were his last words as a professional writer.  Rooney, of course, died on the night of November 4.  I regret that I had not acknowledged his death earlier than now.  I also regret that I cannot add anything to what I've already said about him . . . except that Rooney imagined himself maintaining some kind of presence as a writer.  His goodbye was not meant to be forever.  But Rooney's death only a month after his final "60 Minutes" sign-off only shows how fate, whatever we envision for ourselves, has its own plans.  R.I.P.

It makes sense that the current producers of "60 Minutes" haven't thought up a new kind of end piece to the show.  What could they possibly come up with after more than three decades of Andy?        

Goodbye, Andy

Andy Rooney read his last essay as a regular contributor of CBS's "60 Minutes" tonight, ending a 33-year career of getting the last word on the prestigious TV news magazine, but also capping a career as a writer that goes back seven decades.  He started out as a reporter for the Stars and Stripes Army newspaper in World War II, and later he would be known for his work for talk show host Arthur Godfrey and his writing and producing for CBS newsman Harry Reasoner before becoming "60 Minutes"'s regular essayist. 

Rooney is a rarity among television personalities; he's someone who's exactly the same off screen as he is on.  He always made his tenure at "60 Minutes" about the essays and commentaries he wrote, not about himself, and his wit and wry observations cut through the air without much getting in their way.  Once in awhile Rooney would strike a sour note. His comments about the gay lifestyle led many to charge him with homophobia, and his loaded derision of Kurt Cobain for committing suicide when "a lot of people would like to have the years left that he threw away" generated almost unanimous criticism.  (Rooney failed to take the rock star's depression into account.)  But he mostly got things right, whether commenting on consumer products or the spectacularly ridiculous advertising that accompanies them or the price of tickets to sporting events. 

Among my favorite Rooney TV pieces is his 1980 essay "How We Elect the President," explaining the process of picking a U.S. President from the first caucus to the general election, which was a masterful satire of the long, drawn-out affair.  Rooney is also a newspaper columnist as well, where he's commented on everything from kitchen appliances to the original watercoooled Volkswagen Beetle with aplomb.  It's hard not think of a mundane or thought-provoking topic that he hasn't given any curmudgeonly thought to.  And on "60 Minutes," he did it 1,097 times.

He signed off tonight saying that he's not retiring from writing, because even at 92 years of age, he's a writer and he always will be, and he thanked viewers for listening to what he had to say for 33 years.  He's sure to be around in some capacity after tonight, and I'm sure he'll have something to say about it. :-)    

Counterfeit Drugs

CBS's "60 Minutes" had a report last night about the rise of counterfeit drug sales in the United States, largely due to the irresistible lure of cheap, discounted prescription drugs in a country (this one, the U.S. of A.) where medications are simply damn too expensive. All sorts of counterfeits come from countries like China and India, and it takes a trained eye to spot the fakes from the real thing. Fake drugs include edible substances with no medicinal value and some ingredients that aren't edible at all - like chalk.

What I found even more shocking - but not so surprising - is that many of the Internet sites where such drugs are available pretend to be based in Canada. In Canada, of course, thanks to a health care system superior to that in the United States (if you find an industrialized country whose health care system isn't superior to the American one, please write a note on this post), real drugs are cheaper than on this side of the border. One of my British friends - who has National Health, obviously - sent me a link to a Canadian prescription drug site. I sent the link to my cousin. Now I'm left wondering if it's legitimate.

I'm also left wondering what's going to be done about lowering the price of prescription drugs, if anything, in this country. Something has to be done eventually. People have died from these fake drugs. They bought them because they couldn't afford the real ones.

In the News

Reports have circulated that President Obama is ready to give up on Republican support for health care reform, but his spokesman, Robert Gibbs, insisted that this is not the case. Gibbs said today that the President is still interested in working with Republicans, and he wants to work with legislators with constructive ideas.

Well, is Obama going to make up his mind?

Although more Americans are supporting a public option, many more Americans still believe in the lies about government takeovers of health care and rationing, and the lies have been repeated by health care reform opponents. Although they've been called out, these opponents are not interested in the truth. To paraphrase a movie line, if they wanted to get the truth out, they would have spoken to "60 Minutes."

Speaking of which, I heard that Don Hewitt, the creator of "60 Minutes," died today. Hewitt expanded television journalism with his news show, looking at stories with greater depth and digging deeper at timely issues. The show has kept the high standards it started out with when it debuted in 1968, even after Hewitt's retirement five years ago. RIP.