No, No, Norah

I am so glad I ended my beautiful-women picture blog.

One of the biggest mistakes I made when I ran that blog was including TV newswomen among my subjects - not just because I was prioritizing them for their looks as well as for their skills (which is why I excluded Fox News personalities, as if that made it any better), but because the same TV newswomen I featured whom I thought had professional scruples turned out to be sellouts to Trump.  First, Kaitlan Collins.  Then Kristen Welker.  Last Sunday, on CBS's "60 Minutes," Norah O'Donnell's number got called.

I touched on this earlier this month,  but I have to return to this issue.  Norah O'Donnell interviewed Trump for "60 Minutes," and the interview was pared down to fill two of the program's three main blocks between commercials.  (The name of the program is a gross misnomer; anyone who records it and watches it later will zip through the commercials and can watch "60 Minutes" in 45.)   Thus, the Trump interview took up the bulk of last week's broadcast.  In all of that time, O'Donnell either asked Trump softball questions or asked tougher questions that he provided fudged answers to without any pushback or challenge.  That is, based on what I read and heard about the interview.  I didn't have the stomach to actually watch it.

It gets worse.  In going over the full transcript of the interview, voting-rights attorney and  activist Marc Elias found that O'Donnell had not only failed to challenge Trump in the footage that was actually broadcast, she had not challenged Trump in the parts of the interview that weren't included in the on-air version. "When I read the full transcript of the interview," Elias wrote on his own Web site Democracy Docket, "I realized there had been no pushback, no corrections, no challenging follow-ups. The entire interview had been an open-ended opportunity for Trump to tell rambling lies, only to have them cleaned up into a more polished product."

The decision was made to conduct an interview that didn't so much resemble Mike Wallace's hard-hitting one-on-one talks with national and world leaders as it resembled MTV interviews of the early eighties, in which the on-camera hosts would ask rock stars perfunctory questions about irrelevant topics (like the time Elton John discussed his role as a co-owner of the Watford soccer team - hardly anything to do with his music or anything most of his fans didn't know about).  O'Donnell, in interviewing Trump, seemed to have more in common with MTV host Martha Quinn than with ABC journalist Martha Raddatz.  But the decision on how to conduct the interview wasn't made by O'Donnell, or "60 Minutes" producer Tanya Simon.  It was made by new CBS News chief Bari Weiss, whose conservative politics jibe nicely with Trump's reactionary agenda, and whose motto for CBS News  - "Do the fucking news" - suggests that all she's doing is the fucking of the news.  Which is news in and of itself.

I don't think I can watch "60 Minutes" anymore.  Not even the arts and entertainment pieces, like Lesley Stahl's engaging story of Rob Reiner's long-awaited sequel to This Is Spinal Tap earlier this season, because those stories will likely skew more toward entertainers whose work has no value and who prosper largely for being good at self-promotion or savvy enough to do what it takes to stay hip.  In other words, people like Trump.  As for Norah O'Donnell, she has forfeited any right to be mentioned in the same sentence among pioneering CBS newswomen like Nancy Dickerson and Marlene Sanders.

And to think she might get rewarded for this MTV-style sham interview by being returned to the CBS Evening News anchor desk.

Let It Go

As noted back in June, the 57th governor of New Jersey will be someone who prefers to go by a nickname.  Tomorrow we find out which person that is - Rebecca Michelle "Mikie" Sherrill or Giacchino Michael "Jack" Ciattarelli.

Yeah, I voted last week - for Mikie Sherrill, of course, but the New Jersey gubernational campaign has been the most nerve-racking and most depressing one this year.  The MAGA Republican Ciattarelli has a shot, as I've noted before, and Sherrill, as a moderate Democrat, can't even get respect from her own supporters, who wish a more progressive nominee could have won the June primary.

So Jack, despite the consistent leads Mikie has had in the polls, could still win tomorrow.  I don't really care now.  Let it go.  I'm going to turn sixty this week, and I have much more personal concerns to think about at a time when America has run off the rails.  And it has, big time.  While people who need food assistance have been snapped off SNAP by the shutdown, Trump had a "Roaring Twenties"-themed party at Mar-a-Lago with free-flowing booze and free-flowing women.  To ensure that people on food stamps can't get around their benefits, the government has forbidden grocers who participate in the SNAP program to offer food to beneficiaries at a discount.  (They think of everything, don't they?)  And after having given CBS's "60 Minutes" a chance in the first weeks of its fifty-eighth season, I checked the on-air program guide last night to find that last night's episode had an "exclusive" interview with Trump.  Having seen excerpts of the "interview" that Norah O'Donnell conducted with the White House squatter, I came away feeling like I'd seen the sort of pseudo-interviews MTV would have back in the early eighties with rock stars, who would give perfunctory answers to equally perfunctory questions.  O'Donnell seemed to have more in common with Martha Quinn than with Martha Raddatz.  (You have to be of a certain age to get that reference.)

Again, I don't care.  It is what it is, and not only that, it ain't what it ain't.  I no longer want to take part in changing America - I haven't wanted to for awhile, really - I prefer to change my own little corner of it.   That's why I continue to clear-cut an invasive bush from the community park in my neighborhood, with hopes of getting new trees planted there in the spring.  It's why I plan to add other features to the park in 2026.  And I'm also taking more care of myself and my cats than taking care of what I can do for my country.  Because quite frankly, I will ask not what I can do for my country, as the answer is . . . nothing.  I need to tend to routine medical examinations, one of which I'm slightly overdue for, and I have to take care of the house and get someone to clear the snow this coming winter.  I may even have to get a landscaper if I can't even keep up with my own gardening.

My mother always told me not to worry about things I can't control, which, had I listened, would have made me the most worry-free person in America.  Now that there are things I have control over, I want to focus on those concerns and nothing else.

Who will be the next governor of New Jersey?  At this point, why should I care?

Nothing Bright About It

Do you remember Rick Bright? Of course you don't, because the media has been more focused on Tara Reade.  Dr. Bright is the fellow who had been heading the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), which is charged with helping to find a vaccine to stop COVID-19, until Trump removed him from his position after Dr. Bright said that the administration wasn't doing enough to stop the spread of the virus.  On May 5, Dr. Bright officially filed a whstleblower complain, and, because there's apparently nothing Trump can do to stop him from doing so, a committee of the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives has called him to testify this Thursday (May 14). The likeliest reason for his dismissal from BARDA was his objection to Trump's promotion of hydroxychloroquine to fight COVID-19, which turned out to be a a not-so-bright (pun sort of intended) idea.

Dr. Bright, a virologist, still works for the government, having been assigned to the National Institutes of Health to help with developing diagnostic testing.  Which is sort of weird, as Dr. Bright had been complaining about the lack of available testing.  Trump has dismissed him as a "disgruntled" employee.

"I am not disgruntled," Bright told CBS News anchor Norah O'Donnell. "I am frustrated at a lack of leadership. I am frustrated at a lack of urgency to get a head start on developing lifesaving tools for Americans. I'm frustrated at our inability to be heard as scientists. Those things frustrate me."

Dr, Bright, who was pushing for more personal protective equipment as far back as January, added that his reassignment was perplexing, given his expertise at vaccines. "To take me out of our organization focused on drugs and vaccines and diagnostics in the middle of a pandemic, of the worst public health crisis that our country's faced in a century," he said to O'Donnell, "and decapitate the BARDA organization. To move me over to a very small focused project of any scale, of any level importance is not responsible. Didn't make sense."

Unless you remember that the guy in the White House is a psychopath.

O'Donnell's interview with Dr. Bright airs on "60 Minutes" on Sunday, May 17.  Don't miss it.